Tumors and Tapeworms

A group breaks Tradition Five on its own when its meeting slowly becomes about every trouble in life except the one the drinker walked in with. Bill W. put it in a doctor's picture (A.A. Comes of Age): "If we had discovered a widely applicable cancer cure, we would be begged to attend to that and that only. We would not try to look after all tumors and branch out into tuberculosis and tapeworms besides." A remedy that works for one illness is not improved by spreading it over all of them. Picture a home group a few years on. The topics drift: work stress, a divorce, the news, somebody's diet. Every share is honest. Nobody votes to change anything. But a man three days off a bender sits through the whole hour and hears no one say how they drank, how they stopped, or what happened next, and he does not recognize himself in the room. The Long Form gives the group one job (Big Book, p. 563): "carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers." Members have the rest of the week, and each other, for everything else. The meeting belongs to the drunk. Test it tonight: listen to your meeting as if you were three days sober, and ask whether you heard the way out.