Secret Society?

What did the co-authors of our Big Book think about anonymity, and why was this concept of anonymity incorporated into the Society?

All right . . . I’ll tell you:

They were afraid that once the Big book got distributed and word got out that they had discovered a solution to alcoholism that actually worked, they would be over-run with requests for help and unable to carry out their normal lives.

Many of the early members were professionals and wanted to get on with their careers. It was NOT a protective device from exposure, from a perspective of shame or guilt. Secrecy for the sake of “hiding” like a guilty child is not what anonymity was supposed to ever be about.

Bill is characterizing anonymity in Tradition Twelve as having: “immense spiritual significance”. It is significant that he does this not in his essay about the Tradition, but in the Tradition itself. Yet this aspect was absolutely impossible for me to understand for the first several years of sobriety.

I was very fortunate in that I took to heart the old Fellowship axiom of “Sticking with the winners” Those, in my view at the time, were some of the old-timers, and those with significant terms of sobriety. They also tended to be more active in service and serving than others. So the emphasis on the spirituality of anonymity was brought to the forefront. I still did not get it, but I believe a see was planted. And for this reason I like to encourage those I sponsored to get into Service early. They do not. But maybe like I n me a seed will be planted.

As a newcomer I was stuck on the “Secrecy” aspect of anonymity; the protection of ones identity so no one in mainstream society could finger, judge or harm me financially and socially because I was some sort of social defective.

This is a very self-centered view of anonymity, I must admit. Being only a year or two without booze and avoiding the more introspective aspects of our Program, how could I have been anything but? I was willing to serve, as long as there was some sort of recognition in it, no matter how small.
As I matured in recovery however, anonymity became more tied to humility. As my life as a recovered alky began to take shape, my own deflation saw to it that God was taking more and more the lead in more and more of my affairs. That humility of course necessarily spilled over into the things I did to be helpful and to serve my group, other drunks and onward.

In “The Doctor’s Opinion” while prefacing Silkworth’s letter, Bill notes, “we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plane”

Peace,

Danny S