Selling Newcomers Short

I don’t remember who it was, it may have been Matt M. He told me that the folks who had been here before us, who had put their blood, sweat, and tears into the collective experience of Alcoholics Anonymous, would someday move on and leave something to us – a legacy.

We were to be entrusted with this legacy in order that Alcoholics Anonymous continue to be available for all who suffer from alcoholism, for all who wish to recover, for all who, by God’s grace, were going to walk into our rooms.

That legacy was for us to pass this “thing” on the way we received it. Not to dilute it nor to change it where it didn’t need changing, to change it where it did need changing to improve it.

Many of us have received it differently from our sponsors and the elder statesmen but you and I know with certainty that the message of Alcoholics Anonymous has not changed. There is life after alcohol, there is hope. Life gets better sober.

Why then do we do things like selling newcomers short?

I know we all love to hear ourselves talk. Yet, to have the largest percentage of our meetings be discussion meetings that face the constant challenge of a topic? What has happened to simple speaker meetings? Where have the exchange meetings disappeared to? Why aren’t local groups in contact with each other to share speaking commitments?

Why does it seem that anniversary meetings are our speaker meetings? The newcomer isn’t being asked to speak at an anniversary meeting (perhaps rightfully so). However, since it was suggested to me that I speak before my first sober anniversary in order to relive my story and help another alcoholic, it is apparent that our newcomers aren’t getting the opportunity to do this for a variety of reasons.

One of those reasons is that today’s speakers need to have a “great” story! Lame. Yeah, I said – lame. Labeling an alcoholics’ story “great” is lame. Because every speakers’ story is “great!” No speakers’ story is “great.” Because we want folks to show up at our anniversary meeting so we promote this months’ speaker as having a great story! We are way too wrapped up in ourselves and then we wonder why folks are getting drunk.

Or – you have to be a member of the “good ole boys club.” Early on I discovered that cliques were disliked yet people in cliques stayed sober together. We’ve taken it, like so much else we do, to the extreme. Promoting fellow members to convention committees as having great stories, being wonderful speakers, someone you’ve simply got to hear! And only a small group of individuals wind up speaking while the newcomer who hasn’t spoken languishes in obscurity, never getting a chance to follow through on an old and wise suggestion.

Yet we’ll swear we’re fulfilling the Primary Purpose.

This is not an improvement. This is not fulfilling our legacy!