April 27

April 27 – AM          Page 70-71, How It Works, Chapter 5

If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot.  We have listed and analyzed our resentments.  We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality.  We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness.  We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.  We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.
In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves.  We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.  If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.  That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.

April 27 – PM          Page xix, Foreward To Second Edition (1955)

As we discovered the principles by which the individual alcoholic could live, so we had to evolve principles by which the A.A. groups and A.A. as a whole could survive and function effectively.  It was thought that no alcoholic man or woman could be excluded from our Society; that our leaders might serve but never govern; that each group was to be autonomous and there was to be no professional class of therapy.  There were to be no fees or dues; our expenses were to be met by our own voluntary contributions.  There was to be the least possible organization, even in our service centers.  Our public relations were to be based upon attraction rather than promotion.  It was decided that all members ought to be anonymous at the level of press, radio, TV and films.  And in no circumstances should we give endorsements, make alliances, or enter public controversies.
This was the substance of A.A.’s Twelve Traditions, which are stated in full on page 564 of this book.  Though none of these principles had the force of rules or laws, they had become so widely accepted by 1950 that they were confirmed by our first International Conference held at Cleveland.  Today the remarkable unity of A.A. is one of the greatest assets that our Society has.