A Central A.A. Institution

A secondary aid becomes a threat the day people start believing they can't recover without it. In the 1940s it was the A.A. club, a rented hall with coffee and company, and Bill W. watched members lean on it (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 17): "We might conceive them as a central A.A. institution". A central institution is the thing everything else hangs on. "At times club enthusiasts will act as though they really believed we could handle our alcoholic problems by club life alone. They are apt to depend upon clubs rather than upon the A.A. program." The Long Form gave clubs and hospitals their place in its own words: secondary aids. They come second, behind the one thing a group exists for, which is carrying the message to the drunk still drinking. Today the club has been replaced by the program: thirty days inside, then aftercare, then sober living, then alumni night, until a newcomer is told that A.A. is something you do after treatment, when treatment says so. The meeting has become one stage in somebody else's plan. A group that accepts that order has made itself secondary to a facility, which is the Tradition turned upside down. Test it tonight: ask a newcomer how they found your meeting, and whether anyone told them they had to go somewhere else first.