Who Next?

The first thing early A.A. feared would kill it was the slip, and the groups learned it couldn't, so long as the door stayed open. Bill W. (A.A. Comes of Age): "At first nearly every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if indeed he sobered up at all." A slip is a drink after getting sober. Each one hit the whole room. They would look at each other and wonder who was next: "We were afraid that alcohol might completely undo us." Years later Bill could say what the groups had learned. "Alcohol always threatens the individual," but, he went on, "we know that it cannot destroy the common welfare." That is the Long Form's last two sentences at work (Big Book, p. 563): "Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward." The group outlives the slip, and the man who slipped is close behind, welcome back the night he walks in. Today the slip often gets treated the other way. In facility programs a drink can mean discharge, and a meeting run on the same house rules can leave a man feeling he has lost his seat. A.A.'s door was never the facility's door. Test it tonight: if a member came back tonight after drinking, would anything your group does make it harder for him to sit down?