12 Steps & 12 Traditions
This month’s Step and Tradition articles from the Digital Archive:
|  No Fanfare, No Foofaraw
Tradition 11 - Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films
I HAVEN'T MADE a good old-fashioned sweeping statement in a long time. I would like to make one now and say that nothing on earth could ever have promoted me out of drunkenness into sobriety. Not family, friends, or lovers. Not a jail, a mental institution, or a psychoanalyst. Not threats of violence, actual fistfights, or suicide attempts. There just never was enough reason or incentive in the sober life to win me over.
Never, that is, until I came to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, in the summer of 1960.
I had my last drink in the fall of that year, and I owe my sobriety largely to the fact that AA members made sobriety very attractive. Subtly, without fanfare, they drew me into their midst. Never once did they pressure me or interrogate me. About the only questions I was ever asked in those days were whether I would like to help set up the meeting room and what meeting I was going to the next night. Or they might ask if I was feeling better. Come to think of it, aren't those the essentials in the AA way of life--service, fellowship (unity), and personal recovery?
In the early days of AA, we were very much a secret society. Meetings were held in private homes and were hard to find. Our pioneers were understandably cautious, not only because of the stigma of alcoholism, but also because they did not know what kinds of people would seek them out. "Wrong" kinds, they feared, might ruin the fragile experiment.
In the AA film Bill Discusses the Twelve Traditions, our co-founder says of those early times that "if you posed the question of attraction versus promotion, the idea of attraction would be to sit on the front porch and wait for some drunks to come along asking for help."
As it turned out, the seeds of AA have been planted in many different ways. It was a psychiatrist who planted the seed in my imagining. Not only did he recommend AA, but he lent me a copy of the Big Book and put me in touch with a member who took me to my first meeting. It was a smooth, attractive action that he set in motion, and a desire for sobriety was kindled in me.
The power of example is perhaps the strongest attraction Alcoholics Anonymous has going for it. The public can hear how AA works and see it in action by attending any of our open meetings (in this area, three-speaker meetings). When I came in, open meetings were still being called the showcase of AA. Indeed, that was the original intention behind open speaker meetings. Non-AAs are specifically invited to the public information meeting, another source by which the public can view firsthand the attractions of sobriety. At this type of meeting, the AA talks may be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Speakers at those meetings at which the public is welcome usually honor the spirit of the Traditions by using only their first names. However, they are not in violation of Tradition Eleven if they choose to use their full names, since the meeting is not on radio, film, or TV. Reporters and all other non-AAs present are asked to respect our Tradition. The thrust of anonymity in Eleven is quite clearly a public relations policy.
Bill W., in a personal letter in 1961, said that although some principles in the Traditions are subject to interpretation, anonymity at the public level requires 100 percent compliance.
The question that faced me in the beginning had nothing to do with press, radio, or films. It was whether to tell my family and my boss. I blurted it out eventually and was fortunate to find acceptance with both. Many AAs think it a good idea to discuss the matter with their sponsors before disclosing their AA membership. As for the boss, he or she might not understand alcoholism, but it is a fact that business and industry do not argue with improved production.
As I understand it, the anonymity principle, as stated in this Tradition, was never intended as a concealment so that we AA members would not know one another. In my beginnings, however, my sense of shame could be assuaged only by the group's assurance that nobody--in or out of AA--would have to know my identity.
A part of the Tradition that still causes some argument is the meaning of "promotion." I have belonged to AA groups where, periodically, a wave of discussion would rise questioning the extent to which the message was being carried into institutions. Some members contended that it was all right to go into those institutions where we already had meetings, but to take on any more institutions would constitute a promoting of AA. It was a confusion of terms and ideas and embodied the same fear felt by our pioneer members, that if we became too inclusive--if the AA message was shared with too many people--we would spread ourselves thin and run the risk of destroying ourselves from within.
The attractiveness of AA does not depend for its effectiveness upon members, geography, or climate. And the message is the same now as it was in the beginning. Whether it is given to a newcomer stumbling down the stairs of the local group, or to the newcomer caught up in the midst of a sprawling International Convention (see "Super Meeting," October 1980 Grapevine), it is the same, undiluted message for one person as it is for one million.
I had occasion to revamp my thinking about this Tradition in the summer of 1980 at our 45th Anniversary International Convention, in New Orleans. There we were, some 22,500 of us coming and going, with our badges that read Jim A., June B., or Bill H. The city was open to us; we went from hotel luncheon meetings to panel discussions at the Superdome, to the alkathons that ran day and night at hotels and civic centers, and back to the Superdome. The people of New Orleans were made aware every day through wide media coverage that the city was ours. Our badges meant only one thing: our AA membership.
I had to wrestle with the feeling that by wearing my badge on the street I was violating Traditions. So I asked myself: Was my picture, complete with badge, printed in the local paper or a national magazine? Did I appear, with my badge, on TV or videotape? Was I interviewed on radio, where I stated my full name and the fact of my AA membership? Those questions and others like them could be answered with only one word--no.
From a practical viewpoint, I should add that the heart of the city was deserted by many of its citizens over that holiday weekend. Of the New Orleans people I met, not one looked at my badge twice. Since I could easily have taken the badge off, I had to conclude that my problem was not with anonymity but rather with a resurgence of the old alcoholic guilt.
I have the Steps to help me deal with my feelings, but a thing I have to watch closely in myself is that I not use the anonymity Traditions (or any of the others) as weapons, and that I not parade them whenever I think I can impress a fellow AA. For instance, it takes no thinking at all for me to toss out an expression like "ought never be organized," "one ultimate authority," or "attraction rather than promotion."
It is equally improper of me to wave weapons at my non-AA friends. When I interject AA jargon and fragments of AA literature into my conversation with non-AAs, with no end in view other than self-promotion, I tend to do the very thing I want most not to do. I make a badge out of my anonymity. Non-AAs are not particularly interested in my way of life. They have their own ways of life.
Anonymity in this Tradition, as I understand it, applies only to "the level of press, radio, and films" and TV. In sharing with my fellow AAs, on the other hand, I don't want to withhold my identity--I want to celebrate it. Why not? Before AA, I had none. But I also want to be careful--exceptionally careful--to protect and cherish the anonymity of my fellow AAs who may be at different stages of recovery and may not yet feel the same way about openness.
Let us all put on badges of gratitude and celebrate the very real personal identities that stand firmly behind our public image of anonymity.
W. H.
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