| Chapter 1: | A Meeting Observed |
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This is read at the beginning of most AA meetings and first appeared in the May 1946 copy of the AA magazine, the AA Grapevine. What is particularly interesting is that AA defines itself through its ‘sharing’. This is what characterises the AA fellowship and links its members. Apart from giving such prominence to talk, it is notable that in the preamble there is more discussion of what AA doesn’t do than what it does. It does not espouse anything, neither does it endorse anything. It has no message for society at large, and it does not want to effect or change the outside world in any way. Its sole concern is its members’ sobriety. Their primary activity is to ‘share their experience, strength and hope’—but only with each other in ‘fellowship’, not with anyone else. Organisationally, it is totally open and inclusive, having only one condition of membership: a desire to stop drinking. AA accepts no financial support. Membership, as the name indicates, is anonymous.
According to the AA Fact File (Anonymous, 2007), since its inception in 1935, it has grown to more than 2 million members with over 130,000 groups. It has developed quite a considerable international presence, there being very few countries in the world without AA meetings. It has done this without any government support and is one of the few social organisations of any size to have originated within the United States that has achieved an international status without promotion by the U.S. government.
As meetings proliferated, new groups have been formed. These groups are not accountable to the movement as a whole unless involved in behaviour likely to damage AA. Group members elect delegates to attend central, regional, and national bodies. The General Service Conference is the most prominent of these, being the guardian of the World Service and Twelve Traditions. Its charter states, ‘The Conference shall be a service body only; never a government for Alcoholics Anonymous’ (Anonymous, 1986, p. 10). The main function of central and regional bodies in AA is to serve the group and AA members. This is done mainly through the supply of literature.
As examined more fully in chapter 5, AA is unusual in that the locus of power is at the periphery; groups and members have been specifically empowered to offset central control. AA’s Twelve Traditions, written by one of AA’s founding members, Bill Wilson (Anonymous, 1986), are an encapsulation of the principles and the experience of early members, which emerged as AA evolved into a large organisation in the late 1940s.