Tradition 9 · September 28

Should We Ever Harden

Daily Traditions · September 28

The threat today

The strangest danger to the Traditions is people who love them. Bill saw it coming in 1955 and wrote the warning himself (A.A. pamphlet P-17): "Should we ever harden too much, the letter might crush that spirit. We could victimize ourselves by petty rules and prohibitions; we could imagine that we had said the last word." That is a description of the Traditions being used as a rulebook — quoted at people, cited to end conversations, deployed to make somebody sit down. The word to hold is victimize. Not that we might get strict — that we might do to ourselves the exact thing these principles were written to prevent, using the principles to do it. And A.A. had the standing to say so, because it had already lived through the alternative. Page xix of the Big Book is blunt about how bad it got: "Soon A.A. was beset by these very problems on every side and in every group." Beset. Every group. And the answer was not a code of law. That's what makes the warning credible — it comes from people who had every excuse to legislate and didn't.

Sit with

Bill's warning was that A.A. might one day do to itself, using the Traditions, the exact thing the Traditions were written to prevent. Have I ever used something true to shut a person up?

Grounded in: P-17 (1955 foreword); Big Book p. xix (Foreword to the Second Edition).

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 27Safe, Even From Me Tradition 9All of September September 29 →Judges of Other People's Morals

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).