Volunteers Only

Tradition 8 is one sentence with a hinge in the middle: "Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers." Now imagine a group that keeps the first half and throws the second away. Nobody gets paid for anything, ever. No paid secretary, no paid caretaker. Purity, at last — and for about six months it is beautiful. Then the phone at the central office starts ringing at hours when the volunteer is at work. The literature order sits in a box. The meeting list goes stale, and a man who has finally decided to try drives across town to a church basement that has been dark for a year, sits in the parking lot, and drives home. P-43 puts the arithmetic plainly: there is "too great a volume of work to be done in spare hours here and there, and only the rich or the retired could afford to work full-time as volunteers." A.A. pays for the office, and will never pay to carry the message. The office answers phones and keeps the doors findable — driving across town at 4 a.m. to meet a stranger in need is how we stay sober ourselves, the way we always have.