Tradition 3 - Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions - Alcoholics Anonymous - Read Along – 12 & 12

Tradition 3 - Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions - Alcoholics Anonymous - 12 & 12 Read Along

If you or someone you care about is suffering from addiction, there is help available.

Are you trying to stop drinking?

Do you think you may be an alcoholic?

Alcoholics Anonymous has been successful in saving millions of lives and families.

Local meetings can be found online.

Reach out if you would like assistance.

Spiritual principles helping to live your best life without alcohol and drugs.

Recovery from unhealthy habits and creating solutions for a long happy and useful life.

Alcoholism doesn't have to be a death sentence.

Addiction can be fixed.

Tradition Three
“The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.”
THIS Tradition is packed with meaning. For A.A. is really
saying to every serious drinker, “You are an A.A. member if you say so. You can declare yourself in; nobody can keep you out. No matter who you are, no matter how low you've gone, no matter how grave your emotional complications —even your crimes—we still can't deny you A.A. We don't want to keep you out. We aren't a bit afraid you'll harm us, never mind how twisted or violent you may be. We just want to be sure that you get the same great chance for sobriety that we've had. So you're an A.A. member the minute you declare yourself.”
To establish this principle of membership took years of harrowing experience. In our early time, nothing seemed so fragile, so easily breakable as an A.A. group. Hardly an alcoholic we approached paid any attention; most of those who did join us were like flickering candles in a windstorm. Time after time, their uncertain flames blew out and couldn't be relighted. Our unspoken, constant thought was “ Which of us may be the next?”
A member gives us a vivid glimpse of those days. “At one time,” he says, “every A.A. group had many member- ship rules. Everybody was scared witless that something or somebody would capsize the boat and dump us all back into the drink. Our Foundation office* asked each group to send in its list of 'protective' regulations. The total list was a mile long. If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could have possibly joined A.A. at all, so great was the sum of our anxiety and fear.
“We were resolved to admit nobody to A.A.. but that hypothetical class of people we termed 'pure alcoholics.' Except for their guzzling, and the unfortunate results there- of, they could have no other complications. So beggars, tramps, asylum inmates, prisoners, queers, plain crackpots, and fallen women were definitely out. Yes sir, we'd cater only to pure and respectable alcoholics! Any others would surely destroy us. Besides, if we took in those odd ones, what would decent people say about us? We built a fine- mesh fence right around A.A.
“ Maybe this sounds comical now. Maybe you think we oldtimers were pretty intolerant. But I can tell you there was nothing funny about the situation then. We were grim because we felt our lives and homes were threatened, and that was no laughing matter. Intolerant, you say? Well, we were frightened. Naturally, we began to act like most everybody does when afraid. After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance? Yes, we were intolerant.”
How could we then guess that all those fears were to prove groundless? How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening people were to make astonishing recoveries and become our greatest workers and intimate friends? Was it credible that A.A. was to have a divorce rate far lower than average? Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to become our principal teachers of patience and tolerance? Could any then imagine a society which would include every conceivable kind of character, and cut across every barrier of race, creed, politics, and language with ease?
Nowadays, when old timers who know Ed foregather, they exclaim, “ What if we had actually succeeded in throwing Ed out for blasphemy? What would have happened to him and all the others he later helped?”
So the hand of Providence early gave us a sign that any alcoholic is a member of our Society when he says so.