Tradition Three
"The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking."
This Tradition is packed with meaning. For A.A. is really saying to
every serious drinker, "You are an A.A. member if you say so. You can
declare yourself in; nobody can keep you out. No matter who you are, no
matter how low you've gone, no matter how grave your emotional
complications - even your crimes - we still can't deny you A.A. We
don't want to keep you out. We aren't a bit afraid you'll harm us,
never mind how twisted or violent you may be. We just want to be sure
that you get the same great chance for sobriety that we've had. So
you're an A.A. member the minute you declare yourself."
To establish this principle of membership took years of harrowing
experience. In our early time, nothing seemed so fragile, so easily
breakable as an A.A. group. Hardly an alcoholic we approached paid any
attention; most of those who did join us were like flickering candles
in a windstorm. Time after time, their uncertain flames blew out and
couldn't be relighted. Our unspoken, constant thought was "Which of us
may be the next?"
A member gives us a vivid glimpse of those days. "At one time," he
says, "every A.A. group had many membership rules. Everybody was scared
witless that something or somebody would capsize the boat and dump us
all back into the drink. Our Foundation office* asked each group to
send in its list of `protective' regulations. The total list was a mile
long. If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could
have possibly joined A.A. at all, so great was the sum of our anxiety
and fear.
"We were resolved to admit nobody to A.A. but that hypothetical class
of people we termed `pure alcoholics.' Except for their guzzling, and
the unfortunate results thereof, they could have no other
complications. so beggars, tramps, asylum inmates, prisoners, queers,
plain crackpots, and fallen women were definitely out. Yes sir, we'd
cater only to pure and respectable alcoholics! Any others would surely
destroy us. Besides, if we took in those odd ones, what would decent
people say about us? We built a fine-mesh fence right around A.A.
"Maybe this sounds comical now. Maybe you think we oldtimers were
pretty intolerant. But I can tell you there was nothing funny about the
situation then. We were grim because we felt our lives and homes were
threatened, and that was no laughing matter. Intolerant, you say? Well,
we were frightened. Naturally, we began to act like most everybody does
when afraid. After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance? Yes,
we were intolerant."
How could we then guess that all those fears were to prove groundless?
How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening people
were to make astonishing recoveries and become our greatest workers and
intimate friends? Was it credible that A.A. was to have a divorce rate
far lower than average? Could we then foresee that troublesome people
were to become our principle teachers of patience and tolerance? Could
any then imagine a society which would include every conceivable kind
of character, and cut across every barrier of race, creed, politics,
and language with ease?
Why did A.A. finally drop all its membership regulations? Why did we
leave it to each newcomer to decide himself whether he was an alcoholic
and whether he should join us? Why did we dare say, contrary to the
experience of society and government everywhere, that we would neither
punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, believe anything, or conform
to anything?
The answer, now seen in Tradition Three, was simplicity itself. At last
experience taught us that to take away any alcoholic's full chance was
sometimes to pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to
endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his own
sick brother?
As group after group saw these possibilities, they finally abandoned
all membership regulations. One dramatic experience after another
clinched this determination until it became our universal tradition.
Here are two examples:
On the A.A. calendar it was Year Two. In that time nothing could be
seen but two struggling, nameless groups of alcoholics trying to hold
their faces up to the light.
A newcomer appeared at one of these groups, knocked on the door and
asked to be let in. He talked frankly with that group's oldest member.
He soon proved that his was a desperate case, and that above all he
wanted to get well. "But," he asked, "will you let me join your group?
Since I am the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized than
alcoholism, you may not want me among you. Or will you?"
There was the dilemma. What should the group do? The oldest member
summoned two others, and in confidence laid the explosive facts in
their laps. Said he, "Well, what about it? If we turn this man away,
he'll soon die. If we allow him in, only god knows what trouble he'll
brew. What shall the answer be - yes or no?"
