Tradition 9 · September 13

Equipped to Set Up a Center

Daily Traditions · September 13

The threat today

A group looks around its town and sees that nobody is telling the truth about alcoholism — so it decides to. One group in the record (A.A. pamphlet P-43) went the whole distance and "built an all-purpose center, including a section for drying-out treatment." Follow what that group now has to decide. Cost. Architecture. Staff. Fees. Medication. Rules about who can be admitted and who can be removed. As the record puts it, "Arguments over cost, architecture, staff, fees, medication, and rules might even make the local paper." Every one of those is a governance question, and a group that started as people in chairs is now an institution with a payroll and a liability problem. The impulse is generous every time. It's always a group that cares, seeing a real gap, with real capacity to fill it. Tradition 9 doesn't say the gap isn't real. It says the moment a group takes on the machinery to fill it, the group stops being a group — and the meeting that was there for the next person quietly becomes the least urgent thing on the agenda.

Sit with

The group meant well and ended up with a building, a payroll and a liability problem — and the meeting became the least urgent thing on its own agenda. What did I take on because it needed doing, that has since crowded out what I was actually there for?

Grounded in: P-43 (the all-purpose center).

Tradition 9

"A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve."

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 9 → Get the app →

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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).