The Alcoholic Who Still Suffers

Read the last words of Tradition Five slowly, because the rumour about them points the wrong way. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers." Whose purpose? The group's, as one body. How many? One. Toward whom? The alcoholic who still suffers, and "still" is the word that matters. That person is still drinking. A member three weeks sober and shaky is struggling, and the group is glad to have them, but they are already inside the door. The rumour says an A.A. group exists to support its members, a circle where the people in the chairs look after each other. That turns the Tradition around to face inward. Nothing in the sentence makes the group's purpose the people already there. The members matter to it because they are the ones who carry the message out. Today the inward version is everywhere: meetings that describe themselves as support for whoever attends, with no word for the drinker who hasn't come. Test it tonight: listen to how your meeting describes itself when it opens, and ask whether the drinker outside is in that description at all.