A Brand of Treatment

A group tied to one kind of treatment has stopped being an A.A. group, and Bill W. said so in plain words. Explaining the Long Form's "no other affiliation", he wrote (A.A. Comes of Age) that an A.A. group should not ally "itself with any particular brand of medical or psychiatric treatment." A brand of treatment is a method somebody sells or runs: a clinic's program, a hospital's model, a facility's phases. And the name, he added, "must be reserved for us only." Us means the alcoholics in the chairs. Here is how the capture runs. A facility starts a meeting for its clients, in its building, on its schedule. Staff open the room, choose the readings and take attendance for the chart. Counsellors tell clients the meeting is part of their treatment plan. No sign in the room says affiliated, yet everything in it is. The Long Form draws the line where the facility cannot argue (Big Book, p. 563): two or three alcoholics may call themselves an A.A. group, "provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation." Who opens the door, who picks the readings, who takes the attendance: those answers show who the group belongs to. Test it tonight: if the program that runs your meeting's building changed its method tomorrow, would your meeting have to change too?