Its Own Rights

In the first groups the sacrifice for unity ran both ways: the members gave things up for the group, and the group gave things up for each member. Bill W. looked back on it (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 49): "We found that each of us had to make willing sacrifices for the group itself, sacrifices for the common welfare. The group, in turn, found that it had to give up many of its own rights for the protection and welfare of each member, and for A.A. as a whole." In turn. A group does not get to take everything and give nothing back. That is the Long Form's last sentence for Tradition One (Big Book, p. 563), written for groups: "Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward." Close afterward means right behind. A member gives up his ambitions in the room. The group, in return, gives up its rights over him: no right to run his life, to charge him, to make him perform to belong. Those are the kinds of rights a group surrenders so that a drunk can walk in and stay. Today some rooms take them back quietly, a check-in sheet here, a required share there. Test it tonight: name one right over its members your group has given up, and ask whether anyone is taking it back.