Had a fun afternoon with an acquaintance that I had not seen in 4 years. We are both doing better than how it used to be and had a nice time chatting with each other. Then it was off to a meeting to discussion the eleventh Tradition “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films”.
In my experience, Tradition 11 has been mis-interpreted and abused more than any other tradition. Attraction rather than promotion is telling people what worked for me instead of telling them “you should go do…” It is about leading by example and not by the hypocrisy of do what I say, not what I do.
Maintaining personal anonymity is about individuals keeping a low profile and not having stories with pictures of them coming out on press, radio and film. Experience has proven that spokes-models trying to represent 12-step programs can be a minefield of relapsing proving they don’t work to those seeking an excuse to not work a program of recovery. That is not the same thing as being a secret program. 12-step programs have signs on buses, PSAs on broadcast media, phone numbers in phonebooks, and print literature placed in libraries, ERs and other locations with high exposure to people with problems related to excessive alcohol consumption.
I am grateful for new friends and for having learned about 12-step programs that help me achieve recovery.
When I was editing my book I had to do a search and replace everything with "12-step program". Almost forgot!
ReplyDelete