Tradition Three

[bluidkiti]

AA Tradition Three

"The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking."


This Tradition is packed with meaning. For A.A. is really saying to every serious drinker, "You are an A.A. member if you say so. You can declare yourself in; nobody can keep you out. No matter who you are, no matter how low you've gone, no matter how grave your emotional complications - even your crimes - we still can't deny you A.A. We don't want to keep you out. We aren't a bit afraid you'll harm us, never mind how twisted or violent you may be. We just want to be sure that you get the same great chance for sobriety that we've had. So you're an A.A. member the minute you declare yourself."

To establish this principle of membership took years of harrowing experience. In our early time, nothing seemed so fragile, so easily breakable as an A.A. group. Hardly an alcoholic we approached paid any attention; most of those who did join us were like flickering candles in a windstorm. Time after time, their uncertain flames blew out and couldn't be relighted. Our unspoken, constant thought was "Which of us may be the next?"

A member gives us a vivid glimpse of those days. "At one time," he says, "every A.A. group had many membership rules. Everybody was scared witless that something or somebody would capsize the boat and dump us all back into the drink. Our Foundation office* asked each group to send in its list of `protective' regulations. The total list was a mile long. If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could have possibly joined A.A. at all, so great was the sum of our anxiety and fear.

"We were resolved to admit nobody to A.A. but that hypothetical class of people we termed `pure alcoholics.' Except for their guzzling, and the unfortunate results thereof, they could have no other complications. so beggars, tramps, asylum inmates, prisoners, queers, plain crackpots, and fallen women were definitely out. Yes sir, we'd cater only to pure and respectable alcoholics! Any others would surely destroy us. Besides, if we took in those odd ones, what would decent people say about us? We built a fine-mesh fence right around A.A. "Maybe this sounds comical now. Maybe you think we oldtimers were pretty intolerant. But I can tell you there was nothing funny about the situation then. We were grim because we felt our lives and homes were threatened, and that was no laughing matter. Intolerant, you say? Well, we were frightened. Naturally, we began to act like most everybody does when afraid. After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance? Yes, we were intolerant."

How could we then guess that all those fears were to prove groundless? How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening people were to make astonishing recoveries and become our greatest workers and intimate friends? Was it credible that A.A. was to have a divorce rate far lower than average? Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to become our principle teachers of patience and tolerance? Could any then imagine a society which would include every conceivable kind of character, and cut across every barrier of race, creed, politics, and language with ease?

Why did A.A. finally drop all its membership regulations? Why did we leave it to each newcomer to decide himself whether he was an alcoholic and whether he should join us? Why did we dare say, contrary to the experience of society and government everywhere, that we would neither punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, believe anything, or conform to anything?

The answer, now seen in Tradition Three, was simplicity itself. At last experience taught us that to take away any alcoholic's full chance was sometimes to pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his own sick brother?

As group after group saw these possibilities, they finally abandoned all membership regulations. One dramatic experience after another clinched this determination until it became our universal tradition. Here are two examples:

On the A.A. calendar it was Year Two. In that time nothing could be seen but two struggling, nameless groups of alcoholics trying to hold their faces up to the light.

A newcomer appeared at one of these groups, knocked on the door and asked to be let in. He talked frankly with that group's oldest member. He soon proved that his was a desperate case, and that above all he wanted to get well. "But," he asked, "will you let me join your group? Since I am the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized than alcoholism, you may not want me among you. Or will you?"

There was the dilemma. What should the group do? The oldest member summoned two others, and in confidence laid the explosive facts in their laps. Said he, "Well, what about it? If we turn this man away, he'll soon die. If we allow him in, only god knows what trouble he'll brew. What shall the answer be - yes or no?"

At first the elders could look only at the objections. "We deal," they said, "with alcoholics only. So went the discussion while the newcomers fate hung in the balance. Then one of the three spoke in a very different voice. "What we are really afraid of," he said, "is our reputation. We are much more afraid of what people might say than the trouble this strange alcoholic might bring. As we've been talking, five short words have been running through my mind. Something keeps repeating to me, `What would the Master do?'" Not another word was said. What more indeed could be said?"

