Ominous Foretaste

The first great test of A.A. unity came from success, when a magazine article sent thousands of drunks looking for groups that barely existed. March 1941: Jack Alexander's piece in the Saturday Evening Post. Bill W. (A.A. Comes of Age): "A real Niagara then broke loose, and we were deluged with letters and with alcoholics by the thousands." Then the strain on the groups: "There had already been an ominous foretaste of the problems of mushrooming groups; quarrels over leadership, money, membership, clubs, exploitation of A.A.'s name, panhandling, and even romancing." Ominous means threatening; mushrooming means springing up fast. And as hundreds of new groups tried to form, "the specters of disunity and collapse grew to frightening proportions." A specter is a ghost. Every quarrel on that list is about a group's own affairs, and every one of them could split a room. The Long Form answers all of them with one order (Big Book, p. 563): "Hence our common welfare comes first." Not my leadership, my money, my club, my name. Today the same list comes back whenever a meeting grows fast or gets noticed: who runs it, who holds the money, whose name is on the door. Test it tonight: pick one word from Bill's list and ask whether it is a fight in your group right now.