Illustration · An imagined desk at home late at night in 1999: a computer with a meeting’s messages on the screen, a keyboard and mouse, a modem whose lights flicker as the messages come in, a desk lamp, a mug and a printed fact sheet. Not drawn from a photograph.

Online

A pilot for meetings by computer, the first requirements Al-Anon’s Board ever made mandatory for every Area, and why Alateen’s place online came last.

“It is too late for Al-Anon not to get involved in the Internet…”

The Board’s committee on electronic meetings, 1996 · as printed in Many Voices, One Journey, 2011

A real group

In 1999 a woman in Texas found Al-Anon on the Internet. She was frightened and ashamed, and it was a while before she went to a meeting in person.

It wasn’t long before she was pressed into service. At her first Area assembly she asked the Area’s delegate about the groups on the Internet, and she remembered the answer.

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m too busy with a real group.”

An Area delegate, as a member from Texas remembered it · Many Voices, One Journey

That was what many members thought of the groups online then, she wrote. At another assembly, someone asked how anyone could make sure what was said in them was “true Al-Anon.” She felt she had to answer.

She told how she had found Al-Anon on the Internet, and got a standing ovation. It was the first time she had spoken at an Area assembly.

Al-Anon had been trying meetings by computer since January 1996, when its Board approved a three-year pilot. Its members were already online, a committee said, and Al-Anon had to be there to keep the message “truly Al-Anon” (Logging on, below).

In 2001 the office began registering online meetings, though not as groups, since Al-Anon’s service structure is built on geography. By the end of the year there were 28, in six languages.

None were for Alateen, Al-Anon’s groups for teenagers. Questions about keeping its teenagers safe weren’t settled, and the office didn’t register Alateen meetings online.

The questions had first reached the Conference in 1986, from Alateen sponsors torn between the Traditions and the law when they knew of child abuse. In 2000 the Conference recommended two adult sponsors for every Alateen group, each at least 21 and in Al-Anon at least two years.

Then, on December 3, 2003, Al-Anon’s Board did something it had never done. It required every Area to adopt safety and behavior rules for Alateen by the end of 2004, or its groups could no longer use the Alateen name.

MoreThe minimums

Anyone in Alateen service had to go to Al-Anon meetings, be at least 21, and have two years in Al-Anon besides any time in Alateen. A felony record, a charge of child abuse or inappropriate sexual behavior, or emotional problems that could harm Alateen members ruled a person out.

The Board acted, it said, under the authority it holds to protect the Al-Anon and Alateen names. It didn’t require background checks, though some Areas used them.

The rules themselves had been talked over for years, but the order caught many members off guard. To some it looked like an ultimatum, with no warning.

In one Area in Ontario, an assembly voted the requirements down that October. On New Year’s Eve the member who kept the Area’s group records took its Alateen groups off Al-Anon’s list, through tears.

It was, the member wrote, “the most painful New Year’s Eve of my life in Al-Anon.” A year passed before the Area voted again and its groups could start over.

More919 groups

Groups that didn’t comply came off Al-Anon’s list on December 31, 2004. By 2005, 2,405 Al-Anon members in the United States and Canada had been certified for Alateen service, and by the end of that year 919 Alateen groups had registered again.

Illustration · New Year’s Eve, 2004, when the Alateen groups of one Area in Ontario came off Al-Anon’s list. The member did it on a database, so the list and the calendar are imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

At the 2004 Conference the Board’s chairperson, Cecilia L., had said, “I am confident that the Board has made the right decision.” A year later its chairperson, Judy P., opened a discussion of how the decision had been carried out.

She spoke, Al-Anon’s history says, with humility: “Hindsight is 20/20 and often our best teacher.”

Illustration · Reading glasses folded on a typed talk, for the hindsight the Board’s chairperson spoke of in 2005. Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

During the years of talk with the delegates, she said, the Board had failed to say clearly that it meant to act, or to give them all they needed. It hadn’t seen that it needed to be “standing there with you” when they took the news to their Areas.

For that, she said, “the entire Board makes direct amends to you,” the Conference members.

Only after that did Al-Anon’s office give its teenagers a place online, on trial: in 2006 a bulletin board, Alateen Web Talk, for members 13 to 18, and in 2009 chat meetings in the United States and Finland.

Listen Online About 1 minute

Year by year

Logging on

Al-Anon online, from a pilot in 1996 to the meeting rooms in its app, with Alateen a step behind each time.