At first the elders could look only at the objections. "We deal," they
said, "with alcoholics only. So went the discussion while the newcomers
fate hung in the balance. Then one of the three spoke in a very
different voice. "What we are really afraid of," he said, "is our
reputation. We are much more afraid of what people might say than the
trouble this strange alcoholic might bring. As we've been talking, five
short words have been running through my mind. Something keeps
repeating to me, `What would the Master do?'" Not another word was
said. What more indeed could be said?"
Overjoyed, the newcomer plunged into Twelfth Step work. Tirelessly he
laid A.A.'s message before scores of people. Since this was a very
early group, those scores have since multiplied themselves into
thousands. Never did he trouble anyone with his other difficulty. A.A.
had taken its first step in the formation of Tradition Three.
Not long after the man with the double stigma knocked for admission,
A.A.'s other group received into its membership a salesman we shall
call Ed. A power driver, this one, and brash as any salesman could
possibly be. He had at least and idea a minute on how to improves A.A.
These ideas he sold to fellow members with the same burning enthusiasm
with which he distributed automobile polish. But he had one idea that
wasn't so salable. Ed was an atheist. His pet obsession was that A.A.
could get along better without its "God nonsense." He browbeat
everybody, and everybody expected that he'd soon get drunk - for at the
time, you see, A.A. was on the pious side. There must be a heavy
penalty, it was thought, for blasphemy. Distressingly enough, Ed
proceeded to stay sober.
At length the time came for him to speak in a meeting. We shivered, for
we knew what was coming. He paid a fine tribute to the Fellowship; he
told how his family had been reunited; he extoled the virtue of
honesty; he recalled the joys of Twelfth Step work; and then he lowered
the boom. Cried Ed, "I can't stand this God stuff! It's a lot of
malarkey for weak folks. This group doesn't need it, and I won't have
it! To hell with it!"
A great wave of outraged resentment engulfed the meeting, sweeping
every member to a single resolve: "Out he goes!"
The elders led Ed aside. They said firmly, "You can't talk like this
around here. You'll have to quit it or get out." With great sarcasm Ed
came back at them. "Now do tell! Is that so?" He reached over to a
bookshelf and took up a sheaf of papers. On top of them lay the
foreword to the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," then under preparation. He
read aloud, "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to
stop drinking." Relentlessly, Ed went on, "When you guys wrote that
sentence, did you mean it, or didn't you?"
Dismayed, the elders looked at one another, for they knew he had them
cold. So Ed stayed. Ed not only stayed, he stayed sober - month after
month. The longer he kept dry, the louder he talked - against God. The
group was in anguish so deep that all fraternal charity had vanished.
"When, oh when," groaned members to one another, "will that guy get
drunk?"
Quite a while later, Ed got a sales job which took him out of town. At
the end of a few days, the news came in. He'd sent a telegram for
money, and everybody knew what that meant! Then he got on the phone. In
those days, we'd go anywhere on a Twelfth Step job, no matter how
unpromising. But this time nobody stirred. "Leave him alone! Let him
try it by himself for once; maybe he'll learn a lesson!"
About two weeks later, Ed stole by night into an A.A. member's house,
and unknown to the family, went to bed. Daylight found the master of
the house and another friend drinking their morning coffee. A noise was
heard on the stairs. To their consternation, Ed appeared. A quizzical
smile on his lips, he said, "Have you fellows had your morning
meditation?" They quickly sensed that he was quite in earnest. In
fragments, his story came out.
In a neighboring state, Ed had holed up in a cheap hotel. After all his
please for help had been rebuffed, these words rang in his fevered
mind. "They have deserted me. I have been deserted by my own kind. This
is the end . . . Nothing is left." As he tossed on his bed, his hand
brushed the bureau near by, touching a book. Opening the book, he read.
It was a Gideon Bible. Ed never confided any more of what he saw and
felt in that hotel room. It was the year 1938. He hasn't had a drink
since.
Nowadays, when old timers who know Ed foregather, they exclaim, "What
if we had actually succeeded in throwing Ed out for blasphemy? What
would have happened to him and all the others he later helped?"
So the hand of Providence early gave us a sign that any alcoholic is a
member of our Society when he says so. *In 1954, the name of the
Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of
Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the
General Service Office.
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