The Bio Line

Three weeks in, you will meet them online if you have not already: the recovery coach, the sober companion, the mentor with a monthly rate — and, set quietly in the bio like a licence, the years in the rooms. The membership is the marketing, because it works: a frightened family choosing where to send money will choose the one who has been where their son is. A.A. saw this exact sale coming and used its flattest language on it. Bill W. wrote (A.A. pamphlet P-17): "no one ought to advertise himself as an A.A. therapist. As we are strictly amateur there can be no such thing." Not should not — cannot. A.A. licenses nobody and certifies nobody, so an A.A. credential offered for sale is a thing that does not exist, being sold anyway. And what is actually on the price tag is not the coach's skill, which may be real. Bill named it while imagining his own shingle: "And I would surely be trading on the name of Alcoholics Anonymous, a purely amateur organization, to enlarge my professional practice." The name was built over ninety years by people who were paid nothing to build it. Selfishness cloaked as spiritual enlightenment may benefit those doing it, but A.A. pays the price.