Well Outside A.A.

A meeting a facility can cancel is a meeting that facility governs, and an A.A. group is governed by nobody. The Long Form is exact about where treatment belongs (Big Book, p. 564): "hospitals, as well as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside A.A.—and medically supervised." Places of recuperation — where people go to dry out — outside. Not partnered, not hosting, not in-house. The same page closes the door on the arrangement itself: "An A.A. group can bind itself to no one." And Tradition 3 sets the one condition on being a group at all — two or three alcoholics may call themselves an A.A. group "provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation" (p. 563). Now look at the meeting on a treatment schedule. The facility picks the time, picks the room, staffs the chair, fills the seats with its clients, and can strike it from the calendar. That meeting is affiliated — tied to the facility — bound, and governed. Call it the facility's meeting. It is not an A.A. group, and nobody who runs it can tell you what A.A. requires of you, because A.A. requires nothing. The real thing is a room where the people in the chairs are the only ones who can close it.