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Tradition Five: what is a group's one purpose?

In short:

  • Carrying the A.A. message to alcoholics who are still suffering. The Long Form says each group "ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers" (p. 563).
  • The purpose points outward, to the alcoholic who still suffers. The Tradition doesn't describe the group's purpose as looking after the members it already has.
  • Everything else a group might do, from running a club or a hospital to backing a cause, is what the Traditions after Five keep at arm's length, so it doesn't pull the group off that one purpose.

What the Long Form says

The whole of Tradition Five: "Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers." (p. 563).

Two phrases carry the meaning.

"A spiritual entity." The next Tradition explains what that rules out. "Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim" (p. 563), so property should be separately incorporated, "thus dividing the material from the spiritual" (p. 564), and "An A.A. group, as such, should never go into business" (p. 564). Bill W. said the same in 1946: "an A.A. group is a spiritual entity, not a business concern" (P-17, "Money", 1946). In 1947, after groups had tried running their own drying-out places, he wrote that a group "is primarily a spiritual entity" and "as a group the less business it has to transact, the better" (P-17, "Hospitals and A.A.", 1947).

"The alcoholic who still suffers." The message is carried to someone who is still in trouble with alcohol. The Big Book's own instructions for doing that are in Chapter 7, "Working With Others," whose opening paragraph says: "Carry this message to other alcoholics!" (p. 89). The Long Form doesn't refer to Chapter 7 by name, but it describes the same work, done by a group.

One purpose, said many ways (1946–1955)

Bill's essays come back to it again and again: - Groups "stick to their single purpose of helping alcoholics to recover" (P-17, "Will A.A. Ever Have a Personal Government?", 1947). - "Neither A.A. as a whole nor any A.A. group ought to enter any activity other than straight A.A." (P-17, "Dangers in Linking A.A. to Other Projects", 1947). A.A. mustn't let the public think it has abandoned "our sole aim" (P-17, "Dangers in Linking A.A. to Other Projects", 1947). - In 1955: "We have but one purpose: to carry the A.A. message to the sick alcoholic who wants it." (P-17, "Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous", 1955).

In 1957 he put it as a proverb, "Shoemaker, stick to thy last" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and said the message to the alcoholic who still suffers is "our basic objective, our real reason for existence" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). His reasoning: if A.A. had found a cure for cancer, no one would want it to branch out into every other disease. Its members can reach suffering alcoholics as no one else can, so that's where its strength should go (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

"Primary purpose" in the Preamble is a different sentence

The A.A. Preamble says: "Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety" (P-16, 2018, the Preamble). That sentence is about members ("our"), and it puts staying sober first. Tradition Five is about the group, and it names one purpose: carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers (p. 563). The two aren't in conflict, since a member has to be sober to carry the message, but they aren't the same statement, and only one of them is the Tradition. The Preamble was written by a Grapevine editor and first published in June 1947 (A.A. Service Manual, 2024–2026 edition); Tradition Five's Long Form is Bill's 1946 text.

What the Tradition doesn't say

It says "primary," and it doesn't list secondary purposes. A group still has to find a room, pay rent and hold meetings. The Long Form treats those as means, and keeps anything that needs much property or management set apart from the group (p. 564).

It also doesn't say a group's purpose is to keep its own members sober, or to be a support group for its members. That may well happen, but the one purpose the Tradition names is the person who hasn't been reached yet.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages First published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix I, Long Form Five and Six 563–564 1946
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 7, "Working With Others" 89 1939
P-17, "Money" — 1946
P-17, "Hospitals and A.A." (from "Adequate Hospitalization"); "Will A.A. Ever Have a Personal Government?"; "Dangers in Linking A.A. to Other Projects" — 1947
P-17, "Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous" — 1955
A.A. Comes of Age, "Unity" (Tradition Five) — 1957
The A.A. Preamble (as printed in P-16) inside cover first in the Grapevine, June 1947; this printing 2018
The A.A. Service Manual (date of the Preamble) — 2024–2026 edition

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, P-16 and the Service Manual are © A.A. World Services, Inc.; the P-17 articles and the Preamble 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.