 An Open Door
Tradition Three
One thing puzzles me," remarked Josh, our group's six-weeks-sober member, responding to the leader's request for a discussion topic. "Well, a lot of things puzzle me, but right now it's what you just read from the Preamble, and it's in the Traditions: 'The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.' What if someone comes into AA who doesn't desire to stop drinking?"
"Like you did?" Sara's understanding smile was like a friendly hand on his shoulder. Josh grinned back at her, secure in the warmth and love of his group.
"Exactly like I did! My first two or three meetings I was afraid to admit I didn't really want to stop drinking, for fear you might throw me out. But now that I'm sure you won't--you won't, will you?"
"Not a chance! You're doing just great and the whole group is thrilled about it. You've raised a point that has bothered a lot of people. Maybe that statement isn't quite as simple as it looks. You wonder if we are living up to our own principles. Daniel, tell Josh about your first AA meeting."
"At the time," Daniel began, "I was a patient in a mental hospital that had never given the time of day to AA. This was over twenty years ago; things are different now. As a daring experiment a few of us diagnosed alcoholics were taken to an AA meeting. I skimmed some of the AA literature, listened to what was said, and after the meeting closed I got into a conversation with the man who became my sponsor. He asked what my impression was.
"'Doesn't matter,' I said. 'I've already flunked out.'
"'What do you mean?'"
"'It says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. I have no desire to stop drinking.'"
"'Then tell me this,'" he said. "'Do you ever have a desire to be a different person?'"
"'Now you've got my attention!'" I told him."'What do I do and how soon can I start?' I've had twenty-three sober years starting with that night, so I'm glad AA makes allowances for people in no shape to know what they want."
Susan held up her hand, "I didn't think I wanted to stop drinking when I got here, either. I wanted desperately to stop being so scared and miserable, but I had loved alcohol and it was several years before I reached the point of actually desiring to live without it, or admitting to myself that I did. If the group had told me to get out, and come back when I had a desire to stop drinking, I'd have been long dead. Elinor, you're the longest-sober one here. Have you ever known of a group that 'threw out' newcomers who wouldn't say they wanted sobriety?"
"Not of my personal knowledge," Elinor answered, "though it probably has happened sometime in the history of AA. Just about everything else has. In my experience very few of us came to AA with any conscious desire to stop drinking. I certainly didn't. Like Daniel and Susan, we urgently desired other things, and knew there was no chance of getting them unless we stopped drinking. That was enough for a start, and we developed, or recognized, the desire to stay sober later."
"Wouldn't it be more honest," Josh asked, "to say 'a desire to recover from alcoholism' instead of 'a desire to stop drinking'? I'm beginning to see that there is a lot more to recovery than just stopping drinking, but the Tradition doesn't hint at that."
"You answered your own question, at least in part, Josh, when you said that after six weeks you are just beginning to see the difference between recovery and not drinking." It was Logan speaking, eight years sober and Josh's sponsor. "That we come into AA to stop drinking is about all most of us can comprehend at first. Why confuse new people further with ideas they aren't ready for? Also, as stated, the Tradition puts the emphasis where it belongs, on getting the drinking stopped. Nothing is more important to the new member than getting the drinking stopped. For a lot of us it makes the difference between staying alive and dying."
"Then why," Josh demanded, "don't we say: 'The only requirement for membership is to stop drinking'? That's what we're here for, isn't it?"
"And what time limit would you set, Josh?" Patrick asked amiably. "Must the new person stop drinking from his first AA meeting? Within a month? Six months? A year? That wouldn't have stopped my drinking. We celebrated my fourteen years of sobriety last month, if you recall, Josh, but I first came to AA nearly eighteen years ago. For the first three and a half years I kept drinking again every few months. Then I'd get the desire to stop drinking again, or enough of a one to bring me back to AA. And I was entitled to come back, and to keep trying. Tradition Three doesn't say we had to stop drinking, but only have a desire to. Otherwise I wouldn't be here tonight. I'd be with Susan, among the long dead. And Sara, I think Marjorie is going to explode if you don't let her say what's on her mind!"
"I'd noticed!" Sara laughed. "Well, Marjorie?"
"What impresses me most about the Third Tradition," Marjorie told us, "is the force of what it doesn't say. It tells us who is eligible for AA membership: anyone with a desire to stop drinking. And that's all. There is no other requirement. Not a word about being rich, or a high school graduate, or white, or male, or a church member. It doesn't say AA is closed to convicts, prostitutes, atheists, the unemployed, or those under twenty-one or over seventy-five. We can't keep anyone out who wants to stop drinking."
"You've got me convinced," Josh admitted. "Changing the Third Tradition wouldn't improve it. Now if we only had a way to tell whether people truly want to stop drinking."
"We do have a way," Elinor assured him confidently. "An absolutely certain way. Only, like so many things in AA, it requires patience. We know a person desires to stop drinking when he does stop drinking--and desires sobriety when he stays sober, day after day."
Elizabeth E.
Tulsa, Oklahoma Go to... | 