Carry This Message

"Carrying its message" in Tradition Five means going to the drinker, and the Big Book's own instructions say so. The rumour says you carry the message by sharing at meetings, by being a good example, by showing up. Those are fine things, but they all happen inside the room. The Big Book's chapter on this work, "Working With Others," opens (p. 89): "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics." Immunity means protection. Then comes the instruction: "Carry this message to other alcoholics!" To other alcoholics: people outside, still drinking. The chapter goes on to say how to find them, when to go, and what to say at the bedside. It is a rescue, carried out in the drinker's world, not a talk given in ours. The Long Form gives that same work to every group as one body: "but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers" (Big Book, p. 563). Today the word carry has shrunk to mean attend. A group full of members who never leave the meeting to find a drinker has kept the words and dropped the work. Test it tonight: ask how many in your group have carried the message to someone still drinking this year, outside any meeting.