The Prime Object

The first A.A. meetings were built for the newcomer, and the Big Book says so in plain words. After Akron's first few men got sober, they gathered in each other's homes almost every evening. The Big Book describes them (p. 159): "happy in their release, and constantly thinking how they might present their discovery to some newcomer." Then a weekly meeting began, and it had a stated reason (p. 160): "Aside from fellowship and sociability, the prime object was to provide a time and place where new people might bring their problems." Prime object means main aim. Fellowship came along with it. Sociability, the pleasure of each other's company, came along too. Neither one was the point. The meeting existed so that a drinker, or a worried family, had somewhere to come. That was a group with one purpose before anyone had written a Tradition to say it. When the Long Form came, it said the same thing for every group: "but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers" (Big Book, p. 563). Today many meetings run as if the fellowship were the prime object, and a newcomer is welcome if he happens to wander in. Test it tonight: ask what your meeting would change if its only job were to give a new person somewhere to bring their problem.