I felt alone, alienated. I was just a couple years in
the program and had recently moved from a village of a few
thousand to a city of over half a million people. I missed
my friends and my home group. I missed the meetings I knew
well, the ones that had saved my life. The big-city meetings
lacked the friendliness, the warmth, and the intimacy of my
village groups. The large meetings I had known were never
more than a dozen or so; "small" meetings in the city were
often in excess of 40 people. I felt lost in them. Speaker
meetings were the most common with often well over a hundred
people sitting in a large room. Smaller discussion meetings,
like the ones that sobered me up, were rare. There were none
within miles of where I lived. Complaints about what was
wrong with the new-to-me A.A. was a part of almost all my
phone calls to my sponsor back home.
"It will take time for your homesickness to end," he said
after one particularly angry call from me. "But," he
continued, "keep going to meetings, whether you like them or
not. They will help you get out of your negative thinking."
Before I could say anything he added,
"Why not give some thought to what the "Twelve and
Twelve" has to say about the Fourth Tradition? It might give
you some ideas that can help you understand better what A.A.
is all about. That's also a part of your problem."
His suggestion surprised me. Up to then, I had never
been to any of the "Traditions" meetings. Why should I? I
had heard somewhere that the Traditions kept groups healthy,
just as the Steps kept individuals healthy. Apart from an

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2.

occasional stint at coffee-making or serving as a group
secretary, I was not involved in service at the inter-group
level, or in anything that involved relationships between
groups. The Traditions didn't seem to have any real
relevance to my life. So my sponsor's idea that the Fourth
Tradition had something to help me adjust to "big city A.A."
was not what I expected to hear.
The discussion of the Fourth Tradition in the "Twelve and
Twelve" seemed to me to be straightforward enough. It meant
that each group was to be independent of all other groups --
in governance, finances, and practices. As long as its
actions didn't affect any other group or the A.A. fellowship
as a whole, each group was free to do whatever its members
decided was in their collective best interests. No group
could dictate practice or policy to any other group. Even
our Intergroup Office, and A.A. World Services itself,
couldn't tell any group what to do or not do. They could
suggest and they could urge, but they couldn't dictate. The
Fourth Tradition seemed to me to have been designed to put a
brake on the alcoholic's well-known tendency to take control
and try to run things. It was "Live and Let Live" applied to
groups.
While all of that seemed clear enough, what wasn't clear
was how any of it could help me deal with my negative atti-
tudes towards the "A.A. style" that was typical of that city.
I continued to go to meetings anyway because I knew I
needed them as a defense against relapse. I went to them
because in my frequent calls to him, my sponsor would get

3.

around to asking how many meetings I had gone to that week,
and what my impressions of them were like. As time went by,
and as I remained stuck in my homesickness, those impressions
remained largely negative. I still didn't seem to fit. A.A.
meetings weren't fun any more. They were bad-tasting medi-
cine for my disease.
One evening, as I left yet another speaker meeting, I
overheard talk about a new discussion meeting that was within
easy driving distance of my home. A call next day to Inter-
group verified time, day, and place. At my first meeting, I
noticed that there were fewer than 25 people in the room. I
even recognized some familiar faces. Maybe this was the
meeting I was looking for.
"Anyone have a topic or problem?" the chairperson asked.
"How about us talking about jealousy and envy?" someone
suggested.
Jealousy and envy? That was a new one on me. I
couldn't ever remember having heard of this topic before.
Certainly it wasn't on the list that my own group back home
had prepared and from which the discussion-topic was usually
taken. Is jealousy and envy really an A.A. topic? It seemed
pretty remote from alcoholism. Did it have anything to do
with recovery? Yet the group didn't seem to have any problem
with it. The old, familiar, "why-isn't-this-like-home?"
thinking was with me again. I was disappointed. This wasn't
turning out to be the kind of meeting I had first thought it
was.

