What AA Does & Does NOT Do

What AA Does

  1. AA members share their experience with anyone seeking help with a drinking problem; they give person-to-person service or “sponsorship” to the alcoholic coming to AA from any source.
  2. Our program, set down in our Twelve Steps, offers the alcoholic a way to develop a satisfying life without alcohol.
  3. This program is discussed at AA Group meetings:

a. Open “identification” meetings – open to anyone, alcoholic or not. At “ID” meetings, AA members tell their stories; they describe their experiences with alcohol, how they came to AA and how their lives have changed as a result. (Attendance at an open AA meeting is a good introduction to AA, to learn what AA is, what it does and what it does not do.)

b. Open discussion meetings – one member speaks briefly about his or her drinking experience and then leads a discussion on any subject or drinking-related problem anyone brings up.

c. Closed meetings are for members of AA and anyone who has, or thinks they have, a drinking problem. They are conducted in the same way as their equivalent open meetings but, as stated, attendance is restricted to members of AA or people who have, or think they have, a drinking problem.

e. Step meetings – discussion on the Twelve Steps of AA.

f. AA members also take meetings into prisons, hospitals, rehabs and the like.

g. AA members are sometimes asked to conduct informative meetings about AA to hospital staff, Rotary, Apex and similar organisations. Such meetings about AA are not part of AA’s recovery programme.

What AA does NOT do

AA does not:

  • furnish initial motivation for alcoholics to recover
  • solicit members
  • engage in research
  • join councils of social agencies
  • follow up or try to control its members
  • compile a register of members
  • make medical or psychological diagnoses or prognoses
  • provide drying-out or nursing services, hospitalisation, drugs or any medical or psychiatric treatment
  • offer religious services
  • engage in education about alcohol
  • provide housing, food, clothing, jobs, money or any other welfare or social services
  • provide domestic or vocational counselling
  • accept any money for its services, or any contributions from non-AA sources
  • provide letters of reference to parole boards, lawyers, court officials, etc.