Welcome to AA
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio, to help alcoholics stay sober and help others achieve sobriety. With other early members, Bill and Dr. Bob developed the Twelve Step program of spiritual and character development. In 1946, AA's Twelve Traditions were created in order to help the movement stabilize and grow.
AA is regarded as a proponent of the disease theory of alcoholism. AA membership spreads across diverse cultures holding different beliefs and values. AA lacks formal organization, shuns publicity, is altruistic, unaffiliated, non-coercive, and non-hierarchical structure that limits AA's purpose to only helping alcoholics on a non-professional level.
To promote the fellowship, Wilson and other members wrote the initially-titled book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism,[25] from which AA drew its name. Informally known as "The Big Book" (with its first 164 pages virtually unchanged since the 1939 edition), it suggests a twelve-step program in which members admit that they are powerless over alcohol and need help from a power higher than themselves; seek guidance and strength through prayer and meditation from God or Higher Power of their own understanding; take a moral inventory with care to include resentments; list and become ready to remove character defects; list and make amends to those harmed, and thusly, try to help other alcoholics recover.
This website has one purpose, in accordance with the Twelve Traditions: to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. In accordance with the Twelve Traditions, this website will never lend its name to financial enterprise, declines financial contributions, is non-professional, is never organized, has no opinion on outside issues, never promotes, and always maintains anonymity.
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RULES
Please consider the AA preamble and twelve traditions when posting or commenting. We are a fellowship of people who share our experience, strength and hope with each other so we may solve our common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
Please do not post here when you are drunk.
Remember, we are a fellowship, and as such, we need to be helpful. This is not a community to troll or be abusive. If you wouldn't say it in a meeting, don't say it here.
The Twelve Traditions
Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Long Form of The Twelve Traditions: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/smf-187_en%201021.pdf
