One Drunk to Another A Bunch of Actors
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CALL SHEETPSA · “WALL”ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUSCALL 7:00 AM CAST “WALL”:60 TELEVISION SPOT
Illustration · A dressing room at a shoot for a television spot: a call sheet taped to a mirror ringed with bulbs, a lanyard with a cast badge, and a script and a cup of coffee on the counter. Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

New York and online · 1997 and after

Legacy

AA’s own spots now cast actors as its members, and AA tells its story on screens of its own.

“…the Internet, social media and all forms of public communications are implicit in the last phrase of the Short Form of Tradition Eleven…”

The 63rd General Service Conference, in an action of 2013 · Advisory Actions of the General Service Conference, 1951–2022

Played by actors

In the winter of 1940–41 Jack Alexander thought the first AA members he met behaved like a bunch of actors (A bunch of actors tells it). Seventy years later AA’s own spots were using real ones. In 2009 the General Service Conference, the yearly meeting of AA’s delegates, trustees and staff, asked for a new spot in which the “full faces of actors portraying A.A. members” would not be shown. It was approved the next year as My World.

In 2011 the Conference made it a rule for every new video AA’s boards produce. Where actors play members, or people coming to AA for help, the video “shall not show the actor’s full face,” unless AA’s General Service Board agrees, by substantial unanimity, that it keeps to attraction rather than promotion and doesn’t put personalities before principles, and the Conference, by substantial unanimity, authorizes it. When Doors was approved in 2015, its voices were to be rerecorded by professional voice actors. In 2019, asking for two new spots, the Conference said that if they showed full faces they should say “actor portrayal” on the screen, and in 2021 it approved two that showed them, made under the working titles Party and Wall.

The screens multiplied. AA’s office had a website by 1997. In 2004 the last line of AA’s radio spots, which had sent listeners to the phone book or the newspaper, became “Look us up. Check your phone book, newspaper or aa.org.” AA World Services opened a YouTube channel in 2018, with the comments turned off, and a page on LinkedIn for professionals in 2021. AA’s Meeting Guide app, which finds the meetings nearest a phone, had half a million users a month by 2023.

Listen Legacy About 1 minute

AA’s own spots

Who’s on the screen

How AA’s own films and television spots have shown its members, from its first spots in the 1960s to two approved in 2021. Each screen sums up how AA meant its members to be seen.

From Bob P.’s history (1985) and the advisory actions of AA’s General Service Conference, 1979 to 2021. Today a spot made for broadcast goes out only once the Conference approves it.

  1. In shadow

    1960s AA’s first spots

    Members, filmed in shadow, tell one-minute stories of their experiences. The last spot shows the board’s chairman, Dr. John L. Norris, full face. He wasn’t an alcoholic.

    6 · In shadow

  2. A voice-over

    1979 An Inside View

    AA’s own film for the public. A voice-over added at the end says that film techniques were used to protect the members’ anonymity.

    7 · My Name Is Bill W.

  3. No full faces

    2010 My World

    The Conference asked for it in 2009, with actors playing the members and no full faces shown, and its committee suggested older alcoholics and alcoholics with special needs among them.

  4. Voice actors

    2015 Doors

    Approved on condition that its voices be rerecorded by professional voice actors, in English, Spanish and French, “removing any sense that the voices are recorded phone calls.”

  5. Actor portrayal

    Full faces

    2021 Party and Wall

    Two spots with actors shown full face, approved under the policy of 2011. When it asked for two new spots in 2019, the Conference said that if they showed full faces they should say so on the screen.

A bunch of actors

In the winter of 1940–41 a reporter thought AA’s members behaved like actors. Today AA’s spots use real ones, and the members stay off the screen.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How AA came to YouTube with the comments off, what its pamphlet on anonymity says about the internet, and the letter AA sends the media every year.

Comments off

In 2016 the Conference asked for two proposals: an account with Google’s program for nonprofits, and a Twitter account. The next year it recommended the first, limited to YouTube, “with a guarantee that comments not be shown.” No Twitter account appears among its actions.

The channel opened in 2018 with three spots, Doors, My World and I Have Hope, in English, French and Spanish, AA’s office newsletter reported, with the aim of hosting all of AA World Services’ videos. In 2019 the Conference had the spots’ titles rewritten so that search engines would find them. aa.org now offers spots with titles like Sobriety in AA: My Drinking Built a Wall.

In 2021 the Conference asked for a study of paying to place the spots on streaming services, “including, but not limited to, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube,” and for podcasts from AA’s office and the Grapevine. The office’s podcast is called Our Primary Purpose.

Anonymity online

AA’s pamphlet Understanding Anonymity, as the Conference revised it in 2022, treats a public website like a newspaper or a broadcast: members don’t identify themselves there as AA members by full name or full-face photo. When members gather as members on social media, it suggests that the pages be set to private rather than public.

Online meetings aren’t streamed to the public, the pamphlet says, but some members use only a first name and last initial there, or turn the camera off, and some groups remind members that taking pictures or screenshots isn’t in keeping with anonymity.

In 2026 the Conference approved the pamphlet again, revised, under a new title: Anonymity — Our Spiritual Foundation.

A letter every year

At one point, Bill W. wrote in 1953, about a hundred members were breaking anonymity at the public level. The Alcoholic Foundation, as AA’s board was then called, “wrote letters to practically every news outlet in North America,” and editors and rewrite men, he wrote, went on deleting members’ names and pictures from AA stories, sometimes giving up a good story to do it.

The letter came back year after year. In 1968 it went to 7,500 newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations. From 1974 delegates could take copies to the smaller newspapers in their areas. In September 2019 it was emailed to more than 29,000 media outlets in the U.S. and Canada, with a link to a short video on anonymity.

The letter of January 2026 asks reporters who identify a member to use first names only, and gives two examples: “Sofia M. or Ben T.”

Sources