Tradition 6 · June 1

Build and Operate Our Own

Daily Traditions · June 1

The threat

Tradition Six begins by naming the three things that pull a group off its job: money, property and authority. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim." To divert something is to turn it off its course, and the course is the drunk who is still drinking. Bill W. admitted how close A.A. came to going the other way (A.A. Comes of Age): "At that time hospitals did not want us, so we thought we would build and operate our own." The list kept growing: teach the public, change the laws, take on every other problem too. "Yes, we did dream those dreams. How natural that was, since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists." Every dream on that list needed buildings, budgets and someone in charge of them. Each one would have put property and authority at the center of a fellowship that worked because one drunk talked to another for nothing. They tried the hospitals, and the hospitals bogged down. Tradition Six is what they wrote down afterward. Today the dream comes back already built: a facility with beds, staff and a budget, offering to be A.A.'s hospital. Test it tonight: ask what your group owns, what it pays for, and whether any of it gets more attention than the newcomer.

Sit with

The Long Form names money, property and authority as the things that turn a group away from the drunk. What in my group is starting to take the attention the newcomer should get?

Grounded in: Long form, Tradition 6 (Big Book, p. 563); A.A. Comes of Age (Tradition Six: the early dreams).

Tradition 6

"An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose."

Read the Long Form (pp. 563–566). The short form on pp. 561–562 is the one everybody quotes — but the Long Form is where the Traditions actually say what they mean. Tradition 3's "no other affiliation" clause, for instance, exists only in the Long Form. That single clause is why no treatment centre can own an A.A. group. Most of what circulates online skips it.

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.

What the Traditions actually say → The Long Form, p. 563 → Search the Big Book → Every day this month →

Ask Recovery Einstein about Tradition 6 → Get the app →

←All of June Tradition 6All of June June 2 →On the Side Lines

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).