What a CONCEPT: AA and Public Controversy

Rebellion Dogs Radio

Alcoholics Anonymous starts the year—January 1, 2022—in self-inflicted public controversy:

"The way our ‘worthy’ alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the ‘less worthy’ is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!" Bill W.

In the UK, AA’s General Service Office retaliation against it’s own group has created click-bait for media outlets. The Daily Mail and other news outlets are reporting that an AA “group is under threat after being censured for reciting the Lord’s Prayer,” and members of the group were “told by leaders it had become too Christian-focused and has been removed from the organization’s online directory.”

In January 2022’s podcast we look at a history of AA’s promise of love and tolerance and the habitual hiccup of AA bleeding deacons pulling the fire-alarm and turning on nonconforming or specialty group, a seasonal reoccurring turn from unity to tryanny. Joni Mitchell’s song, “Circle Game,” comes to mind:

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We are captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind from whence we came
We go round and round and round in the circle game

We do not devote an hour to fault-finding or laying blame. That would be more circle games, we think. We see a learning opportunity. Taking our own inventory, how does our intention of "love and tolerance of others is our code," blow-up into periodic bouts of dis-unity. Can AA live up to its own principles or is it impossible to transcend a human tendency towards tribal conflict? This is important to talk about it. So let's do that. We offer a historical review of policy and some of the patterns that turn AAs against each other.
For show notes links and a transcript visit Rebellion Dogs Radio Episode 67