What is "Rule 62"?
In short:
- "Rule 62" is "Don't take yourself too damned seriously." It isn't in the Big Book. In our sources it appears only in A.A. Comes of Age (1957), in a story Bill W. tells to explain Tradition Four.
- In the story, a promoter in one town got sober, drew up a grand A.A. center with a club, a clinic and a loan office, and wrote sixty-one rules and by-laws to run it. It collapsed. Afterward he mailed every group in the United States a card reading "Rule No. 62," and inside: "Don't take yourself too damned seriously" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
- Bill tells it as an example of a group's right to be wrong, and of the humility to learn from it and laugh.
Where it is
All our sources were searched for "Rule 62," "Rule No. 62," "sixty-one rules" and "too damned seriously." The only place is A.A. Comes of Age (1957). It isn't in the Big Book, P-17 or the other pamphlets in our sources.
The story, in order
Bill tells it while explaining Tradition Four, "Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He first explains that the groups told New York, in effect, "Services, yes. But government, no," and claimed "the right to be wrong" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Then the example: - "Years ago in a certain town a super-promoter got sobered up in A.A." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He planned a big building: a club on one floor, a meeting room on the next, then a clinic and rehabilitation center, and upstairs a loan agency for broke alcoholics. - It needed three corporations, and "Altogether, he wrote sixty-one rules, regulations, and by-laws" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He sold the town and most of his fellow members on the idea, and was to be the general manager himself. - He asked New York for a "super-charter." Some dissenters in the group wrote to New York too. Headquarters told them that each group could run its own affairs as long as it didn't harm other groups, but warned "as strongly as we dared" that smaller schemes like it had failed everywhere (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The group ignored the warning, as it had a right to. - It crashed: "The thump of colliding egos could be heard and felt for miles" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). - Later the promoter wrote that New York had been right and he had been wrong. With the letter came the card he had already sent to every group in the country: on the outside "Rule No. 62," and inside, "Don't take yourself too damned seriously" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
Bill's comment: the group had used its right to be wrong, and had done A.A. a service because it had been "humbly willing to apply the lessons" it learned (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The promoter, standing in the ruins of his own plan, "could laugh at himself—and that is the acme of humility" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
The number follows from the story: he had written sixty-one rules, and this was the sixty-second.
The Traditions behind the story
The story touches two of the Traditions, both in the Long Form of 1946 (now in the Big Book's Appendix I): - Autonomy. Each group "should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience," but when its plans affect neighboring groups or A.A. as a whole, others should be consulted (p. 563). The group was free to try. See Tradition Four: can GSO tell a group what to do? - Keeping property apart. "An A.A. group, as such, should never go into business" (p. 564). Clubs and hospitals should be separately incorporated, kept outside A.A., and set apart so that "they can be freely discarded by the groups" if necessary (p. 564). The promoter did plan three corporations, but it was the group's project: his fellow members backed it and he asked New York for a "super-charter" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). His letter afterward admits New York had told him such enterprises "could not be mixed with A.A." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See What did Bill W. say about clubs and A.A.?
The same spirit in the 1939 text
The Big Book has no Rule 62, but it says something close in its own words: - "But we aren't a glum lot" (p. 132). If newcomers saw no joy or fun in A.A., they wouldn't want it. "We absolutely insist on enjoying life" (p. 132). - "So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness" (p. 132). Why shouldn't we laugh, the book asks: "We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others" (p. 132). - Bill's story: "There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all" (p. 16), with "deadly earnestness" just underneath (p. 16). - And the book's picture of self-will is a man who "wants to run the whole show" (p. 60), which fits a promoter who planned to be general manager of it all.
Read it yourself
- Appendix I, the Twelve Traditions, short and long forms (pp. 561–566): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendicei.pdf
- Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward" (pp. 132–133): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt9.pdf
- A.A. Comes of Age is sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| A.A. Comes of Age (Bill W., on Tradition Four) | — | 1957; the story itself is undated ("years ago"); after 1950 |
| The Twelve Traditions, Long Form, Four and Six (Big Book Appendix I) | 563–564 | AA Grapevine, 1946; in the Big Book from 1955 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 1, 5, 9 | 16, 60, 132 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, whole fourth-edition text and pamphlets (searched) | — | fourth edition 2001 |
Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition.
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book and A.A. Comes of Age are © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.