Tradition 9 · September 19

The Expanded Program

Daily Traditions · September 19

How a group breaks it

A group notices that people keep getting sober and then losing their footing for want of work. So it starts helping. Somebody keeps a list of employers. Somebody else offers to look over a résumé. Within a year the group has an unofficial employment service, and it is genuinely helping people, and the numbers are real. The record has this exact case — a group that offered an "expanded A.A. program" including finding newcomers jobs — and the finding is precise about what breaks (A.A. pamphlet P-43). "But when the group turns itself into an employment agency, newcomers may get confused about their primary purpose." Confused about their purpose. Not the group's. The man who came in to stop drinking now hears that this room is also about employment, and he starts sorting out which parts apply to him. The harm isn't that helping with jobs is wrong. It's that a room can only be unmistakably about one thing, and the moment it's about two, the newest person has to guess which one he came for.

Sit with

Helping newcomers find work was genuinely good, and it left the newest man guessing which of two things the room was for. What have I added to something good until the point of it got hard to find?

Grounded in: P-43 (the employment agency).

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 →

← September 18Still Around Tradition 9All of September September 20 →We'll Supply the Organization

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).