Thirty Days to Speak

A group can make its newest members second-class with one well-meant vote, and the Long Form leaves it no room to. The business meeting is nearly over. Shares have been rambling, someone says, and the new people talk about drinking instead of recovery. A motion: anyone under thirty days listens and doesn't share. It passes with a few hands against. Now look at who it lands on. The man with two days, shaking, who came because he needs to say it out loud to people who understand, is told his voice comes later, once he has behaved. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity." Conformity means doing what is expected of you in order to be accepted. A rule that says get sober first, then speak, makes a member's voice depend on exactly that. Bill W. put how it really works in four words (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 38): "We conform because we want to." People take up A.A.'s way because they have watched it work in the room, not because a vote ordered them onto it. The ones who most need to talk are the ones the rule silences. Test it tonight: read your group's format and ask whether anything in it makes the newest drunk earn his place.