From Many Voices, One Journey (2011), except 2020, from a note on the app by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2026. The address is the one the history gives for the first website. Quotations are short excerpts.

Jan 1996
A pilot
Three years of listing online meetings as electronic meetings, aiming at full registration.
Oct 1996
A website
Launched on the day of the open house in Virginia Beach. In six months, more than 11,000 visits from 36 countries.
Jul 1998
A bank of computers
At the International Convention in Salt Lake City, an electronic meeting in a hotel basement, with members on hand to help.
1999
A fact sheet
The committee behind it wants online meetings to resemble face-to-face meetings as much as possible.
2001
Registered
28 online meetings by the end of the year, in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Japanese. None for Alateen.
2005
Meetings on the map
56 Areas have websites, and meeting information is online for about 90 percent of the United States and Canada.
2006
Alateen Web Talk
A bulletin board for members 13 to 18, on trial, with safety precautions for the teens a primary concern.
2009
Alateen Chat
Trial chat meetings for Alateen in the United States and Finland.
2020
An app
Al-Anon’s first mobile app. It now includes a way for members to meet electronically.

Like a meeting

From 1999 Al-Anon wanted meetings online to resemble face-to-face meetings as much as possible. Its first online meeting for teenagers came in 2006, after the Board required every Area to adopt rules for the adults who served them.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How a recommendation for Alateen became a requirement, a minority report from Vermont, and literature written for the screen.

Recommended, then required

The 2000 Conference’s wording, in the policies of Al-Anon’s service manual, was a recommendation: “It is recommended that there be two Alateen Sponsors,” each going to Al-Anon meetings. Members of AA could serve if they were in Al-Anon too; an AA member who wasn’t could help a group but not sponsor it.

At the 2004 Conference nearly every delegate spoke about the Board’s motion. Some were upset not to have been asked first; others remembered years of discussion. “There is a big difference between guidelines and requirements,” one said. A delegate moved to affirm the Board’s action, saying a voice for the Conference would lessen the dissension, and the motion carried 86 to 6, with 2 void ballots.

A minority heard

A member from Vermont announced the new requirements to her group, and then cast its vote on them at an assembly of her Area. Her sponsor took her along to an Area meeting, where she ended up on the committee drafting its plan to comply. She read Lois Remembers for the history, and heard strong opinions on teenagers’ safety and on the groups’ freedom to decide for themselves.

At the 2005 Conference, Vermont’s delegate read a letter from the committee, a minority report on the requirements, so that the minority could be heard. The Conference heard it and decided no action was needed. She was moved that the minority was heard, she wrote, and impressed that the Board took an inventory and apologized for how the requirements were brought to the members.

e-CAL

In 1997 Al-Anon began an inventory of all its Conference Approved Literature, with all 67 Areas taking part, to find out whether it met members’ needs. It took eight years, and led to new versions of many pamphlets and several books and the end of several others.

In 2006 the Conference approved a three-year trial of e-CAL, electronic Conference Approved Literature: members’ sharings in formats including audio and video, approved quickly and meant to last only a short time, for people more likely to read a screen than a hardcover book. A new e-CAL Committee did almost all its work by email. At the 2008 International Convention in Pittsburgh, winning entries in an e-CAL contest went up on the arena’s big screen. In 2009 the Conference ended the trial for lack of submissions: in the year before, the e-CAL page had posted 28 sharings.

Sources

Many Voices, One Journey. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2011. Chapter 9, “Looking within, 1986–1990” (Alateen safety at the 1986 Conference); chapter 11, “A new beginning, 1996–2000” (the 1996 pilot and committee, the website, Salt Lake City, the fact sheet, the Texas member, the literature inventory, the 2000 policy); chapter 12, “Taking our inventory, 2001–2005” (registration, 2001; the Alateen Motion and its requirements; the 2004 and 2005 Conferences, Cecilia L., Judy P., the Ontario and Vermont members; the counts for 2005; Areas’ websites); chapter 13, “Planting seeds for new growth, 2006–2010” (Alateen Web Talk, e-CAL, Pittsburgh, Alateen Chat).
“From Letters to Logins: WSO’s Role in Our Mobile App.” Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2026 (posted by Al-Anon’s Colorado Area).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, “Starting an Alateen group” (al-anon.org).