PO Box 1980

Thank you for the great stories in the August 1989 Grapevine. They are bound to help some alcoholics get sober, but came too late for my friend, Carl M., who died drunk last year. Carl would attend AA meetings, but insisted that he would rather die than go into a treatment center. Carl learned at closed meetings that he lacked the necessary knowledge of alcohol and body chemistry that he could only get "in treatment." He was reminded by well-meaning AAs that if they could endure the humiliating bottom of becoming a "patient," so could he. Carl correctly inferred that many AAs felt that he had neither "paid his dues" nor had the knowledge needed to belong to their groups. A year has passed and I still hear that new requirement for membership in some groups coming from the lips of sincere AAs. The articles in the August 1989 Grapevine would have helped Carl to understand that the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking and that he did belong among us.