Not Strictly A.A. Enterprises

The first rest farm A.A. members used was never A.A.'s, and that was the right shape before anyone wrote it down. Around 1940 a party of members visited a farm in the Connecticut hills, run as a charity by a woman they knew as Sister Francis. Bill W. recalled her offer (A.A. Comes of Age): "She offered us full use of the place if some of us would create a board of trustees to look after it." Some of us, not the groups. A few members took the property on as a separate job, and the groups went on carrying the message. The farm became a place to rest after hospital, and Bill never called it A.A.'s. Such places, he wrote, are "not strictly A.A. enterprises". Useful, loved, and outside. In 1946 the Long Form made that the rule (Big Book, p. 564): "hospitals, as well as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside A.A." A place of recuperation is somewhere to rest and get your strength back. Today such places multiply: retreats, sober houses and recovery centres, some of which call themselves A.A. places and hold house meetings their residents must attend. Test it tonight: ask whether any house or retreat near you calls itself A.A., and whether any A.A. group has a say in how it is run.