Supporting Sobriety with all 3 AA Legacies

The reason why our triangle isn’t isosceles, acute, scalene or obtuse!

Our beloved Big Book doesn’t really mention the Traditions or Concepts between the Doctor’s opinion and the end of A Vision for You. That’s because, at the time of its publication they hadn’t been invented yet! That’s an issue because by the end of his life and recovery, Bill W was making quite the strong case that actively practicing all 3 AA legacies protects sobriety way more than recovery on its own.

That’s what this article seeks to explore; how we as members can protect our sobriety via recovery, unity and general service. 

As I say, this is where Bill W’s thinking seemed to have travelled by his life’s end. Take, for example, this strongly-worded sentence from 1962 – 

‘The life of each individual and of each group is built around the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. We very well know that the penalty for extensive disobedience to these principles is death for the individual and dissolution for the group’

Back in ’39, the Big Book suggested we only needed God and recovery to stay sober. By the early 60’s, we apparently needed the Traditions as well. Cut to even later, in fact the very last thing Bill W wrote for consideration by the fellowship. In his parting message, what do you think he chose to focus on? The value of God consciousness, meetings, or groups? No. It was anonymity, and its direct link to continuous sobriety!

‘As long as we accept our sobriety in our traditional spirit of anonymity, we will continue to receive God’s Grace.’

Could there be a clearer link between the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions and not picking up a drink?

 Quotes like these have got me asking some pretty fundamental questions. 

• If the Big Book reflects where AA started regarding staying sober – it being our first publication – what new suggestions followed later that directly relate to achieving our Primary Purpose? 
• Why is our Legacy Triangle equilateral? Is it to look well-designed on letterheads and sobriety chips, or is it suggesting that an equal focus on all three legacies will protect us from picking up the next drink? 
• How directly does AA literature make connections between staying sober and the Traditions and Concepts, and are some of us less familiar with these passages because they came after the Big Book? 

Anecdotally, I have gone back through the members I have known who have busted after completing the steps alone – i.e. members who are yet to go deep on the Traditions and Concepts. Tragically, the list is long. I then tried to make another list; of members I’ve known who have busted whilst enjoying a 3-legacy recovery. There was only one problem. None came to mind.

Now OK, that’s just one member’s experience and even though it’s mine, I still question its veracity. I encourage you to make your own, if only to see if Bill W had a valid point or not in his later writings. Here is a great example. It’s a Grapevine article from 1955 – ‘Why Alcoholics Anonymous is Anonymous’. Even though the title suggests it’s about anonymity, thus Tradition’s 11 and 12, what Bill writes seems more like the Step 3 section of the Big Book – i.e. recovery:

‘Nearly all those engaged in this fierce competition declare that their aim is peace and justice for themselves, their neighbors and their nations. Give us power and we shall have justice; give us fame and we shall set a great example; give us money and we shall be comfortable and happy. People throughout the world deeply believe that, and act accordingly. On this appalling dry bender, society seems to be staggering down a dead-end road. The stop sign is clearly marked. It says “Disaster.

What has this got to do with anonymity, and Alcoholics Anonymous?

We of AA ought to know. Nearly everyone of us has traversed this identical dead-end path. Powered by alcohol and self-justification, many of us have pursued the phantoms of self-importance and money right up to the disaster stop sign. Then came AA. We faced about and found ourselves on a new high road where the direction signs said never a word about power, fame or wealth. The new signs read, “This way to sanity and serenity–the price is self-sacrifice.

Our new book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, states that ‘Anonymity is the greatest protection our Society can ever have.’ It says also that ‘The spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice.’

Let’s turn to AA’s twenty years of experience and see how we arrived at that belief, now expressed in our Traditions Eleven and Twelve. At the beginning we sacrificed alcohol. We had to, or it would have killed us. But we couldn’t get rid of alcohol unless we made other sacrifices. Big shot-ism and phony thinking had to go. We had to toss self-justification, self-pity, and anger right out the window. We had to quit the crazy contest for personal prestige and big bank balances. We had to take personal responsibility for our sorry state and quit blaming others for it.

Were these sacrifices? Yes, they were. To gain enough humility and self-respect to stay alive at all we had to give up what had really been our dearest possession–our ambitions and our illegitimate pride.

Viewed in this light, A.A.’s Twelve Traditions are little else than a list of sacrifices which the experience of twenty years has taught us that we must make, individually and collectively…

We have denied ourselves personal government, professionalism and the right to say who our members shall be. We have abandoned do-good ism, reform and paternalism. We refuse charitable money and prefer to pay our own way. We will cooperate with practically everybody, yet we decline to marry our Society to anyone: We abstain from public controversy and will not quarrel among ourselves about those things that so rip society asunder-religion, politics and reform. We have but one purpose: to carry the A.A. message to the sick alcoholic who wants it.

OK, first things first. Those first two large paragraphs are a great description of my character defects. They could literally go straight in the Big Book at Step 3 alongside the actor trying to run the show! 

But then comes the universal linking device; the device Bill uses across all 3 legacies again and again.

Sacrifice, or as some call it, ‘handing it over’. The idea of linking recovery to unity via the theme and act of sacrifice is hard to walk away from. Why? For me it’s because I did the steps! I experienced first-hand the sacrifice that they took. The sacrifice of old ideas for new; for old reactions for spiritual one;, the lack of a higher power for a life completely devoted to one. 

But then for Bill W to describe the Traditions as ‘…little else than a list of sacrifices which the experience of twenty years has taught us that we must make, individually and collectively’, is aconfronting statement that literally screams “Recovery is not enough!

Recovery is not enough!

That one sentence was all it took to convince me that, to provide my sobriety with the strongest protection possible, I need to smash the traditions just as I had smashed the steps! The strength of Bill’s words convinces me, every time I read them, that recovery is simply not enough. I need more God than they alone can give me. 

In other words, if God lurks within all three AA’s legacies, members have the opportunity to discover more of him/her/it through practicing them equally. 

Oh, and of course AA benefits as a result as well!

DR Albury NSW