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 Made A Decision

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The Steps and 12 Traditions and Why we “Work” Them.

Here we are back talking about The Traditions again.

Yay!

This blog is about Traditions Six, Seven, Eight and Nine. And once again, to the critical eye, they can sound boring. Trust me on this, they're not.

          “The Steps protect me from myself; the

Traditions protect AA from me.”

Each tradition became a tradition because they were needed to protect AA from others - and from ourselves - and they often overlap in supporting that goal.

Tradition Six: An A.A. group should never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise ...

(and why not?)

... lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

Newcomers to AA can often "fall in love" with the AA program and want to use it to change the entire world.

They forget they're in AA to learn how to be sober, productive and somewhat normal human beings, not societal wrecking balls hell bent on tearing down existing opinions about alcoholism and to replace them with AA doctrine.

Our program history is filled with such enthusiasm, groups wanting to establish huge treatment hospitals, rewrite medical texts, provide housing for all down-and-out drunks and there to sober them up, and so on.

(The book the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions provides you with the full text on such attempts.)

The ranks of recovering alcoholics are filled with many promoters, big dreamers, schemers and hard-chargers. So, in essence, Tradition Six is all about keeping the collective egos of our group members in check.

 "Easy Does It," and all that!

Bullet Points about Tradition Six:

1. An AA group needs to always focus on the actions of its own sphere of influence.  

2. For instance, we don't sponsor the activities of an alcoholic treatment centre, but we can carry the AA message via meetings into such facilities when invited to do so. 

3. We don’t finance other treatment programs, remaining self-supporting to meet our own needs for carrying AA’s own message. 

4.  We don’t brag about A.A. being the only solution for alcoholism. While we do have the best track record in that regard, ours is not the only path to sobriety.

Tradition Seven: Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

Here again we're dealing with balance. Early AA members hoped for big donations from corporations to help them spread the AA message. None came.

Our Higher Power, you see, knew what would happen to our "promoters, big dreamers, schemers and hard-chargers" if they had wads of cash to splash.

Eventually we, of necessity, adopted the more moderate goals of keeping it simple and letting go of our ambitions to allow God to guide us.

(Be grateful.)

         “We can’t think our way through things. We have to live our way through them - with HP’s help and guidance.”

Bullet Points for Tradition Seven:

1. Each group should have a Treasurer. The person having that responsibility should give members a financial report on a fairly regular basis (as determined in a group conscience meeting).

2. If a group is not meeting its financial responsibilities, like rent, purchasing literature, contributing to the General Service Office, etc., the group’s Treasurer must inform the group. Members then can decide on a course of action to improve its financial condition.

3. A group must never borrow money to meet its needs or accept donations from well-meaning, but uninformed, people not affiliated with the AA program "lest problems of money, property or prestige divert us from our primary purpose."

4. The group treasurer should ideally be a member having a year or more of continuous sobriety.

Tradition Eight: Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

The "special workers" referred to in this Tradition are mainly clerical or janitorial.

AA members are NOT therapists, social workers, or treatment experts. Some of us may be employed in those fields, but we don't present as experts to our fellow members.

Within AA we are all just recovering alcoholic/addicts. Our interaction with fellow members is based on our own experience about the strength and hope we've gained from AA's 12-Step program of recovery.

Bullet Points for Tradition Eight:

 1. Service centres (AA offices and clubhouses) sometimes have to employ people to keep up with paperwork, do timely mail outs, clean the facilities, and perform other services where volunteers are not always available (or - sadly - reliable). 

2. Special workers employed and paid for their special services can be AA members, or non-AA members.

3. I have used boldface type in #2 because there is often a lot of confusion in this area in AA groups unfamiliar with our Traditions.

Tradition Nine: A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

AA is very loosely organized, with each group remaining autonomous (self-governing) over its own responsibilities.

For the larger business structure of AA as a whole we rely on - and make financial contributions to - our AA service offices.

Each group elects its own officers, some to handle its own internal affairs (secretary, treasurer, etc.) and others to represent us in district committees. 

Bullet Points for Tradition Nine:

1. We don't attempt to reinvent the wheel. When our group encounters problems we can't fix, we turn to our AA service offices for solutions based on our Traditions and their experience.

2. AA's General Service Offices house the collective wisdom and history of problem solving. It's available when needed to all regional service offices, groups, and individual members.

3. The address for the GSO in the USA is: A.A. World Services, Inc., P.O. Box 459,Grand Central Station, New York, NY, 10163.

4. The address for AA's General Service Office in the UK is: "Alcoholics Anonymous, PO Box 1, 10 Toft Green, York YO1 7NJ. 

5. Outside the USA and UK members are advised to contact the Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office in their own country.
   

The next blog will be all about Traditions 10, 11 and 12. I can't wait to figure out what I actually know about them. Hoping you feel the same.