Overjoyed, the newcomer plunged into Twelfth Step work. Tirelessly he laid A.A.'s message before scores of people. Since this was a very early group, those scores have since multiplied themselves into thousands. Never did he trouble anyone with his other difficulty. A.A. had taken its first step in the formation of Tradition Three.

Not long after the man with the double stigma knocked for admission, A.A.'s other group received into its membership a salesman we shall call Ed. A power driver, this one, and brash as any salesman could possibly be. He had at least and idea a minute on how to improves A.A. These ideas he sold to fellow members with the same burning enthusiasm with which he distributed automobile polish. But he had one idea that wasn't so salable. Ed was an atheist. His pet obsession was that A.A. could get along better without its "God nonsense." He browbeat everybody, and everybody expected that he'd soon get drunk - for at the time, you see, A.A. was on the pious side. There must be a heavy penalty, it was thought, for blasphemy. Distressingly enough, Ed proceeded to stay sober.

At length the time came for him to speak in a meeting. We shivered, for we knew what was coming. He paid a fine tribute to the Fellowship; he told how his family had been reunited; he extoled the virtue of honesty; he recalled the joys of Twelfth Step work; and then he lowered the boom. Cried Ed, "I can't stand this God stuff! It's a lot of malarkey for weak folks. This group doesn't need it, and I won't have it! To hell with it!"

A great wave of outraged resentment engulfed the meeting, sweeping every member to a single resolve: "Out he goes!"

The elders led Ed aside. They said firmly, "You can't talk like this around here. You'll have to quit it or get out." With great sarcasm Ed came back at them. "Now do tell! Is that so?" He reached over to a bookshelf and took up a sheaf of papers. On top of them lay the foreword to the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," then under preparation. He read aloud, "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking." Relentlessly, Ed went on, "When you guys wrote that sentence, did you mean it, or didn't you?"

Dismayed, the elders looked at one another, for they knew he had them cold. So Ed stayed. Ed not only stayed, he stayed sober - month after month. The longer he kept dry, the louder he talked - against God. The group was in anguish so deep that all fraternal charity had vanished. "When, oh when," groaned members to one another, "will that guy get drunk?"

Quite a while later, Ed got a sales job which took him out of town. At the end of a few days, the news came in. He'd sent a telegram for money, and everybody knew what that meant! Then he got on the phone. In those days, we'd go anywhere on a Twelfth Step job, no matter how unpromising. But this time nobody stirred. "Leave him alone! Let him try it by himself for once; maybe he'll learn a lesson!"

About two weeks later, Ed stole by night into an A.A. member's house, and unknown to the family, went to bed. Daylight found the master of the house and another friend drinking their morning coffee. A noise was heard on the stairs. To their consternation, Ed appeared. A quizzical smile on his lips, he said, "Have you fellows had your morning meditation?" They quickly sensed that he was quite in earnest. In fragments, his story came out.

In a neighboring state, Ed had holed up in a cheap hotel. After all his please for help had been rebuffed, these words rang in his fevered mind. "They have deserted me. I have been deserted by my own kind. This is the end . . . Nothing is left." As he tossed on his bed, his hand brushed the bureau near by, touching a book. Opening the book, he read. It was a Gideon Bible. Ed never confided any more of what he saw and felt in that hotel room. It was the year 1938. He hasn't had a drink since.

Nowadays, when old timers who know Ed foregather, they exclaim, "What if we had actually succeeded in throwing Ed out for blasphemy? What would have happened to him and all the others he later helped?"

So the hand of Providence early gave us a sign that any alcoholic is a member of our Society when he says so. *In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.

[bluidkiti]

NA TRADITION THREE

"The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using."



Our new members are the lifeblood of our fellowship and our service to these members becomes the heartbeat of NA. Today, grateful for our lives as protected by a loving God, we become willing to venture into the darkness where they are and demonstrate that we truly do care and understand. We can welcome them to join us as they are, since we have faith today that they can no longer harm us, no matter what their situation, where they came from, or how they got here. We can allow them to become a member when they say so. Any addict, regardless of any other problem they face, is welcomed to find their home in NA. Narcotics Anonymous is a fellowship which is all inclusive with respect to any mood-changing, mind altering substances. All that is required is that one thinks they have a drug problem and has a desire to stop, nothing more, nothing less.

