I attended a meeting this week where the topic was the Eighth Tradition. The Eighth Tradition states “Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers”. We also touched on the Sixth Tradition, where the second part of the tradition states “…lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose”.
Our “primary purpose” in AA is to stay sober, and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. If you are a member of another twelve-step fellowship, your fellowship has a primary purpose focused on something else-but the principle is the same. You have a primary purpose.
One of the reasons that the message of recovery works is because it is pure. When I hear the message of recovery in a meeting, I know two things about that message:
1) The person who is sharing it has had the same (or similar) experiences as me.
2) The person who is sharing it is sharing it freely, without thought of personal gain or profit.
They aren’t charging me anything to hear that message. They are sharing that message because they have the same primary purpose that I do.
If I thought that someone in a meeting was there to make a profit off of me, I would have the same type of skepticism that I have when I go to purchase a car. I know that the salesperson is there to make money off of me (I’m sorry if you’re a salesperson, I am not a very trusting buyer). In the back of my mind, I wonder if the salesperson wants the best for me, or if that person just wants my money.
People who go to twelve-step meetings aren’t selling anything to anyone. There is no profit motive. As it says in the Preamble, “….there are no dues or fees. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking”.
That is a pure situation, as pure as it was when first designed in the late 1930’s. Had it been any less, I don’t know if I would have stayed for a second meeting to hear the rest.
With Love,
The Recovering Urchin
