Benders

Capture doesn't only happen one group at a time; a whole town's groups can be taken together, and Bill warned that movements go on binges too. Bill W. wrote in his foreword to the Traditions pamphlet (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 5): "For whole movements have, before now, gone on benders, too!" A bender is a drinking spree that runs for days. On the same page: "But A.A. unity cannot automatically preserve itself." A town's version goes like this. A big program offers to print one meeting list for the whole city, free. The list is handsome and everyone uses it. Next year the program asks listed meetings to post its intake number. Then to report attendance. Then to sign court cards its way. Group by group, each says yes, because everyone else did. Nobody voted to join anything, but the city's meetings now run on one outside body's terms. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die." In that town A.A. is still alive, on someone else's terms. Test it tonight: ask who prints your town's meeting list, and what a group has to do to stay on it.