As for membership in NA; our position ought be one of unrestricted and inclusive participation. If spiritual progress was our goal, how could we claim such progress if we were to erect even the slightest barrier between ourselves and the still using or suffering addict? More often than not, these addicts will come to us as non-conformists, whereas many of us can identify with such a position. Therefore, we ought neither insist nor suggest that they conform, not even that they meet us at the half-way point. These individuals are often too sick, weak, and frightened to overcome any hurdles. In erecting them we may be sentencing our new members if not to death, to many more years of dereliction and institutions.

A member shares, "It is very important that the newcomer know that the only requirement for NA membership is the desire to stop using. I have heard it said that it must be an honest desire or a sincere desire, but I know that is not true. You only have to have a desire to stop using - any kind of desire. When I came to my first meeting, I had no idea what was going on. I knew I was not very honest at that time. If I was told I needed to have an honest desire to stop using I would have never come back to another meeting. It took me three months to finally get clean. I guess my desire to stay clean was greater than my desire to use."

Desire and willingness are the two most important prerequisites to recovery. In order to recover, an addict must have the desire to stop using and in order to stay clean, and addict must have the willingness to follow suggestions so that they will continue to recover.

Pain doesn't make us members. This is why it is important for us to share our pain, so others can respond to us and give us the beginnings of membership. If this sharing doesn't make our desire for recovery clear to others, we can hurt a long time in helpless confusion. We can even blame others for not treating us with the respect and affection we think our agony buys for us. We may see recovery as a contest of pain. The person who hurts the most does not get the most help: it is the person who lets the group know they are open to help by asking for it. Our own personal acquaintance with desiring recovery initiates our recovery. Before this, we were only re-experiencing our past hurts and injuries. Desire implies a future and a change.


While NA clearly rests on the principle of “complete abstinence,” we do not use this principle as justification to exclude an addict from membership status. To deny any addict’s full privileges may lead one to believe that “desire” is not enough. If we are to seek an atmosphere of recovery in our meetings, such an atmosphere will also compliment each spiritual principle embodied in our steps and traditions. The practice of acceptance, patience, tolerance, and unconditional love support our aim of equality, which in turn prevents us from creating a “second class” of membership. It is understood that our membership is a rough mixture of people at different levels of disease and recovery.

Using refers to using drugs in one form or another and starts with an individual member’s drug of choice. The more we learn about the addicts we find in the meetings, the more we can discover similarities to what we have gone through and still experience daily. When we find we have enough in common with addicts in Narcotics Anonymous, we have shifted our identification from lonely scared addict in a world where we cannot recover, into a world where being an addict first means we cannot use drugs and live successfully and further that we can regain our health and a degree of good sense.





There is no "wrong" reason for coming to NA. Many of us came to escape jail or other institutions. We may or may not have found a desire to stop using because of this. Those who have are free to begin a new way of life. Those who do not have the desire return to their old way of life. We have learned through personal experience that no one can make an addict stop using other than himself. Being ready to stop using is a personal decision and NA must not try to force our way of life on anyone regardless of how apparent it is to us that the individual should join us. However, we can pray for that person and be ready and willing to help if that person decides to ask for help. The benefits of membership cannot be bought, sold or given to someone without the desire. It can threaten their life or make them insanely jealous to have contact with a clean addict before they are willing to surrender. We can make ourselves available and stay in touch only if they have this desire.

Desire, is also a quality which is necessary to understand. Desire is often quite personal to each and every one of us. To some this word brings forth in influx of emotions ranging from extreme fear, to intense hurt and near unbearable anxiety. To others it may not be so severe. Each of us has traveled different paths in our lives and has unique experiences in respect to others. It does not matter what got us here but that we accept each other as members in an atmosphere free from judgment.

Membership is the key to our personal recovery. We feel comfortable with and part of the group. Along with membership, certain responsibilities come in to play. We must provide an atmosphere of recovery to anyone seeking it. Membership should not be taken lightly; it is a privilege. To serve is not a chore. We have found growth and freedom from membership and should freely pass these things to others.

