When I was new in AA, I was disruptive and difficult. I believed that, because of particular events in my childhood, my mental health problems, and my almost constant and extreme distress, the rules that applied to everyone else did not apply to me. It was the job of AA, I thought, to give me special attention, and to mould around my wants and needs. To its great credit, and to the great credit of individual AA members, I was not treated differently than anyone else—and no less was required of me than of anyone else. I did not have a free pass to behave and to treat others as I wished without consequence. The minimum standards of behaviour required to maintain a tranquil and effective recovery space applied to me as much as to anyone else.
To be a member of AA, the only requirement was and is a desire to stop drinking. But to attend meetings, I had to be willing to pipe down and play ball: to respect the group conscience of the meeting. When I was disruptive of the meeting or the general atmosphere of geniality, I was quietly taken aside, pulled up, and set straight. Rightly so! To get the full benefit of relationships with others in AA, I had to learn how to be cordial: to be polite, to raise my hand, to take my turn, to stop when my time was up, to treat others with courtesy and respect, and to refrain from attack, defence, counter-attack, trouble-making, and general unpleasantness. Tradition One's Unity came first, and it was in my best interests to contribute to maintaining that unity.
I should note that I am by no means perfect today: every defect I came to AA with is still available, and all these defects make occasional appearances. The difference today is that their manifestation is rarer, less marked, and sooner rectified.
Unwelcome as this correction was, it was the healthiest thing that had ever happened to me. A spiritual awakening in the form of a rude awakening. I had become expert at securing special treatment through a combination of theatricality, guilt-tripping, threat, hectoring, and outright bullying. AA taught me that, if I wanted to get the benefit, I would have to join the group, and cast off my mantle of being special and different.
I once told Maureen I could not do inventory because I could express myself adequately only through the medium of poetry. She told me in colourful terms that I was a common-or-garden alcoholic and that the solution that had worked for many others would work for me too. And so it did.