Information to Professionals
Newsletter for Professionals
Cooperation with the professional community is an objective of A.A. and has been since our beginnings. We are always seeking to strengthen and expand our communication with you, and we welcome your comments and suggestions. They help us to work more effectively with you in achieving our common purpose: to help the alcoholic who still suffers.
Professionals who work with alcoholics share a common purpose with Alcoholics Anonymous: to help the alcoholic stop drinking and lead a healthy, productive life.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a nonprofit, self-supporting, entirely independent fellowship—“not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution.” Yet A.A. is in a position to serve as a resource to you through its policy of “cooperation but not affiliation” with the professional community.
Although the strength of our program lies in the voluntary nature of membership in A.A., many of us first attended meetings because we were forced to, either by someone else or by our inner discomfort. But continual exposure to A.A. educated us to the true nature of our illness. We then developed a desire for a happy, sober life like that of other members we saw, and we attended meetings willingly and with gratitude.
We can serve as a source of personal experience with alcoholism as an ongoing support system for recovering alcoholics. Members share their experiences in recovery from alcoholism on a one-to-one basis, and introduce the newcomer to A.A.’s Twelve Steps of personal recovery and its Twelve Traditions that sustain the fellowship itself.
Reprinted from AA General Service Conference approved literature.