When we finally make the decision to stop using, we must take certain action in order to begin the recovery process. We must make a commitment to attend meetings regularly, to get a sponsor and work the Steps and Traditions. As we continue to recover, other actions must be taken in order to insure ourselves against complacency. These include carrying the message to the addict who still suffers as well as a commitment to service. It is only through these types of positive actions can we attain spiritual growth.

Membership in NA is something that is often taken for granted because the program works so quickly. In our disease, we may fail to value the peace and comfort that is coming our way. Life always has its little surprises around the corner. In recovery, these surprises are usually pretty good! As with many other groups, with membership comes certain obligations. We cannot just assume that meetings will automatically be there for us when we need them. We must get involved, attend business meetings and make a commitment to service. We must give back what was so freely given to us if we are to continue to recover as individuals and as a fellowship.

The desire to stop using is our only requirement. This does not refer to chemicals, people, food, sex, etc. Using refers to the way our addictive personality manifests itself in our daily lives. We live to use and use to live. We do not separate ways or means of usage nor do we focus on our use. We focus on freedom from active addiction. This freedom begins with putting down the most obvious. Chemicals allowed us to recognize and identify our disease. As we begin to recover, we may begin to see other ways we actively use. Identifying rather than comparing helps keep us focused on our desire. We must carry a clear message of Narcotics Anonymous recovery to enable newcomers to see what we have to offer and how we can help. When we cloud our message, we become inconsistent and this may confuse the newcomer. Membership is open for those with the desire. This does not mean that we do not carry our message to plant seeds with those addicts with potential desires. As long as the still suffering know about NA, we have carried out our primary purpose. We may not be able to keep a using addict clean, but we can give a struggling member a choice and a healthy environment for growth.

Though we have found that imposing conformity does not work, we do have the power of example. Unable to spiritually control the thoughts, feelings, and actions of our newer members, we can rely on our faith in a loving God that they will come to their own understanding in their own time. Eventually all addicts will conform to the principals that guarantee their survival, if not, they sicken and possibly die. These are facts of our experience.

Willingness is an action word. This program is for people who want it, not for people who need it. We have to reach a point of total surrender before the willingness comes. The breakdown of our personal world is part of what helps us get clean. It helps us remember what the last one did for us. We thank God for this tradition because if it was not there - we would not here. The desire to stop using is the only requirement for membership. It does not matter how much or how little, just that you want to do something about using. In order to have the necessary desire for recovery, we had to reach a point of desperation. On a deeper lever, we began to actively seek a new way of life.

Our recovering friend continues, "Although I have been abstinent for years and attend NA meetings on a regular basis, I am ‘not’ automatically a member of NA. A lot of the time I have no desire to stop using. At these times, even though I am clean, I do not consider myself a member because membership provides action. I can ‘desire’ all I want, but, if I do not act to make that desire a reality, it means very little to me. This is a ‘grow or go’ program. It works if you work it. When I am sitting in limbo, not using, but also not taking an active part in my recovery, I am not a member. Membership implies participation!

"‘The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using.’ This is a passage in our literature that I have heard many times at the beginning of NA meetings. I have considered this an important issue facing our fellowship in the future as more and more people desire to stop using. I remember the first NA meeting that I attended. I was asked to leave because I would not say that I was an addict. In as much pain, anguish and despair as I was in at that first NA meeting, I was asked to leave and attend an open meeting. I cannot hear these words now and not shiver. Today I am an addict in recovery and I think back to that first meeting where the bondage of denial kept me from saying I was an addict. Today I know that I can only call myself an addict and I can only judge my own desire to stop using. So, when I see a new face in our meetings, I say to myself these very same words. As our fellowship grows, new controversies arise such as singleness to purpose or one disease, one program. I do not apply myself to these controversies. For no addict seeking recovery whether in denial or acceptance should be denied recovery the way I was at my first NA meeting." This apparently negative experience may have triggered her desire.
It does not matter what, or how much any person used. Using is a term relative to each member as well. Neither excessive consumption nor sporadic maintenance changes the status of our membership. Each has paid the price for membership with their pain and each deserves the same chance at recovery as any other addict. We have learned that the disease of addiction knows no boundaries and holds no hostages. Any addict, regardless of the drug they used, duration they used, or length of abstinence is subject to the same misery, dereliction, institutionalization, and death as the next. Just as any addict, in any of these instances, deserves the same dignity and respect as anyone else. This is how the equality and inclusively of our membership compliments our unity, which in turn works to develop a fellowship whose only goal is to help one another find recovery, just for today.

