WHO
WE ARE
Alcoholics
Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their
experience, strength and hope with each other that they may
solve their common problem and help others to recover from
alcoholism.
The
only requirement for membership is a desire to stop
drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We
are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not
allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization
or institution, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our
primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other
alcoholics achieve sobriety.
The
Preamble, from
The Grapevine,
reprinted with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.
We
in A.A. are men and women who have discovered, and admitted,
that we cannot control alcohol. We have learned that we must
live without it if we are to avoid disaster for ourselves
and those close to us. With local groups in
thousands of communities, we are part of an informal
international fellowship, which now has members in 146
countries. We have but one primary purpose: to stay sober
ourselves and to help others who may turn to us for help in
achieving sobriety.
We
are not reformers, and we are not allied with any group,
cause, or religious denomination. We have no wish to dry up
the world. We do not recruit new members, but do
welcome them. We do not impose our experience with problem
drinking on others, but we do share it when we are asked to
do so.
Within
our membership may be found men and women of all ages and
many different social, economic, and cultural backgrounds.
Some of us drank for many years before coming to the
realization we could not handle alcohol. Others were
fortunate enough to appreciate, early in life or in their
drinking careers, that alcohol had become unmanageable.
The
consequences of our alcoholic drinking have also varied. A
few of us had become derelicts before turning to A.A. for
help. Some had lost family, possessions, and self-respect.
We had been on skid row in many cities. Some of us had been
hospitalized or jailed times without number. We had
committed grave offenses - against society, our families,
our employers, and ourselves.
Others
among us have never been jailed or hospitalized. Nor had we
lost jobs or families through drinking. But we finally came
to a point where we realized that alcohol was interfering
with normal living. When we discovered that we could not
live without alcohol, we, too, sought help through A.A.
All
the great faiths are represented in our Fellowship, and many
religious leaders have encouraged our growth. There are even
a few self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics among us.
Belief in, or adherence to, a formal creed is not a
condition of membership.
We
are united by our common problem, alcohol. Meeting and
talking and helping other alcoholics together, we are
somehow able to stay sober and to lose the compulsion to
drink, once a dominant force in our lives.
We
do not think we are the only people who have the answer to
problem drinking. We know that the A.A. program works for
us, and we have seen it work for every newcomer, almost
without exception, who honestly and sincerely wanted to quit
drinking.
Through
A.A., we have learned a number of things about alcoholism
and about ourselves. We try to keep these facts fresh in our
thinking at all times, because they seem to be the key to
our sobriety. For us, sobriety must always come first.
(Reprinted
from This
is A.A.
p. 7,8, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.)
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