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Can anyone be thrown out of A.A.?

In short:

  • No one can be expelled from A.A. itself. The Long Form of Tradition Three says "we may refuse none who wish to recover" (p. 563), and that membership should never depend on money or conformity.
  • Bill W., writing in 1946: a member "is a member as long as he says he is" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946).
  • That isn't the same as putting up with anything at a meeting. In 1946 a member who kept turning up drunk could be "led outside" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946), then welcomed back the next day if sober. A club, which is separate from A.A., could bar him. Neither takes away his membership in A.A.
  • Bill was honest that in 1946 this view was "not yet unanimous" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946) and membership rules still existed in places. The Tradition is the lesson A.A. drew from those rules.

What the Long Form says

Tradition Three in its original form says A.A.'s membership "ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism" (p. 563). From that it follows, in the Tradition's own word "Hence," that "we may refuse none who wish to recover" (p. 563). And membership should never "depend upon money or conformity" (p. 563): not on dues, and not on agreeing with anyone or behaving a certain way.

The short form puts it as one requirement, "a desire to stop drinking" (p. 562). The Long Form puts it the other way round: there's no one A.A. may turn away.

Why: the 1946 essay

Bill's Grapevine piece "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?" (1946) is the essay Tradition Three grew out of, and it's mostly about throwing people out.

A few years earlier, the New York office had asked groups to send in their membership rules. Put together, the rules filled "a great many sheets of paper" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). If all of them had been in force at once, almost no alcoholic could have joined, and about nine-tenths of the oldest and best members "could never have got by!" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). Early members would have been put out for slipping too often, for bad morals, for mental troubles, or for not coming from the "better classes."

Bill describes groups going on "rule-making benders" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946): committees given power to filter out undesirables, elders casting out the troublemakers. It didn't work. The fights over enforcement turned out to be worse for the group "than the very worst that the worst ever did" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). Some of the people once judged hopeless became the group's most respected and best-loved members, and Bill calls those who condemned them "the Pharisees" whose false righteousness did the group "the deeper spiritual damage" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946).

His conclusion: "Our A.A. door stands wide open" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). A newcomer "signs nothing, agrees to nothing, promises nothing" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). He joins on his own say-so.

A meeting, a club, and A.A.

The same essay draws the line that answers most real cases. A member who "persists in coming to meetings drunk" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946) may be led outside, but in most groups he can come back the next day if he's sober. "Though he may be thrown out of a club, nobody thinks of throwing him out of A.A." (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946).

So three different things: - A.A. membership belongs to the person. No group, committee or office can take it away. - A meeting can ask someone who is disrupting it to leave for now. Bill's 1946 essay on money mentions a steward who can "eject a troublesome drunk" (P-17, "Money", 1946). How a group runs its own meetings is its own affair under Tradition Four (p. 563). - A club is a separate thing that the Long Form says should be "set apart" from A.A. (p. 564). It can have its own rules for its own premises.

What wasn't settled

Bill didn't pretend everyone agreed. The open door wasn't yet the universal practice, he wrote: "Membership rules still exist." (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946). He called the broad view "the main current of A.A. thought today" (P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?", 1946), while adding it was not yet unanimous.

The 1946–47 texts deal with drunkenness, slips, panhandling, gossip and "mental twists." They don't take up a member who puts other people in danger. They say a group can lead someone out of a meeting and that a group runs its own affairs, but they don't spell out more than that, and we won't add to them.

Later sources, for comparison

In 1957 Bill summed up Tradition Three as: "You are an A.A. member if you say so" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The A.A. group pamphlet (P-16, 2018) quotes the 1962 Twelve Concepts: "no member to be expelled from A.A. — membership always to be the choice of the individual" (P-16, 2018).

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages First published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix I, Long Form Three, Four, Six 562–564 1946
P-17, "Who Is a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous?" — 1946
P-17, "Money" — 1946
A.A. Comes of Age — 1957
P-16, The A.A. Group (quoting Concept XII, 1962) 12 2018 printing

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). Our copy of A.A. Comes of Age has no printed page numbers, so it's cited by book and year.

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, A.A. Comes of Age and P-16 are © A.A. World Services, Inc.; the P-17 articles are © AA Grapevine, 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.