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As the discussion proceeded, one man spoke of how
jealousy of his wife's closeness to one of her women friends
had harmed his marriage. A woman spoke of the damage done to
her by a co-worker who envied her ability and work record.
It had got so bad that she found herself drawn into messy
office politics. The job she had loved had become painful,
and she dreaded going to work in the morning. In the end,
and to keep her serenity, she resigned from the company.
Another man admitted how, years earlier, he had become
envious of the popularity of another member of his home group
who was much in demand as a sponsor. His envy-driven
resentment resulted in his criticism of the other man. The
group had become seriously divided within itself, with
factions developing and widening. Gradually many of the
group's members drifted away from it. The speaker described
how difficult it was for him to make amends to the man he had
harmed and to the group itself for his behavior.
As the meeting continued, I realized how envy and
jealousy can bring serious harm to both individuals and the
fellowship. The discussion made me look at myself, at the
ways in which I was envious of others, and the ways in which
my criticism of other persons in the program, and of groups,
might have damaged them -- and me. The discussion was
opening for me a new level of awareness. This was a great
meeting! I could hardly wait to talk to my sponsor about it
and about what I had learned about myself from it.
For a while after that, complaints about A.A. were put
on the back burner, as my sponsor and I talked about how envy

5.

and jealousy had affected my life and behavior. It was the
first time we had ever discussed the subject because it was
the first time I have even considered the possibility that I
suffered from those particular defects.
In the course of one of our conversations he remarked
casually,
"Aren't you glad now that we have the Fourth Tradition?"
"Fourth Tradition?"
"Yes, Fourth Tradition." He was quiet for a moment. "It
seems to me," he continued "that people were able to come
together without anyone in A.A. stopping them or hassling
them, and could start a discussion group in an area where
speaker meetings seem to be the custom. You could finally
find a group that could help you -- and that group has given
you something new to think about." He paused, and then,
"What might it have been like for you if some A.A.
authority was in control of meetings and decreed that there
could only one be one type of meeting in the area . . . and
it was a speaker meeting?" Not too good for me, I thought.
"Is that what the Fourth Tradition is about?" I asked.
"I think so," he replied. "Sure, as you saw for
yourself, it's about curbing our power-drives. But I think,
at a deeper level, it also quietly invites us to find many
different ways to express our message of recovery."
Until then I had thought that the Fourth Tradition's
purpose was solely to stop something happening. But there
was a flip-side to this. The Tradition also encourages
something that is a cornerstone of A.A.'s success in helping
us -- the need for different perspectives on recovery, for a

6.

variety of ways for us to find the healing we need.
Speaker meetings, discussion meetings, Step and
Tradition meetings; open meetings, closed meetings, "Big
Book" meetings, "Grapevine" meetings; meetings for gay
people, for women alone, for men alone, for health
professionals, for members of the legal and law-enforcement
professions; meetings that focused on the basics of recovery,
other meetings that were specially geared to spiritual
recovery, or to emotional recovery -- all of these, and
more, exist so that each of us can find the help and healing
we need. If I don't like how a particular group chooses to
bring the message of recovery, or if I don't like a parti-
cular kind of meeting (I still don't get too much from
speaker meetings), there are other meetings available to me.
I can even start any kind of meeting I like without having to
get permission from any individual or group within A.A.
We have the same disease; and so the principles that
guide our recovery are the same. Whatever the meeting or
group might be, we share the same Steps, the same Traditions.
We find common guidance from the "Big Book," from the "Twelve
and Twelve," from "As Bill Sees It." Our groups are united
in their commitment to be a healing presence for those who
still suffer, and to help its members grow in their recovery.
But we are each ourselves, different from one another in
our life-histories, our backgrounds, our needs, and the
Fourth Tradition helps protect each of us in our right to be
different. The meeting that keeps me well may not work for
you, and yours may not work for me. The way one group

7.

expresses the message of recovery may inspire me, but not the
person sitting next to me. In the first months of recovery,
I needed meetings that emphasized the basic tools of the
program and showed me how to apply them to my life. Other
meetings, which went beyond those basics, meant nothing to
me. But as I grew in my sobriety, I needed different
meetings, ones more geared to helping me become emotionally
and spiritually healthy. I expect that, as the years go by,
I will need still other kinds of meetings. . . even, perhaps,
speaker meetings!
The Fourth Tradition has made it possible for all kinds
of meetings, expressing different perspectives on recovery,
to exist within our vast A.A. fellow-ship. Building on the
principle of tolerance which "Live and Let Live" expresses,
it makes it possible for each of us to find the specific
healing we need within the fellowship. "The program will
always meet you at the level of your needs": because of the
Fourth Tradition, A.A. makes and keeps that promise to all
of us.

Jamie C.