“We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.
The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism.” (Page 17, Big Book)
A number of years ago, I knew someone who had the following policy:
- Always go to your home group unless you’re out of town or too ill to get out of bed
- Always go to fellowship and have dinner with everyone else.
He understood what it means to join AA. It means joining a home group and committing. Not committing unless something else happens, unless it’s a special occasion of some sort, unless it’s your birthday, unless work is playing up, unless you’re tired, unless you’re bored, unless you’ve done a lot of AA that week or day already, unless it’s a bit of a rush to get there, unless it’s inconvenient, unless it’s a friend’s birthday or other party, unless the buses are up the swanny, unless there’s a particular show you want to see, unless someone’s got tickets for the theatre, unless you’ve got the hump with the group or someone at it, unless you need an early night, unless you’ve had a hard week, or unless you simply don’t feel like it.
He also understood what fellowship means. Fellowship is not friendship. It’s being together with everyone at coffee or dinner after the meeting not because they are your friends but because you’re all in it together. You enter the café or restaurant and sit with who is there. No hesitation. No calculation. No scanning for optimum positioning. Dive in. Leave no one out. Exclude no one. Shun no one. Not the mad, not the old, not the dull, not the ill—because there’s going to be a time when we’re mad, old, dull, or ill, as well, and no one will want to sit next to us. Hold the hand out to everyone, because we’re going to need the hand held back out to us, one day. Length of sobriety has nothing to do with it. Fellowship is friendly and courteous, and one takes an interest in everyone at the table, but it’s not selective or even personal. That’s the principle, the ideal, and, even if one makes mistakes, that’s what one’s growing towards. As soon as one realises the error: correct it.
At a particular group, everyone went to fellowship together. Then a couple of people decided they didn’t like the restaurant (it was greasy, or the service was slow, or it just wasn’t Up To Scratch, even though it could accommodate everyone in the group, which is a rarity, and was cheap), so they broke off to go off with their fancy friends somewhere else. Someone else did the same with their gang (that’s what a clique is—the clique is not the people at the group, it’s the breakaway gang), and he was left on his own with just one other person at the original fellowship venue the group had used for years. The two of them held out. Eventually the other cliques fell apart (they always do, because they’re based on selection and exclusion), and fellowship reverted to the common venue, where everyone was invited and everyone was welcome.
Sometimes, people would show up an hour or more after fellowship started, having crossed the whole of the city to get there, knowing that there would be alcoholics to talk to, because there always were. It was famous in AA.
Why is this so important? In AA, we do not leave anyone behind. We look after the visitors, the newcomers, the stragglers, and the people we would not be friends with ordinarily. There must be no more of a requirement for fellowship than for membership of AA: turning up with plaintive eyes and a desire to stop drinking.
“… here was haven at last.” (Page 160, Big Book)
“But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experience the conviction grew that A.A.’s had to hang together or die separately.” (Foreword to the Second edition, Big Book)
We provide haven for others, and that provision of haven is what provides us with haven.
AA’s not a social club. It’s not a friendship circle. It’s almost the opposite: friendship selects and excludes; fellowship is undiscriminating and includes. Friendship is cunning. Fellowship is too dumb to be cunning. It just grins.
Some indicators reveal whether one has joined a home group and therefore joined AA.
Firstly, if one’s group has a system for arranging cover, does one arrange cover for any reason other than being out of town or too ill to get out of bed? There might be an occasional emergency (I once had to take my elderly mother to Accident and Emergency), but emergencies are vanishingly rare.
Secondly, does one always go to fellowship with the group or does one sometimes abandon fellowship because something more fun or interesting is on offer?
The occasional ‘slip’ is extremely revealing, because it reveals an underlying attitude.
I stopped slipping on alcohol when I stopped slipping on home group and fellowship.
I was told: If you skip your home group once, or skip fellowship once, you’re holding the get-out-of-jail-free card in your back pocket the whole time. Attendance is then conditional. Conditional on nothing better showing up. Attendance is always second best to the opportunity that did not show up. When that is my attitude (which it has been), I’m not even fully there. Every single time it comes to going to the meeting or fellowship, I am asking, ‘is there anything better on offer?’ There’s always one eye on the door. One eye on the door means one eye on drinking. I’m not happy simply being right here, right now. I’m looking for a thrill. Waiting for it. Holding out for it. Boy whistling in the dark (see Chapter Eleven).
In such a condition, I have not joined AA. I am still of the world and am visiting AA—for now.
I’ve been taught: If it’s home group night, and I’m asked to do anything that would interfere with the meeting or fellowship, I go. If I’m asked to speak at another group, the answer is no, because I’m already tied up. The same if it’s someone’s birthday. The same if it’s some other celebration. New Year’s Eve. Hallowe’en. Anything.
No group, no fellowship, no AA.
AA is not a place: it IS a fellowship. No fellowship, no AA.