Hey Marc, not to be contrary but  an AA "Club" is not AA.  AA meetings may be held there, and those groups are AA but the Club is not.  So if the Club told the guy that he was persona non grata then it's not really an AA issue.  By the way, I live in St. Pete Beach and have been to the 2250 club, but not since they moved from 2250 central ave.

Dean

-- Edited by StPeteDean at 17:45, 2008-10-06

Marc I hear you and agree with you. It's a great attitude to have. Don't let the bastards get you down

Hey guys,
Interesting day so far.
Last night at the meeting I had a burning desire. I shared of how my sponsee is banned and how tradition nine clearly states that this ought not to be so. So Today I find out that they Banned me. Who's next? My sponsor?
This is an excerpt from tradition Nine...."Neither is General Service Conference, its Foundation Board,* nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We've tried it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result. Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying "This is life for us; you can't keep us out." Committees have instructed many an A.A. to stop working on a chronic backslider, only to be told: "How I do my Twelfth Step work is my business. Who are you to judge?" This doesn't mean an A.A. won't take advice or suggestions from more experienced members, but he surely won't take orders. Who is more unpopular than the old-time A.A., full of wisdom, who moves to another area and tries to tell the group there how to run its business? He and all like him who "view with alarm for the good of A.A." meet the most stubborn resistance or, worse still, laughter." Tradition three is even more interesting to me....

"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. *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. "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 oldtimers 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."

Tridition one...

We may certainly answer this question with a loud "No!" We believe there isn't a fellowship on earth which lavishes more devoted care upon its individual members; surely there is none which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes. No A.A. can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery are suggestions; the Twelve Traditions which guarantee A.A.'s unity contain not a single "Don't." They repeatedly say "We ought..." but never "You must!"

Two...Where does A.A. get its direction? Who runs it? This, too, is a puzzler for every friend and newcomer. When told that our Society has no president having authority to govern it, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues, not board of directors who can cast an erring member into outer darkness, when indeed no A.A. can give another a directive and enforce obedience, our friends gasp and exclaim, "This simply can't be. There must be an angle somewhere." These practical folk then read Tradition Two, and learn that the sole authority in A.A. is a loving God as He may express Himself in the group conscience. They dubiously ask an experienced A.A. member if this really works. The member, sane to all appearances, immediately answers, "Yes! It definitely does." The friends mutter that his looks vague, nebulous, pretty naive to them. Then they commence to watch us with speculative eyes, pick up a fragment of A.A. history, and soon have the solid facts.

Four...

"Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole."

Autonomy is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us, it means very simply that every A.A. group can manage its affairs exactly as it pleases, except when A.A. as a whole is threatened. Comes now the same question raised in Tradition One. Isn't such liberty foolishly dangerous? Over the years, every conceivable deviation from our Twelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That was sure to be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individualists. Children of chaos, we have defiantly played with every brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and, we think, wiser. These very deviations created a vast process of trial and error which, under the grace of God, has brought us to where we stand today. When A.A.'s Traditions were first published, in 1946, we had become sure that an A.A. group could stand almost any amount of battering. We saw that the group, exactly like the individual, must eventually conform to whatever tested principles would guarantee survival. We had discovered that there was perfect safety in the process of trial and error. So confident of this had we become that the original statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence: "Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.

Five...

"Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry it's message to the alcoholic who still suffers."

Six...

"An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose."

The moment we saw that we had an answer for alcoholism, it was reasonable (or so it seemed at the time) for us to feel that we might have the answer to a lot of other things. The A.A. groups, many thought, could go into business, might finance any enterprise whatever in the total field of alcoholism. In fact, we felt duty-bound to throw the whole weight of the A.A. name behind any meritorious cause....And so on...

-- Edited by Marc T. at 11:08, 2008-10-07

Hey brother,

Real world.

Sounds like they are doing it their way..instead of the AA way..:)

Ide be looking for another meeting.

Have a good day.

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.

