Freely

A.A. Comes of Age reaches for an old line because nothing newer says it as well: "Freely you have received, freely give." Every sober member is holding something he did not pay for — hours somebody spent on him, a night somebody sat with him, a message carried across town for nothing. He cannot pay it back; the people who helped him do not take payment. So the debt can only move one direction: forward, to the next man, in the same condition it arrived. Free. That is the whole economy of A.A. — one rule, moving one way, for ninety years. Break it once — charge one drunk, one time, anywhere in the chain — and every link downstream starts life owing money instead of owing help. The Tradition keeps the chain clean. What came free goes free, or it stops being the thing that came.