Lots of things are part of my story
that are not relevant to carrying the message of AA to alcoholics. The question
is: what is my purpose in sharing about other addictions?
The Big Book had it right. Keep the focus on the alcohol.
Mention drugs. But do not get distracted. I mention Al-Anon matters in AA
occasionally, but I do not keep it the focus even of any one share (except when
we're on the chapters To Wives or The Family Afterward in the Big Book).
There is nothing to stop people going to more than one
fellowship; in fact, many people do.
Many sponsees of mine also go to OA or Al-Anon. No one
really wants to bring either of those topic areas into AA, and both of those
fellowships stick very closely to their primary purposes too.
Whichever fellowship you are in for that hour, stick to its
subject area. If you particularly want to talk about a particular substance or
using pattern more appropriate to another fellowship, go to that fellowship
that day. If you are having a particular obsession with crystal meth, and you
go to an AA meeting that day rather than CMA, CA, or NA, why did you make that
decision? That is the real question.
At a broader level, if you consistently want to talk about
your using and you did not drunk so much, why did you pick AA as your primary
fellowship? Why not pick a fellowship more obviously suited to your problem?
Sometimes the argument is made that the recovery is better
in AA. Well, fine; that may be true in some areas. However, many OAs visit AA
for that reason but then take what they have learned and start up strong OA
meetings. I have sponsored OAs in this way, who have set up the first strong,
Big Book-focused meetings in their respective home areas. But they don't share
in AA meetings except in relation to their alcoholism.
There is no natural entitlement to public confession in AA on
all matters that come to mind. AA has a specific purpose, to recover from and
help others recover from alcohol. Treating the room as an alternative to
therapy with the room acting as the therapist while you say whatever is on your
mind is not what AA is about.
Since my last drink, I have never treated AA as a place that
I can hijack for my own purposes (e.g. to gain the questionable therapeutic
benefit of talking about problems publicly); I treat it as a place where I am
invited to fulfil a particular role: to share about how I have used the twelve-step
programme to recover from alcoholism.
There is nothing to stop someone in AA who wants to talk
about their using from asking one of the millions of members of AA if they
could sit down for a coffee and talk. At such talks, anything goes. You may
talk all day, all week about anything. Complete freedom!
The question, therefore, is not whether one 'may' talk about
drugs in passing (which one obviously may, in the spirit of the Big Book—although
some hardliners disagree). The question is really where the sense of
entitlement to talk primarily, consistently, or continually, or at length about
drugs—as opposed to alcohol, drinking, alcoholism, or recovery from alcoholism
using the Twelve Steps—is coming from. That is about putting one's own needs or
desires first, ahead of group and fellowship welfare. Recovery is supposed to
be about putting the group and the fellowship first, with personal recovery
taking a close but second place. The question is not what is best for you but
what is best for the group and the fellowship as a whole.
The drugs-in-AA issue is therefore a Tradition One issue,
not a Tradition Five issue, which is why the discussion gets side-tracked and lost
down a dead-end.
The most compelling reason why drug talk—or Al-Anon talk, or
OA talk—should not become the focus in AA:
In parts of the country where most people in recovery are
basically druggy, but the meetings are mostly AA, there is nowhere for
alcoholics to go to get identification. I've been to meetings in New York where
no one mentions alcohol. Fine, talk about drugs, but if that takes over, a new
fellowship would need to be founded for alcoholics to talk about alcohol. It could
be called Alcoholics Anonymous.