5th month - 5th Tradition

[kremjk]

Our A.A. experience has taught us that:

5.) Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.  (short form, pg.562 4th ed.)

5.) Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose-that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.  (long form, pg. 563 4th Ed.)

© Copyright 2007 Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
All Right Reserved

[kremjk]

The 'still suffering' alcoholic may be sober and in AA, but suffering from health or emotional issues also. I was directed to seek help for my 'other problems' from the doctors and counselors in my community. The AA members offered me help with alcoholism and did not try to play doctor. They pointed to this passage in the Big Book:

Now about health: A body badly burned by alcohol does not often recover overnight nor do twisted thinking and depression vanish in a twinkling. We are convinced that a spiritual mode of living is a most powerful health restorative. We, who have recovered from serious drinking, are miracles of mental health. But we have seen remarkable transformations in our bodies. Hardly one of our crowd now shows any mark of dissipation.

But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures. God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.

page 133 Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Ed.

? Copyright 2007 Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
All Right Reserved

[angussdundee]

Thank you for your post Jim and for sharing your experience regarding doctors etc.
It was a lady doctor who pointed me towards Alcoholics Anonymous and I believe she saved my life, although I didn't think much of her diagnosis at the time.
I found out later from her, that she had spent her first years out of medical school practicing as a young enthusiastic doctor in a multi-cultural inner city area. She had tried every form of medication with alcoholics and addicts but they just kept turning up again and again after periods of brief sobriety. Then she tried the AA way, instead of the Frank Sinatra (I'll do it my way) way, as she puts it. Instead of prescribing the latest 'wonder drugs' she started referring her obvious alcoholic patients to AA instead. The ones that did respond to regular AA attendance were miracles before her very eyes. Often she would hardly recognise her patients when they entered her surgery after only a month or two of regular attendance to AA and by not drinking a day at a time.
She was then in a position to offer her willing patients the counciling and drug free treatment that has helped hundred of them (myself included) to lead sane and sober lives.

God help the doctors, and God help us all.

Anguss.

[samf]

Thank you guys!

I have had to have outside help, too. I try to remember for me that we are not doctors, too.

When I read this tradition, I always think of this one person who used to remind me that old timers can still be the alcoholic who suffers, as well.

sam