ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship designed and administered by a bunch of ex-drunks whose only qualifications for membership are that they can't hold their liquor and have decided they don't want to learn how. Not that they could anyway, they never could, and it's highly unlikely that they ever would. It has no rules, dues or fees, nor anything else that any sensible organization seems to require.
At meetings, the speaker starts on one subject, winds up talking about something entirely different, and concludes by saying he doesn't know anything about the program except that it works. The groups are always broke, yet always seem to have money to carry on. They are always losing members but seem to grow. They claim AA is a selfish program but they always seem to be trying to give it away and to do something for others.
Every group passes laws, rules, edicts and pronouncements that everyone blithely ignores; members who disagree with anything have the privilege to walk out in a huff, quitting forever, only to return as if nothing has happened and be greeted accordingly. Nothing is ever planned 24 hours ahead, yet great projects are born and survive magnificently. Nothing in AA is according to Hoyle. How can it survive?
Perhaps it's because we have learned to live and laugh at ourselves. God made man. He made laughter too. Perhaps he is pleased with our disorganized efforts and makes things right no matter who pushes the wrong button. Maybe he is pleased, not with our lack of perfection, but with our sincerity. Maybe he is pleased with our trying to be nobody but ourselves. We don't know how it works, but it does, and members keep receiving their dividends from their AA investments. It is smart to be sober, and much easier, my friends, to stay sober than to get sober.
(from some other members' writing on the web Author Unknown )
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