Two...Where does A.A. get its direction? Who runs it? This, too, is a puzzler for every friend and newcomer. When told that our Society has no president having authority to govern it, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues, not board of directors who can cast an erring member into outer darkness, when indeed no A.A. can give another a directive and enforce obedience, our friends gasp and exclaim, "This simply can't be. There must be an angle somewhere." These practical folk then read Tradition Two, and learn that the sole authority in A.A. is a loving God as He may express Himself in the group conscience. They dubiously ask an experienced A.A. member if this really works. The member, sane to all appearances, immediately answers, "Yes! It definitely does." The friends mutter that his looks vague, nebulous, pretty naive to them. Then they commence to watch us with speculative eyes, pick up a fragment of A.A. history, and soon have the solid facts.

I am a member with afew 24 hrs, my brother was in a fight in a clubhouse of AA between he and another member . The group itself or club house members, All of whom were nowhere near the fight and did not see what happened outside agreed to kick him out for good. I cant believe this group is in the directory?One things for sure...the face of aa has gotten ugly and counterfeit.

Welcome to the board Gypsy,
What Bill said. First off, an AA "Club" is not a group, it is where a group might meet. Typically a dozen or more individual groups hold their meetings at a club. The Club is in the business of providing rental space for the groups' meetings, for profit or not. So the club could decide that a person is no longer welcome irregardless of what any of the groups, that meet there, have to say about it. Also, a group, being autonomous, as Bill mentioned, can hold a "Group Conscious meeting" and decide that, for the safety of the other members, a person is no longer welcome. Because individual groups can make these kinds of decisions (and many others) those decisions have no bearing or reflection on AA as a whole, except when people, who don't understand the aforementioned, slander AA, such as you did here. By the way, this forum, like every other forum, has a "search function". Before starting a thread on a particular topic, especially one that is controversial or derogatory about or to AA, you could have searched for previous topics on this subject and found that same information. This is considered to be proper forum etiquette http://forum-services-review.toptenreviews.com/25-forum-posting-etiquette-tips.html So, in about 12 hours, this thread will be merged with another of it's topic.

Hopefully, you didn't join this forum, just to post this derogatory thread. Please start an introductory thread, about yourself with some experience, strength, and hope, so that we can get to know you and give you a proper welcoming.

edit:   I deleted your post, in the other thread, that you bumped for two reasons.  One, it was off topic for that thread, unless you concider your post "anti-AA rhetoric", and Two, it said the same that you're saying here.   If you have a beef about AA, you need to take it up with  your local AA intergroup office or AA world services in NY.  This message board is Not AA.  It's a place where we talk about getting sober and how AA facilitates that.  It's not a place to come and bash AA.  That's generally considered "Flaming" or "Trolling", to join a message board and immediately post material or opinions of an imflamatory nature in regards to the subject matter of the board. 




-- Edited by StPeteDean on Wednesday 22nd of December 2010 10:43:22 AM

Perhaps a CoDA group would aid in the process of not enabling your brother's aggressive behavior. If he got treated so bad why doesn't he stick up for himself with words? Why is he not making this post? Perhaps he has relatives that do the talking for him while he just gets in fights?

Most the time when I find myself complaining about stuff in AA or in life, I wind up eventually realizing the problem is me.

It takes two people to fight...ALWAYS.

Gypsy wrote:

---

Dear Mark and all of you who claim membership, I have beena member 10 years. dry date aug 27 2000  I was in a fist fight with someone whom is and enemy of mine outside a club house?! 5 days later I was arrested for attempted murder, of course I bonded out beat the false charges but did go to jail and well the cost spiritually was bad enough and the price to protect myself  and prove my innocence was worse than  my drinking that supposed "GOT ME TO AA"
I am not unique but to be honest the face of aa is  ugly and dead. why? because the organization allows and permits such acts and supports them as  AA GROUPS. 
I  dont drink talk to my therapist and avoid meetings as much as I can. I think aa is a cult organization.
upon my return from the ordeal I was told flat out your barred for life I was so happy, cuz now I tell the truth to people about my experience about this thing called a program!....Having fun despite being taken into a dry drunk cult.
Good luck to all of you thanks for reading.

---

Sounds like a resentment to me.  But then maybe whatever your doing to stay dry allows those.  Thanks for reminding me where I don't want to be.  I'll take sober over dry any day!

 

B....

bikerbill i agree with you this is an uotside issue nothing to do with aa ......my take on this one is could be aa is not for everybody but im glad its there .....love you and thanks for beeing here everybody i mean everybody