Left Definitely Outside

A meeting place is a secondary aid, and the capture comes when the place starts owning the group. Bill W. said where the early clubs ended up once A.A. had learned its lesson (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 22): "The club is left definitely outside, where, in the opinion of many, it should be." Outside means the club belongs to the members who pay for it and enjoy it, and the groups use it or don't. Today the clubhouse is often an app. Picture a group that moves its meeting onto a recovery platform that costs nothing to use. The platform owns the link, the list of who attended and the rules for who may speak. It adds its own banner, its own counsellors' ads and its own check-in form for the newcomer to fill out. A year later the group wants to leave, and finds that its members' contacts and its meeting's address belong to someone else. The Long Form's order was the other way round: secondary aids are set apart so the groups can drop them, never so they can drop the groups. A room the group cannot leave is not set apart; it is in charge. Test it tonight: if your meeting is online, who owns the link, and could your group take it, and its members, somewhere else tomorrow?