![]() So staying anonymous is important at both the individual and organizational levels. AA members do not speak for the fellowship, AA prefers not to advertise or self-promote, and the fellowship prefers not to engage in public affairs. Maintaining anonymity is also fundamental to AA's public relations policy.The "Anonymous" piece of Alcoholics Anonymous is intended to protect AA members from external stigma or judgment, and allowing members to remain anonymous gives them the discretion to choose how, when and to whom an alcoholic might reveal their alcoholism.AA's primary purpose is to help alcoholics* achieve sobriety, and provides a self-supporting infrastructure where alcoholics help others in their goal to quit drinking.Alcoholics Anonymous-commonly referred to as AA-was founded in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, by Bill W.World History, 1985 – By Bob P.The basics of AA, the Big Book and the Promises found within Gresham's Law And Alcoholics Anonymous 5.Grapevine Articles Of The Washingtonians 15.The Varieties Of Religious Experiences 17.Talks At General Service Conferences 31.Letters – To Bill Wilson From Jim Burwell 3.Letters – To Jim Burwell From Bill Wilson 18.With such assurances, we shall without doubt continue to improve and extend our vital lifelines of special service to better carry our AA message to others to make for ourselves a finer, greater Society, and, God willing, to assure Alcoholics Anonymous a long life and perfect unity. As a movement, we shall remain comfortably poor, for our service expenses are trifling. While important, these service activities are very small by contrast with our main effort.Īs such facts and distinctions become clear, we shall easily lay aside our fears of blighting organization or hazardous wealth. Yet our recovery program has been enormously aided. Special services are performed.īut by none of these special services has our spiritual or social activity, the great current of AA, ever been really organized or professionalized. People have to be appointed to look after these things, sometimes paid people. Nor can we secure good hospital connections, properly sponsor new prospects, and obtain good public relations just by chance. The AA book and pamphlets, our meeting places and clubs, our dinners and regional assemblies - these are services, too. If, for instance, an AA group elects a secretary or rotating committee, if an area forms an intergroup committee, if we set up a foundation, a general office or a Grapevine, then we are organized for service. Yet, paradoxically, we have ever stoutly insisted upon organizing certain special services mostly those absolutely necessary to effective and plentiful Twelfth Step work. AA has always violently resisted the idea of any general organization. We shall, naturally, take the firm and safe middle course. But the promoter will continue to remind us of our terrific obligation to the newcomer and to those hundreds of thousands of alcoholics still waiting all over the world to hear of AA. The conservative will surely see to it that the AA movement never gets overly organized. “My two-year plan calls for one million AA members by 1950!”įor one, I’m glad we have both conservatives and enthusiasts. ![]() ![]() Millions for drunks, great AA hospitals, batteries of paid organizer, and publicity experts wielding all the latest paraphernalia of sound and script such would be our promoters dream. Left to himself, he would “bang the cannon and twang the lyre” at every crossroad of the world. Quite opposed to such halcyon simplicity is the AA promoter. ![]() If any alcoholics stray our way, let’s look after the. Says he, let’s get back to coffee and cakes by cozy firesides. He thinks money only makes trouble, committees only make dissension, elections only make politics, paid workers only make professionals, and clubs only coddle slippers. Terrified of anything organized, he tells us that AA is getting too complicated. We have, for example, the kind of AA who is for simplicity. No fees, or dues, no rules imposed on anybody, one alcoholic bringing recovery to the next that’s the substance of what we most desire, isn’t it?īut how shall this simple ideal best be realized? Often a question, that. The least possible organization, that’s our universal ideal. ![]()
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