[MajestyJo]

I just got this from a Florida friend who is in "The Program". It's amazing. It is a bit long, but well worth the read and reflection.

This was sent to me from a long-time member who is 23 years sober from Texas.

A Story of the Third Tradition

Here is the story about Irma Livoni. Each year around this time I try to tell this true story about what happened not just on Dec. 7th, 1941 (Pearl Harbor Day) but what happened to one of the few women who was in AA at that time and about a letter she received in the mail on Monday Dec. 8th, which virtually kicked her out of AA.

In Dec. of 1984, I had been sober for 2 1/2 years, and working with my sponsors Bob and Sybil Corwin since Jan. of 84. Sybil had gotten sober in March of 1941 and at the time she was 43 yrs sober. We were driving home from a meeting and she asked me the date (to her it was just Sunday). I told her it was Dec. 8th, and that yesterday (Dec 7th) was the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. She said 'Matt, have I ever told you about Irma Livoni?' 'Nope, who is she?'

She said, 'Well, when we get back to the house, come in for coffee and I will tell you a story about AA history and some of the reasons we have tradition 3. Oh, and by the way Matt, did you know that the literature specifically protests 'queers, plain crackpots and fallen women,' and since you and I are at least two out of those three, we should be especially grateful for tradition 3. I'll show you it when we get home.'

I laughed out loud, as Sybil had a great sense of humor, and she had been a taxi dancer, back before she got sober, you know one of those '10 cents a dance' ladies, and she was divorced twice, and was a single mom, as well as an alcoholic back then, so the term fallen woman' was something that hit close to home.

She had told me that it was very different back in the 30's and 40's for a woman to be an alcoholic. Sybil said it was a time when women wore hats and gloves, and 'respectable women' were not usually found in a bar or at 'whoopee parties.'

Our Thursday night step study had voted to not cover the traditions after we got to step 12, so I figured they must not be very important and thought I'd probably be bored with the conversation, but she got my attention telling me that 'queers, crackpots and fallen women' were mentioned, so I agreed to come in for coffee. Besides Sybil had been sober longer than I had been alive. I didn't argue with her very much.

Sybil got down her copy of the big book. She said, I want you to find the traditions in there, and read me tradition 3. It was a 1st edition Big Book. Thicker than mine.

I said, 'Is this why they call it the Big Book?'

She said, 'exactly, Bill had it printed on big paper, with big margins around the type, so that people would think they were really getting something for their money.'

I looked in the back of the book, where I thought the traditions were, but couldn't find them. 'I can't find them, Sybil.'

'Exactly. That's because we didn't have any traditions back in 1941 when I came in, and Matt, AA was in mortal danger of destroying itself, which is why we have traditions now.' Then she had me find them in my 3rd edition and in my 12x12. I didn't read it all, just the caption heading, and then she started telling me the story of IRMA LIVONI.

Irma was a sponsee of Sybil's. She also became a member in 1941, just after Sybil. Sybil took her into her home. (Sybil told me that many people's bottoms were very low then, no home, no job, no watch, no car, nothing). Sybil said it was different then for a woman to be an alcoholic, That most of them had burned all their bridges with their families, and were looked down upon, even more so than male alcoholics. Sybil said she watched AA help Irma get sober, watched AA help Irma get cleaned up, watched AA help Irma get her first apartment in sobriety.

Then she said that on Dec. 5th, 1941 a self appointed group of the members signed a letter to Irma and mailed it 2 days before Pearl Harbor, on that Friday, Dec. 5th. Here is a copy of the letter.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
Post Office Box 607
Hollywood, California

December 5th, 1941

Irma Livoni
939 S. Gramercy Place
Los Angeles, California

Dear Mrs. Livone:

At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, held Dec. 4th, 1941. It is decided that your attendance at group meetings was no longer desired until certain explanations and plans for the future were made to the satisfaction of this committee. This action has been taken for reasons which should be most apparent to yourself. It was decided that, should you so desire, you may appear before members of this committee and state your attitude.
This opportunity will be afforded you between now and Dec. 15th, 1941.You may communicate with us at the above address by that date.

