PO Box 1980

Wisecracks about elected officials and candidates may be appropriate for late night TV, but they simply don't belong in AA meetings. Even casual comments on controversial issues can be enormously destructive to individuals and to groups. When I walk up to a group of people waiting for the meeting to start or during a smoke break and overhear political or religious discussions, my heart sinks. If I were a newcomer, I might just walk away, confused or alienated, back into the darkness. After all, we don't come to AA to be told the right way to vote or the right way to get to heaven. Aren't there dozens of other times and places for these kinds of discussions? And when the room breaks into laughter at some joke about a political figure, for whom some of those attending almost certainly had voted, that feeling of fellowship, so essential for recovery, is busted, leaving some folks feeling separate, alone (once again) in a crowd.