Anonymity - Enabling the Dishonesty of AA for 72 Years

Anonymity in AA jargon is used in two ways. (1) It is used to describe the need to protect against disclosing others' involvement in AA. (2) It is also used to describe the desire to protect AA from being associated with (i.e., tainted by) ourselves.

Other people's involvement with AA

Loving-kindness, respect, and courtesy are the motives behind protecting others people's anonymity. The promise of personal anonymity and confidentiality is very important to many newcomers. Sadly, this promise is often broken. When people ask me about how someone in the fellowship is doing which might involve revealing some sensitive information, I merely tell the them that so-and-so would probably appreciate a phone call. If they don't have the number, I get theirs and pass it on to the person they're asking about.

One's own involvement with AA

Protecting AA by not revealing our own personal involvement is motivated by salesmanship, evangelic loyalty, and deviousness. Many people say that they don't share their affiliation with AA because they then become a spokesperson or representative of AA. Early AA was afraid that if someone announced their membership in AA and then started drinking again, then it would make AA look like it failed. And we, as conscientious AA members, must never admit that AA doesn't work for most people. We have to keep our failures behind closed doors.

We simply couldn't afford to take the chance of letting self-appointed members present themselves as messiahs representing A.A. before the whole public. The promoter instinct in us might be our undoing. If even one publicly got drunk, or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes, the damage might be irreparable. - Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p 187.

At my Al-Anon meetings, I hear many people in toxic families reiterate the claim the family makes on its privacy. Abusive households set a high store on keeping the family secrets. I have been helped and hurt by my attendance in AA for the last fifteen years. AA has helped and hindered my progress toward a happy life without strong toxins. If AA is happy to take credit for my clean and sober life, then AA also gets the blame when I decided to drink or use drugs. The fact is: AA doesn't get the credit or the blame for my decisions. It provided a time and place for me to meet up with other folks who were trying to live a clean and sober life. Some of these people truly helped me and encouraged me; some were sick twisted fucks.

I will not keep my name or affiliation with AA private. I will not enable AA to pretend that it is a better institution than it is or let it make claims that it helps more people than it actually does. If AA is a program of rigorous honesty, then it should not be ashamed of its success rate... nor of its failures.