Tradition One: does it mean "my sobriety comes first"?
In short:
- No. Tradition One says the opposite order: "our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward" (p. 563).
- The reason it gives is that the individual's life depends on A.A.'s: "A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die" (p. 563). Putting A.A.'s unity first is how members protect their own recovery, and the recovery of alcoholics who haven't arrived yet.
- The individual isn't dismissed. The Long Form keeps him in the same sentence: second, and "close afterward."
What the Long Form says
The whole of Tradition One in its original form is four short sentences (p. 563): - Each member is "but a small part of a great whole" (p. 563). - A.A. must go on living, or most members will die. - "Hence our common welfare comes first" (p. 563). - "But individual welfare follows close afterward" (p. 563).
The short form keeps the first half of the idea and the reason behind it: "Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity" (p. 562). The line about individual welfare following close behind is only in the Long Form.
The opening of Appendix I gives the same reasoning. Because A.A. makes the difference between life and death for its members, and could for many more, it needs "permanent unity" (p. 561). Alcoholics must "work together and hang together" or most will "die alone" (p. 561).
Where "my sobriety comes first" goes wrong
The phrase isn't in the Tradition. It reverses the order the text gives. The Tradition doesn't say a member's welfare doesn't matter; it says the member's welfare depends on something bigger than him, so that comes first.
Bill W.'s later writing keeps pointing the same way. In the foreword to P-17 he asked every member to be as aware of what endangers A.A. as a whole as of the personal defects "which threaten his own sobriety" (P-17, Foreword, 1955), and added: "For whole movements have, before now, gone on benders, too!" (P-17, Foreword, 1955). A.A. unity doesn't keep itself, he wrote; like personal recovery, members will always "have to work to maintain it" (P-17, Foreword, 1955).
In 1955 he described the Traditions as sacrifices. Each member "had to make willing sacrifices for the group itself, sacrifices for the common welfare" (P-17, "Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous", 1955), and the group in turn gave up rights "for the protection and welfare of each member" (P-17, "Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous", 1955). The giving goes both ways, but it starts with the member giving.
Where it came from
In A.A. Comes of Age (1957), Bill tells a story he places under Tradition Two, the group conscience, which ends with Tradition One's principle. In 1937, broke and with Lois supporting the household, he was offered a paid job as a lay therapist at Towns Hospital. It would have helped him, and it was ethical. His New York group told him no: A.A. couldn't be tied to one hospital or have paid therapists. He listened. Three principles, he wrote, had fallen that night on "the anvil of group experience" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and the first he lists is "The common welfare must come first" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill's own welfare that night came second, and he says the group was right.
He also compares the early members to a crew adrift on a raft after a plane crash: "Nobody dared rock that raft, lest they all perish" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). In the same passage he insists that "Probably no society sets a higher value on the personal welfare of the individual member than does A.A." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The common welfare comes first because without it there would be little personal welfare at all.
A later pamphlet on the same point
The Twelve Traditions Illustrated (P-43, 1971) takes up the "selfish program" idea under Tradition One directly. It asks, "Oh well, it's a selfish program, isn't it?" (P-43, 1971), and answers that self-indulgence threatens both the member's own sobriety and the unity of the group.
Read it yourself
- Appendix I, "The A.A. Tradition" (pp. 561–566), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendicei.pdf
- P-17, A.A. Tradition — How It Developed: https://www.aa.org/aa-tradition-how-it-developed
- P-43, The Twelve Traditions Illustrated: https://www.aa.org/twelve-traditions-illustrated
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age is sold by A.A. World Services at https://onlineliterature.aa.org
- Related: Is helping others selfish if it keeps me sober? · What does Step 12 really say?
Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix I, introduction and Tradition One (short and Long Form) | 561–563 | Long Form 1946 |
| P-17, Foreword | — | dated 1955 |
| P-17, "Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous" | — | 1955 |
| A.A. Comes of Age (Tradition One; Tradition Two and the 1937 Towns Hospital offer) | — | 1957 |
| P-43, The Twelve Traditions Illustrated | 1 | 1971 |
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-43 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.