Membership Rules? Around 1943 or 1944, the Central Office asked the groups to list their membership rules and send them in. After they arrived we set them all down. A little reflection upon these many rules brought us to an astonishing conclusion. If all of these edicts had been in force everywhere at once it would have been practically impossible for any alcoholic to have ever joined A.A. About nine-tenth of our oldest and best members could never have got by! << << << >> >> >> At last experience taught us that to make away any alcoholic's full chance for sobriety in A.A. 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?
I remember in the UK someone started a meeting and they though that people were getting it too cheap, so you had to pay £5 to attend.
The group didn't last long.
No, I didn't go to it.
AA appears to work because nothing much is set in stone, the fellowship adapts to the needs of the members.
It doesn't stop people wanting to control, but it usually thwarts their efforts.
Therefore the aim of the fellowship to to effectively transmit the program of recovery to suffering alcoholics rather than to become a pseudo religeon with no relevance to the new commer.
Talking of which, my home group had a script for the secetary to run the meeting, everyweek the secretary would ask for someone to turn the kettles on 5 minutes from the end of the meeting.
At a group conscience a new commer asked why did we do this. I said for people to have tea after the meeting, she said no one drank tea after the meeting. I said perhaps to do the washing up, she said there was a water heater.
It appears that long ago people stopped having a drink after the meeting, but none of us had realised.
Without new commers pointing out simple things like this, and sometimes more important stuff, we are doomed to carry on doing stuff because that's the way we always did it, rather than what does the fellowship need us to be doing.
I remember in the UK someone started a meeting and they though that people were getting it too cheap, so you had to pay £5 to attend.
The group didn't last long.
It seems like about everything has been tried. Bill W. and the other early AAs didn't write the traditions in a flash of inspiration - it was hard won experience.
Saxophones are like AA. Originally designed and conceived by Adolphe Sax, much of his original philosophy is still present in the instruments of today over 100 years later. But some of them aren't - like the C soprano, C tenor, C bass, F alto, and F baritone. Even today, you can find ads touting some revolutionary new fingering system that makes sax playing "easier". Go find some propaganda from 50 years ago and you'll find.... goofy fingering systems to make sax playing easier, from companies you never heard of and never will.
Saxophones are like AA in that every bad idea anybody ever came up with to "improve" it has already been tried. And that experience has refined both over the decades. That doesn't keep people from still trying, but we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by studying history