In case you do not wish to appear, we shall consider the matter closed and that your membership is terminated.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Los Angeles Group
Mortimer, Frank, Edmund, Fay D., Pete, Al

I was stunned. 'How could they do this Sybil?' Because we didn't have any guidelines, any traditions to protect us from good intentions. AA was very new, and people did all sorts of things, thinking they were protecting the fellowship'

Sybil then said to close my eyes and imagine my being in the following setting. Sybil explained that Dec. 7th, 1941 was Pearl Harbor Day (a Sunday). She said that on that Sunday night everyone in LA was afraid that Los Angeles would also be attacked and bombed. There was a citywide blackout, people were so terrified. She said that on Monday Dec.8th President Roosevelt gave the speech that talked about 'the date that will live in infamy' and that we were now at war with Japan and Germany.

She said, that was the day that Irma received her letter. There was only one meeting in the entire state of California when Sybil came in, in 1941. By December there may have been 2 or 3, but Irma had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, no other group in California that she could ask for help.

Sybil said, 'Imagine only 1 or 2 meetings in your entire state, and being shunned by your family and by society and by the only group of people who were on your side, your AA group. Imagine them shutting the door on you and sending you such a letter.'

I shivered at the thought of it, It was Christmas time, the stores were decorated and now poor Irma was all alone, I thought about how it was in 1984 with 2000 meetings a week to choose from in Southern California, and then I imagined having no other help for a hopeless alcoholic.

Sybil told me that Irma never came back to another meeting, left AA and died of alcoholism. She wrote to Bill about the incident, and I cannot tell you that is the reason that the following is a part of the 3rd Tradition, but it certainly seems to apply.

>From Tradition 3, page 141: that we would neither punish nor deprive any AA of membership, that we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything? The answer, now seen in Tradition 3, was simplicity itself. At last experience taught us that to take away any alcoholics full chance was sometimes to pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury and executioner of his own sick brother?'

JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER

I remember looking at those words again and again. They seemed to get larger and larger.

JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER
JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER
JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER

I hadn't really noticed Executioner when I had read it the first time at my 12 & 12 study group. Again I felt so bad for this poor lady. Wow, those words really had a different meaning than when I had read the traditions before, So here it is , 23 years later, and each Dec. 7th & 8th I always think about Irma Livoni, and how lucky I am, that we have traditions now, I also think of how lucky I was to have met Sybil and so lucky that she appointed herself my sponsor.

Years later I realized how everything she ever taught me was like gold, but in 1984 I had no idea who Sybil really was or how lucky I was to have her as my sponsor. She was like a piece of living history, but I really didn't realize how valuable that was in explaining WHY we do someof the things we do (like the story she told me about how they never said 'Hi Sybil' and no one said 'Hi my name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic' back then).

Besides being one of the first women in AA,. Sybil was the first woman west of the Mississippi. She also became the head of LA's central office for 1 2 years, and she became close friends with Bill and Lois. She and Bob even used to go on vacation with them. She used to tell me all sorts of stories about Bill Wilson and things he said to her.

He was very interested in how AA would work for women, as there were very few women worldwide in AA back in 1941. Marty Mann came in before Sybil did, but very few stayed sober.
I learned that night that no one can get kicked out of AA. We can ask a disturbing wet drunk that he needs to settle down or we might have to ask him to step outside for that day, but we don't vote to kick anyone out forever . And we don't shun people because our guidelines, our traditions tell us that no one has to believe in anything (they don't have to like me) and they don't have to conform to anything, they don't have to dress a certain way, or have no facial hair, or pay anything .) Even if I get drunk again, I am still welcome at any AA meeting.

So that's the story about Irma Livoni. Feel free to pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested in knowing a bit about how and why the traditions got started. I think it sort of puts a face on Tradition 3: the face of a woman I never knew, who got kicked out ofAA. Who got drunk and died.

Thank God for Tradition 3 and thank God for all of you. I truly appreciate and cherish all the people in this group..
Best AA love to you all.