Every Member's Responsibility.

I have a Sponsor, a Service Sponsor, a Home Group, and a Sobriety date.  A sobriety date that hasn't changed for some years now.  However, when I first came to AA, My Sobriety date changed every 3-14 days for a long time.  In fact, it took me 10 months to get 30 days put together. This is when the literature was "outdated".   I liked hanging around the "cool meetings" that were not literature based, but instead would read new age scientific study's and articles, talk about yoga and mindfulness and all the different ways they were staying sober.  I liked trying the different ways and the different ideas. I liked what the cool alcoholics had to say much better than the old school 12 steppers with Big Books in their hands.  

When I got to AA it was because I had finely ran out of my own ideas.  I opened the book when I finely ran out of "your" ideas too. 

"My" program didn't work for me anymore.  "Your" program didn't work for me either, but for some reason, "THE" program of AA WORKED. AND WORKED WELL!  To this day, it has been the ONLY thing that has been able to arrest my alcoholism.  For some reason, when another Alcoholic took me through the program; someone who had also done the work from the book... well, I had a spiritual awakening as the result of those steps.  As promised. 

I seem to be in more debate with others lately about what A.A. is and is not.  I am hearing more and more statements like, "You don't have to do the steps" and that "The Traditions, especially Anonymity is outdated." and even "It doesn't matter what your addiction is.  Alcohol was but a symptom." Now we all know that A.A. has no monopoly on God, or sobriety for that matter, but if we can't all agree on what the A.A. program is internally, how can we explain in our Cooperating with the Professional Community and Public Information work, to the out-side world what the message and program are?

A.A. still stands for "Alcoholics Anonymous" I am an alcoholic.  Which means I have the phenomenon of craving (once I take a drink I can't stop) coupled with the mental obsession that tells me I can beat the allergy if I just find the right combination or plan.  I had to find a higher power that relived that obsession.

Again, my ideas all failed.  Identification with another alcoholic, who was properly armed with facts about himself, was able to provide me hope, and eventually willingness led me to the program in that book which led me to God.  That is the ONLY thing that worked for me.

When we vote for a trusted servant we might ask how long they have been sober, how much coffee they have made in that time, and listen to how like-able or friendly they seem. We rarely, if ever, ask them if they have had a spiritual awakening as a result of the 12 steps, or even if they identify as an alcoholic as describe in our Big Book. 

If the recently released communications audit suggests that we have lost our message in New York and our literature is inconsistent, then I have to believe they are including the GV publications in that.  And if that is the case, its been that way (in my opinion) for 40+ years.  But the literature published by AAWS seems at-least to me still very consistent, and congruent for the most part. This is something I thank God for often.  Because like Wilson said, our literature is what preserves the integrity of the AA message.  

Many members today don't know what the AA message is.  But that is only because so many meetings are no-longer literature based. We have a 90% open discussion, voluntary participation fellowship.  Many AA members actually believe they are suppose to come to the meetings to talk about their day and get whatever off their chest.  Many A.A. meetings have turned away from the literature and toward group therapy.  This is just a fact.  A sad fact, but it is not even debatable.  The message has been lost.  But it is hiding in our literature.

Wilson writes in 1958;

"Sobriety-  freedom from alcohol through the teaching and the practice of our 12 steps is the sole purpose of an AA group." 

Responsibility is one of our 36 spiritual principles.  I feel it is our responsibility to bring the message through our literature to our home group.

~Steps down from soap box