Why Anonymity?
Well, for one thing, “Because AA’s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good,” P184 12/12.
For another, ” We are sure that humility, expressed by anonymity, is the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can ever have.” P187 12/12.
And how about this: because if someone breaks their anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, internet, and any of the dozens of social media outlets available- and they relapse and begin to make a complete ass of themselves, then their decision to be a spokesperson for AA gives this movement a really bad name.
And lastly, wouldn’t it be a shame if people had not the opportunity to experience the true humility and spiritual growth behind practicing such a principle as anonymity?
Upon arriving in a fog to this scene we call recovery, merely a blur of a clue as to what I was really getting in to, I naively thought that the “lash” of alcoholism was the only reason I was here. I was quick to learn one early lesson: I was here because I had a thinking problem. I had a diseased personality. My natural instincts had been warped into such a state that my only coping mechanism was to obliterate each present moment by drinking. by running away from the “Here and Now”. Alcohol was but a symptom. Great to lesson to learn early on.
Then I had the experience of bragging to my sponsor who I had just seen at the old Mustard Seed (On Wells off of Division-in the old firehouse): A rock star!!!
Well thank God my sponsor took the time to break me in half by ripping in to me about how I had just violated one of the most sacred aspects of AA: Anonymity. He went on to say that I had no right whatsoever to inform him (or anyone else) of who I had seen at the meeting. He added that I better learn and remember to respect peoples’ anonymity at all costs, and that my ego needed to be deflated immediately.
It was at that point that I began to learn and accept the wonderful power, the necessary humility, and the spirituality behind the concept of anonymity.
