Not-God (49 page)

The April 1975 meeting of A.A.’s General Service Conference directed attention to the topics of sponsorship, literature, and members of Alcoholics Anonymous employed in alcoholism treatment programs. One decision of this gathering bequeathed to its 1976 successor the theme, “Sponsorship: Our Privilege and Our Responsibility.” The practice of sponsoring had originated in earliest Cleveland A.A. to meet the challenge of the burst of growth that had followed the publicity accorded the baseball player Rollie Hemsley. An incursus both similar and dissimilar motivated the renewed interest thirty-six years later. As the later surveys would demonstrate, more and more individuals were approaching the fellowship not at the invitation of someone already a member but from a program of treatment. These newcomers tended to bring not only a much more sophisticated knowledge of the malady of alcoholism but also more background in the psychological than in the spiritual dimensions of recovery. They needed a different kind of guidance than had earlier generations of recruits, and both 1975’s and 1976’s delegates explored suggestions on how members could shape traditional sponsorship to meet that need.
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The topic of literature celebrated success but also raised hints of what would become a source of concern in the later 1980s. Overall literature sales increased in 1975 by more than 50 percent over 1974 — a rate three times as great as the growth in membership. Those who approached Alcoholics Anonymous by way of treatment clearly tended to be readers. Most treatment centers, in fact, dispensed A.A. publications to their clients. And in that reality lay the yet unperceived seeds of a future problem. In two short years, 15 percent of A. A. literature would be sold to non-A.A. buyers. By late 1986, that figure would approach 50 percent, and both A.A. members and G.S.O. staff were questioning whether such selling of literature outside the fellowship at a profit violated A.A.’s Traditions of non-affiliation and self-support.
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The final large 1975 General Service Conference topic concerned A.A. members who worked in the treatment programs that were in so many ways impinging upon Alcoholics Anonymous and shaping its growth. How was the principle of “cooperation without affiliation,” formulated in the late 1940s and urged again in 1959 and 1972, working? Fairly well, the delegates agreed, again rejecting the term “two-hatters” for members employed in treatment as an earlier Conference had repudiated “A.A. counselors.”
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The centerpiece at the Fortieth Anniversary International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous held in Denver, Colorado, in July of 1975 was a gleaming, stainless steel, six-hundred-gallon coffee urn that dispensed the warm brown brew through fifty spigots. At this “Whip Inflation Now” juncture in American history, whether because of economic conditions or inspired by the convention theme of “Let It Begin With Me” or because of the location, the Denver gathering witnessed the greatest leap in attendance: from about 11,000 in 1970 at Miami Beach, to 1975’s total registration of 19,300. Rivaling the coffee urn, a “monster replica” of the Big Book, 28 feet by 14 feet by 3 feet, filled center stage in Currigan Hall, where the largest meetings were held.

Convention activities ran each day from July 4 through 6, from 8:00
A.M.
to 2:00
A.M
Paralleling the A.A. proceedings, Al-Anon and Alateen held their own conventions offering full schedules of events. One participant described a memorable highlight:

As that vignette attests, communication need not always be verbal. Within Alcoholics Anonymous, indeed, even within the central practice of story-telling, the most essential kind of communication, that aspect of it which less provides information than invites identification is always somehow more than merely verbal.

Perhaps because he hoped to write one last book that explored “practicing these principles in all our affairs,” after completing
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
in 1957, Bill W. became intensely interested in just that kind of A.A. communication. His contribution to the
A.A. Grapevine’s
publication celebrating the fellowship’s twenty-fifth anniversary,
A.A. Today
, was titled “The Language of the Heart.” A year earlier, the co-founder had explored the same territory in a
Grapevine
article that reminded, “A.A. Communication Can Cross All Barriers.”
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Bill’s interest does not surprise. Always a profound participant in his age and acutely sensitive to what was going on at the group level, Wilson was responding both to the needs engendered by the fellowship’s growth and to the climate of opinion that embraced Marshall McLuhan and spawned a new era of critical theory. Communication was in the air, and the context of a decade that ran from Kennedy to Nixon, embracing both assassinations and the landing of men on the moon, assured that the topic of communication would be linked with profound awareness of the possibility and even the likelihood of change. In 1970 and again in 1976, delegates to A.A.’s General Service Conference were reminded that Alcoholics Anonymous had a procedure for changing even the Twelve Traditions and Twelve Steps, should such need arise.
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But A.A.’s immediate communication concerns were far more mundane. Any institution faces the challenges of maintaining integral identity while adjusting to changes in its context, but neither the fellowship’s own growth nor the changes wrought by treatment programs, neither wider use of mind- and mood-altering chemicals other than alcohol nor changing demographics, suggested any need to change the substance of the A.A. program. The 1971 General Service Conference helpfully divided practical concerns into two obvious parts: internal communication within the fellowship and external communication with individuals and groups who do not belong to Alcoholics Anonymous. What follows will explore each in turn, under the first treating developments concerning anonymity, self-support, and
The A.A. Grapevine;
under the second surveying A.A.’s outreach both to still-suffering active alcoholics and to various kinds of professionals.

In addressing both those within and those outside its fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous always recognized the need for two different types of communication: that aiming to furnish information and that hoping to invite identification. A.A. literature served both needs, and the kinds of literature distributed revealed another two-sided demand within the fellowship. Some members sought help in carrying the message of recovery, while others looked for assistance in continuing personal growth in recovery. The two needs are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, but the first more directly involves service.

