One Drunk to Another A Daily Reprieve
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · A folded newspaper and a hat left on a hall table at night, outside the open doorway of a meeting room where the coffee is on. Not drawn from a photograph.

Daily Reflections · October 28

An Unbroken Tradition

One aim ahead of any cause: a line from the middle of Bill W.’s essay on Tradition Ten, and some of the times AA’s name came close to being drawn in.

Today’s reading

The reading for October 28 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 177.

This page doesn’t reprint it. Read it free at aa.org, then come back for the asks.

Read it at aa.org

Themes and asks

  1. Ahead of any cause

    The passage ranks AA’s own life above any cause its members might take up. A little earlier, the essay says that holds even for a worthy fight. Read beside today’s title, that choice isn’t settled once; it gets made again each time a good cause comes along.

    • What cause would you most like to see AA take up, and which drinker would it keep away?
    • What good thing have you let crowd out what keeps you sober?

  2. Still a citizen

    Just before the passage, the essay is careful to say what the Tradition doesn’t ask. Members keep their own part in the questions of their day; what stays out of the fight is AA itself.

    • Where do you speak up for what you believe, as yourself rather than as a member?
    • When has an opinion of yours come into a meeting that didn’t need to be there?

  3. We squabble

    Right after the passage, the essay owns up that AA’s members fight: over $25 in postage stamps, over who runs the group, sometimes walking out to start another. The rows never hurt AA, it says, and they were nearly always about how to help more drunks.

    • What’s the last group argument you got hot about, and what was it really about?
    • Who do you disagree with at business meetings, and how do you treat them at the next meeting?

  4. Something to stand on

    Gratitude runs through today’s reflection: its writer is glad that what AA is for hasn’t changed since the start.

    • What in your life has stayed the same long enough to lean on?
    • Whose work, from before you ever came in, are you still standing on?

Behind the words

Perhaps the first

The passage sits in the middle of Bill W.’s essay on Tradition Ten in the Twelve and Twelve. Just before it, Bill sets the members apart from AA as a whole: restored “as citizens of the world,” they keep their own say on the issues of their time, while AA takes no side. Two paragraphs on, he tells how the Washingtonians, a society of drunks a century earlier, were drawn into other causes and stopped being any help to alcoholics. From that lesson, he wrote, “was laid the cornerstone for Tradition Ten.”

The instinct was older than the Tradition. In 1939 the Big Book’s Foreword said AA was tied to no faith or sect, “nor do we oppose anyone.” The same book warned members off any show of hostility to drinking as such: a newcomer, it said, is relieved to find “we are not witch-burners.” Looking back in 1960, Bill thought Tradition Ten might have been the earliest of the twelve to form. Fighting drink head-on, he wrote, had never worked for them.

In September 1948, writing on the Tradition for the Grapevine, Bill warned members not to take their unity for granted. To most of them, he wrote, AA had come to seem “as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.” It needed a tradition on controversy strong enough to outlast the times, and “the weakness of persons.”

By the mid-1960s, the person was Bill. From December 1965 he sent doctors in AA papers on niacin, vitamin B-3, as a help for alcoholics, and members argued about it at meetings. Almost everyone agreed, Pass It On says, that he was breaking the Sixth and Tenth Traditions, both his own work. In 1967 the General Service Conference accepted a board report that kept the two apart: questions about niacin were to go to Pleasantville, New York, and Bill was to write about it on stationery that didn’t give the General Service Office’s address.

The Preamble that many meetings open with, first printed in the Grapevine in 1947, still keeps AA out of controversy and out of causes.

More on the Washingtonians, and the charter AA never asked Congress for: The Washingtonians and Legacy, in Rule 62. On the letterhead: Something useful, in People Like You. On Bill and niacin: Mr. Anonymous, in Number One Man.

Where it held

A century before AA, a fellowship of drunks took sides. Since then, AA’s name has been pulled toward other causes more than once; here are three times. From Bill W.’s writing, AA Comes of Age and Pass It On.

  1. 1840sThe WashingtoniansIn Bill’s telling, their speakers took sides over slavery, and then the society set out to reform the nation’s drinking.Within a few years they were no use to drunks. Historians tell the fall differently.
  2. From 1944A letterheadBill’s and Dr. Bob’s names were on the letterhead of Marty M.’s National Committee for Education on Alcoholism. In 1946 a big mailing asking the public for money went out on it, some of it to AA groups.The founders withdrew from the committee.
  3. The 1950sA charter from CongressA law to protect AA’s name, which would put AA, Bill wrote, “in the same class as the Red Cross.”The Conference said no: a legal weapon would lead to lawsuits, and lawsuits to public controversy. Bill called it “the final foundation” of the Tradition.
  4. 1965–1967NiacinAA’s co-founder urged a vitamin on AA’s doctors, and members argued about it at meetings.Questions about niacin went to Pleasantville instead, and his letters about it left off AA’s office address.

“As a Fellowship, we cannot fight anybody, anywhere or at any time.”

Bill W., in the Grapevine, November 1960, looking back on the Tradition.

Threads

Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.

Sources
  • Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. The essay on Tradition Ten.
  • Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939. “Foreword to First Edition” and “Working with Others,” as reprinted in the fourth edition (AA World Services, 2001).
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “Tradition Ten,” September 1948, and “Freedom Under God: The Choice Is Ours,” November 1960.
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Unity: The Second Legacy.”
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapters 19 and 24.
  • “Alcoholics Anonymous Preamble,” the June 1947 text as posted in the AA Grapevine’s online archive.
  • The AA Preamble: Background Information (SMF-127). AA General Service Office, revised June 23, 2021.
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. October 28 · aa.org

Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know

Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.

Printed from One Drunk to Another, an independent AA history · onedrunktoanother.org/today/october-28/