Tradition 10 · October 8

The Account Has No Face

Daily Traditions · October 8

The threat today

A meeting starts a page so people can find the schedule when the hall changes its locks. Good idea, real problem, solved. Then something happens in the news that touches drinking, and whoever holds the password posts about it — and the post carries the group's name, because every post from that account does. The Tradition's operative phrase (Big Book, p. 565) is not about intention. It is "in such a way as to implicate A.A.," and a group account implicates by design; that is what it was built to do. There is no version of that post which reads as one member's view. The account has no face. Bill W. described the mechanism decades before the technology existed (A.A. pamphlet P-17): "it was in the power of an A.A. to marry Alcoholics Anonymous to practically any enterprise or controversy at all, good or bad." He was writing about a man breaking his anonymity in a newspaper, which at least took nerve. The modern version needs no anonymity break at all. It needs a login, thirty seconds, and a sincere opinion about something that genuinely matters.

Sit with

A group account cannot post as one member, because it has no face — every word it sends belongs to the group. What do I say from a position where people cannot hear it as only mine?

Grounded in: Long form, Tradition 10; P-17, p. 53.

Tradition 10

"Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy."

Read the Long Form (pp. 563–566). The short form on pp. 561–562 is the one everybody quotes — but the Long Form is where the Traditions actually say what they mean. Tradition 3's "no other affiliation" clause, for instance, exists only in the Long Form. That single clause is why no treatment centre can own an A.A. group. Most of what circulates online skips it.

And a distinction worth keeping straight: the Traditions are governance, not theology. They bind A.A. groups and the Fellowship — not individuals, and not outside businesses. They were adopted in 1950 to keep A.A. from being owned or co-opted. They are not a rulebook for your personal life.

What the Traditions actually say → The Long Form, p. 563 → Search the Big Book → Every day this month →

Ask Recovery Einstein about Tradition 10 → Get the app →

← October 7Fifty Per Cent Tradition 10All of October October 9 →Read From the Front

Daily Traditions is an independent educational resource from Recovery Starts — not official A.A. literature, not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, and not medical advice. The Twelve Traditions are the property of A.A. Page references are to Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), 4th Edition: short form 561–562, long form 563–566. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).