Living out the mandate of service, encapsulated in the Twelfth Step and the Fifth Tradition, led over these years to two particular problems. The first, anonymity, was largely resolved even before the beginning of our period, although new technologies and the changing cultural context required specification of that solution. On the second matter, the question of how the service function of Alcoholics Anonymous and specifically the fellowship’s New York General Service Office would implement the Seventh Tradition’s mandate of self-support, a solution began to be glimpsed only at the 1987 thirty-seventh meeting of A.A.’s General Service Conference, which for the first time in its history chose a theme related to finances: “The Seventh Tradition — A Turning Point.”
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In one sense, the greatest threat to A.A.’s tradition of anonymity derives from the fellowship’s own success. Because of increasing knowledge, but especially because of the sober lives lived by individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous and their acceptance of identification as “alcoholic,” alcoholism has become to some small extent a respectable condition — at least for those who accept the A.A. philosophy. A.A.’s Tradition of anonymity, meanwhile, continues to apply not to whether or not one is an alcoholic but to one’s membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. Those outside the fellowship, however, whether or not they themselves agree with A.A.’s understanding of alcoholism, have come to realize that anyone who comfortably acknowledges being alcoholic is almost certainly an A.A. member. Those who are not members of Alcoholics Anonymous do not serenely identify themselves as “alcoholic.”

Over the years, A.A. practice has simply accepted this reality. There has been no movement toward expanding the scope of the anonymity Tradition, which remains confined to the fact of A.A. membership. The only recent interpretation concerned the use of audiotapes and videotapes, especially since the advent of cassettes. Delegates to the 1974 General Service Conference suggested, “At A.A. meetings [tape recordings] should not be made without permission of the people speaking,” recommending further that tapes made at meetings be lent or offered to groups outside A.A. “only if the individuals whose speeches are recorded have also protected their anonymity by using first names only.” Because videotapes do not afford the same opportunity, the visual equivalent of “first name only,” their use has been seen as a violation of anonymity and therefore not accepted.
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The question of taping recalled to attention an issue thought to be earlier settled — the matter of anonymity
within
the A.A. fellowship. One 1971 General Service Conference workshop had warned against its increase, suggesting that within Alcoholics Anonymous the use of full names not only did not violate anonymity but instead enabled effective communication.
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Practices differed over the years that followed, geography being the main apparent determinant. Individuals accustomed to attending “open” meetings and groups that welcomed many newcomers tended, for reasons of consistency and calming, to stick with “first names only” even within closed meetings. Groups selfconsciously “oldtimer” or claiming derivation from Akron-Cleveland tended to use full names proudly. Visitors rarely questioned either practice, generally accepting local custom as yet a further manifestation of the diversity for which sobriety frees.

Despite these resolutions, anonymity remained a potentially difficult topic. The mid-1980s saw the appearance of several books that told of the A.A. experience of relatively prominent individuals, and the difficulties dogging the “Creating a Sober World” project hinted that anonymity safeguarded not only the ideal of “principles before personalities” but also the ultimately practical necessity of valuing established principles more than transient projects. Some members felt that anonymity breaks were increasing, but impressions derived from sheer quantity can mislead, as data presented at the 1982 General Service Conference suggested. Delegates that year heard presentations on “a hot topic throughout A.A. history”: “Anonymity Breaks — How Are We Handling Them?” Discussion offered data: “Some members are under the impression that anonymity is being broken at the public level more and more. Factually, over the past fifteen years, about one member in 5,000 has had his or her anonymity broken. Despite our apprehension, our wonderful Eleventh Tradition seems as respected today as in the past.”
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Communicating the implications of A.A.’s Seventh Tradition of self-support was more difficult. Awareness of the need emerged more slowly, and the question of support for A.A.’s New York General Office remained intertwined with the tension between Akron and New York, the fellowship’s twin foundation locales, as well as with the “us against them,” urban northeast
versus
the rest of the country thinking so pervasive in the history of the United States. In 1972, for example, General Service Conference delegates raised questions about using the money in the Bill Wilson Memorial Fund “toward the purchase of a permanent location for the General Service Office-Grapevine Office” and about the possibility of limiting costs by moving the Alcoholics Anonymous World Service offices out of New York City; 1978 brought a similar suggestion. On both occasions, the questions were summarily answered and the deeper concern ignored or brushed aside — perhaps the reason why, in mid-1987, events hint that the suggestion will soon surface again, with perhaps different results. The 1972 response was instructive in a different way: “It is traditional not to own properties. One reason is that this could commit future generations of A.A.s to indebtedness which they might not be able to support as the years pass.”
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The tradition “not to own properties” reflected Bill W.’s concern that each A.A. generation reaffirm financially the commitment to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous through “general service” activities distinct from individual Twelfth-Step work and individual group availability. From the very beginning of A.A. history, member contributions consistently fell short of meeting that need. The early stock certificates in “World Publishing, Inc.,” the carefully measured John D. Rockefeller contribution: repaying each had been made possible mainly by profits from the selling of the book
Alcoholics Anonymous
. Throughout his own service, Bill W. had not received a salary but had subsisted on the royalties from his writings — later,
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
and
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
as well as the A.A. Big Book.
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After Bill’s death, 1973 witnessed G.S.O. suggesting “a penny a day” annual contribution per member from individual groups to Alcoholics Anonymous World Services — the first increase in the three dollars per year originally suggested in 1961 and reaffirmed by the 1963 and 1969 General Service Conference. In 1975, G.S.O. recommended a “60-30-10” percentage split of the monies collected in the basket at A.A. meetings. Also over the years, inflation led to increasing the dollar amount of allowable individual contributions, from $100 to $200 in 1967, $500 in 1984, and $1,000 in 1986.
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