The Third Tradition

Tradition 3) The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using. "Using" pretty much covers it, because each substance, including alcohol, we "use" to alter our reality, to block pain, to self medicate. Why, then, do we continue to hear "addict/alcoholic" in our meeting rooms? Should we even care? And more importantly, why do we hear the barrage of pompous comments about a member's "pure NA program"?

Much of the "dually addicted" problem is coming from treatment centers. I was in an AA meeting the other night and heard someone state that they were "an addict with a desire to stop drinking." How original, how unique, how many treatment center counselors did it take to come up with that one? How deadly, though, because I don't know your story, but my terminal uniqueness is what almost killed me before coming to the rooms and kept me in and out in the beginning for two hellish years.

It's pretty simple. If you're in an NA meeting, respect the Third Tradition and identify as an addict. If you're in AA, respect its Third Tradition and identify as an alcoholic. If you are in AA and you feel the need to "remind" yourself that you're also an addict, guess what? You need to take your slippery butt to NA, where you probably belong.

It's dangerous to get a few years on the block then hide out solely in AA. I can't tell you the number of friends my recovering addict pals who went strictly to AA I have lost to pain pills because they seem to forget, yup, they once liked those darn pills, too. They forget, before they try to claw their way back, that pain pills are addictive, just like the heroin they used to shoot or the cocaine they stuffed up their noses.

My heart belongs to NA. It's where I got cleaned and where I was loved unconditionally. It's where, for the first time in years, people looked me in the eye and said they loved me.

But when you have a few years in the camps, and you live in a town of 30,000 and you're consistently among the one or two people in the meetings with more than a few years, there are times when AA is a great alternative. But my heart is in NA. The message I carry is an NA message. It is where I tell my truth.

But the constant anti-AA message I hear when I go to NA reminds me why I sometimes don't want to go to NA. I began drugs largely due to peer pressure in high school and you know what? I'll be double damned if I'm going to be coerced from attending whatever Fellowship I want.

If I let your narrow thinking coerce me, does it mean I shouldn't go to Gamblers Anonymous if I can't stay out of the bingo halls? What if I'm a recovering sex worker, wounded from years of sexual abuse? Should I avoid Sex Workers Anonymous in a desire to work a "pure" NA program? What if I'm addicted to Twinkies? Do NA members really want to hear about that creamy white filling during an NA meeting when our focus should be on the desire to stop using?
I first came into the rooms in '81 and NA literature was limited. (Does anyone remember the Fourth Step guide we used then that had a question on bestiality? Hey, that's okay, I was raised around sheep, too.) We got clean on the--gasp--Big Book. That is my history. Does NA want only revisionist history? That's what Marx did, and then came Stalin.

I am proud of our NA literature and my stint at the World Service Office helping to develop several of our most-used pieces. I don't feel the need to fly my NA flag to anyone; I have done my time in the trenches and I continue to serve. However, when I had about 12 years clean and moved to a small town, I began to attend AA. Today I am just as loved in AA and as long as I have friends there, I'll continue to attend.

Which programs others attend is absolutely none of my business. If it works for them, I'm happy for them. When I share, I speak a clear NA message when I'm in NA. In AA, I may mention I used drugs and will talk to anyone who is having a problem with drugs after the meeting, but I focus on my experience with alcohol. If you don't have a history with alcohol, don't go to AA. Or if you do go, identify as an alcoholic because that's the Third Tradition, or don't identify at all and go to open meetings.

I was fortunate to study at Naropa for three summers, a college of poetics in Boulder founded by, among other great beat poets, Allen Ginsburg. Ginsburg was a giant among poets. At a time when no one was talking about it, he openly discussed his drug use, his homosexuality and he put his politics on a plate. He was a great and in my experience, a loving man. He said something once that fit. He studied under William Carlos Williams, one of the great American poets. But he spoke about his close relationship with Williams, which hit the rocks for a number of years. He said for an artist to find his or her own niche and become great, he or she "must first despise your teachers."

I believe this rebellion is part of adolescence, be it in life or in art. We have to break loose from the restrictions we feel are placed on us, whether real or imaginary, from our parents, our teachers, our mentors. Only then do we find our own way.

It appears to me that NA is still in its adolescence, breaking away and "despising" AA. But just as in our addiction most of us rebelled against our parents, in recovery we hear over and over in meetings of the joy of rebuilding these fractured relationships. My hope for the NA Fellowship is that it grows in maturity to the point that we don't waste valuable energy boasting about our NA "purity."

Like it or not, AA is the mothership from which NA sprang. Let's stop crapping on the deck of our mothership with snide, non-productive remarks like "I work a pure NA program" (I've got news for you; there isn't one); "I get everything I need in this Fellowship (good for you; now try staying out of the casinos for a few days); and the one from a dear friend with the most hubris I've ever heard in 20-plus years in the Fellowship: "If AA didn't come along, I believe it would have been something and NA would still have started." Speaking strictly for me, I wouldn't place all my marbles in that belief basket. Personally, I thank God on a daily basis that I was born long after Doctor Bob and Bill W. and a few befuddled hopeless alcoholics miraculously found each other and floundered to a start. I, and probably many of you, would have died in the gutter but for that.

It's time for NA to go from its raging adolescence to maturity. It's time for us to simply stand quietly on our own feet and stop bashing the mothership. I have never heard an AA member bashing NA or wearing a t-shirt that proudly proclaims "Pure AA member." It's a waste of breath and ink.

Just as we now, in most cases, love and honor our parents, it's time for us to stop bashing the mothership. Let's put our energy where it really belongs--in carrying the message to the addict who still suffers.