Violently Took Sides

A group breaks Tradition One when it turns its business meeting into a court over members' private lives. Early A.A. learned this through what Bill W. called the triangle, an affair between members. He described what followed (A.A. Comes of Age): "People violently took sides." Whole groups, he wrote, "got into uproars, and a number of people got drunk." Then: "We trembled for A.A.'s reputation and for its survival." Here is how it happens now. Two members, both married to other people, leave together one night, and the whole room knows by morning. At the next business meeting someone moves that the group take a position. It is about the group's good name, they say. It turns into an hour on who did what to whom. Half the room votes one way and half the other, and the group now has an official side in a private fight. Within a month four people have stopped coming, and one of them is drinking. Nothing in the Long Form makes a group the judge of anyone's marriage. The group's business is the common welfare (Big Book, p. 563): "Hence our common welfare comes first." The room the next drunk needs is not served by a verdict. Test it tonight: ask whether your business meeting has ever voted on a member's private life, and who stopped coming afterward.