The Man Who Pays the Rent
Daily Traditions · July 25
Imagine one member who quietly covers the rent shortfall every month. Generous. A relief. But slowly the group depends on him, and slowly he feels — not wrongly — that he's earned a little more say. Then comes the month he's angry, or broke, or gone, and the room he'd been holding up wobbles. The Long Form's whole point is that the group be supported "by the voluntary contributions of their own members" — all of them. One person's generosity can quietly become one person's grip.
Where am I over-giving in a way that makes me the load-bearing wall?
Grounded in: Long form (self-support by the members); P-91.
This is a hypothetical. The situation described above is illustrative — an imagined scenario used to think a Tradition through. It is not a real group, not a report of anything that happened, and not a rule we invented. The Traditions belong to A.A.; we're only reading them plainly.
Tradition 7
"Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions."
And a distinction worth keeping straight: the Traditions are governance, not theology. They bind A.A. groups and the Fellowship — not individuals, and not outside businesses. They were adopted in 1950 to keep A.A. from being owned or co-opted. They are not a rulebook for your personal life.
Daily Traditions is an independent educational resource from Recovery Starts — not official A.A. literature, not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, and not medical advice. The Twelve Traditions are the property of A.A. Page references are to Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), 4th Edition: short form 561–562, long form 563–566. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).