I've read previous post but nothing that hits this exactly. We have a person that claims to have many, many years of sobriety that includes years of alcohol and drug use. This person has been seen drinking and has offered drugs to people in and outside of the meeting room. Person has actually opened mouth in a meeting with a drug sitting on tongue. We took a group conscious, and banned this person from our group. Now we have a couple of people stating we can't do this. I would like your option.
If he suffers from alcoholism he is in. Long form Trad three. If he disrupts the group and hampers its ability to carry the message, he is out, based on traditions 1 and 5. AA membership can be refused to none who wish to recover - he can go to another group. The group answers only to its Higher Power as expressed through the group conscience. No one has any spiritual power to tell a group what to do.
I've read previous post but nothing that hits this exactly. We have a person that claims to have many, many years of sobriety that includes years of alcohol and drug use. This person has been seen drinking and has offered drugs to people in and outside of the meeting room. Person has actually opened mouth in a meeting with a drug sitting on tongue. We took a group conscious, and banned this person from our group.
Not a good idea to be banning alcoholics.
Was he allowed to face his accusers? Was he allowed to speak to your evidence? Was he allowed to speak in his own behalf?
If an alcoholic comes to an A.A. meeting under the influence of alcohol, how do you treat him or handle him during the meeting?
Answer
Groups will usually run amuck on that sort of question. At first we are likely to say that we are going to be supermen and save every drunk in town. The fact is that a great many of them just don't want to stop. They come, but they interfere very greatly with the meeting. Then, being still rather intolerant, the group will swing way over in the other direction and say, "No drunks around these meetings." We get forcible and put them out of the meeting, saying, "You're welcome here if your sober." But the general rule in most places is that if a person comes for the first or second time and can sit quietly in the meeting, without creating an uproar, nobody bothers him. On the other hand, if he's a chronic "slipper" and interferes with the meetings, we lead him out gently, or maybe not so gently, on the theory that one man cannot be permitted to hold up the recovery of others. The theory is "the greatest good for the greatest number." (Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies, June 1945)
We asked a combative, verbally abusive member not to return.
She was too disruptive and physically threatened the founding member of that group
who is a 78 year old woman with cancer...
He is disrupting the primary purpose of the group, to help alcoholics. He does not show the desire nor will to stop. Then look at the legal side, if said purpose is trying to sell drugs to people in your group, he is using your group as a way to make money in illegal ways. He appears to be praying on the members and their addictions to try to build up a clientele. The safety of the Group as a Whole is a priority.
