Scaling the Message

A Twelfth Step call is one alcoholic answering the phone line, then going out to meet whoever called and doing the work laid out on pages 89 to 103 of the Big Book. There are rarely enough people to go. The calls come at bad hours, the ones who take them get worn out, and the obvious fix is to hire. So imagine A.A. trains a corps of paid carriers — good people, sober people, properly supervised — and sends them out full time. On paper it is better: more calls answered, consistent quality, nobody burning out. The only problem is that A.A. already ran that experiment. Bill W. wrote: "Early in the game we discovered that under no conditions should an A.A. be paid for taking or carrying this message to somebody else, person to person and face to face." Ruled out, permanently. And he wrote what was at stake if that ever changed: "If professionalism ever invaded us at that level, we were doomed." Not weakened. Doomed. The newcomer feels the difference between a man showing up on the clock, and a man whose own sobriety depends on showing up. Everything A.A. has rests on the second man.