Tradition 5 · May 5

No Axes to Grind

Daily Traditions · May 5

How it gets captured

A meeting run by a facility can use A.A.'s words and still lose what made the message work. The Big Book (p. 18) lists the conditions that make a sober alcoholic believable to a drinking one: "that there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured". An axe to grind is a private reason for helping. Now walk into a room that a treatment program runs and calls an A.A. meeting. Someone on staff opens it. The hour is on the client's schedule, and often on the bill. The person at the front has an employer to please and notes to write afterward. Most of those conditions are broken before anyone has said a word. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563) asks each group to be "a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose", and a facility has other purposes it must serve first: beds, outcomes, payment. That is not a judgment on anyone's heart. It is how a business has to work, and it is why a business can't be an A.A. group. The drinker can feel the difference, even if no one in the room says it out loud. Test it tonight: ask of your meeting whether anyone in it is paid, and whether anyone running it answers to someone outside the room.

Sit with

The message works when nobody carrying it wants anything back. Does anyone running my meeting answer to an employer?

Grounded in: Big Book, p. 18 (There Is a Solution); long form, Tradition 5 (Big Book, p. 563).

Tradition 5

"Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers."

Read the Long Form (pp. 563–566). The short form on pp. 561–562 is the one everybody quotes — but the Long Form is where the Traditions actually say what they mean. Tradition 3's "no other affiliation" clause, for instance, exists only in the Long Form. That single clause is why no treatment centre can own an A.A. group. Most of what circulates online skips it.

And a distinction worth keeping straight: the Traditions are governance, not theology. They bind A.A. groups and the Fellowship — not individuals, and not outside businesses. They were adopted in 1950 to keep A.A. from being owned or co-opted. They are not a rulebook for your personal life.

What the Traditions actually say → The Long Form, p. 563 → Search the Big Book → Every day this month →

Ask Recovery Einstein about Tradition 5 → Get the app →

← May 4The Card Players Tradition 5All of May May 6 →Straight A.A.

Daily Traditions is an independent educational resource from Recovery Starts — not official A.A. literature, not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, and not medical advice. The Twelve Traditions are the property of A.A. Page references are to Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), 4th Edition: short form 561–562, long form 563–566. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).