Breaking Anonymity

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Originally uploaded by Lady Pandacat von Nopants
Tradition Eleven of Alcoholics Anonymous is about anonymity at the public level. "Public" is a term that is relative: announcing something to a group of people gathered in a room is public; putting information over a loudspeaker in a building is more public; being on stage in front of a large community audience is much more public; being on radio, TV, or film is WAY public. The tradition seems to be targeted to latter of the public examples and yet, is a controversial topic among AA's.

With the students of my drug and alcohol abuse course this semester, I broke my anonymity. It turned out to be a very good decision, as there was a level of respect and compassion for persons who abuse substances that resulted. My disclosure allowed for stereotypes to be dispelled and for alcoholism to have a "face" and be normalized. Sometimes I break anonymity on a small scale, such as with friends of friends or classmates of my healing community when it is right timing -- i.e. a person is bringing up their own struggle with addiction or that of someone close to them. On the other hand, I was having dinner over the weekend with 3 women who are in recovery and active in either AA or OA, while one additional member of the dinner party was not privy to the fact that 3 of us were in AA. When she asked: "How did you all meet?" The reply was: "We go to the same church." Stretching the truth a tiny bit for the sake of anonymity. It was up to the discretion and consensus of all 3 of us to decide if it was appropriate or not to break anonymity in that moment; it wasn't necessary.

A different scenario: in a training class that I've been facilitating at an agency over the past 6 weeks, I mentioned a concept that came from being in the rooms of AA and introduced it as: "This is something said in recovery circles." Last week, a member of this training class asked if he could talk to me in private. He spoke about his battle with alcohol. How he tries to control it and can stop for a little while and then, once he picks up a drink, he gets out of control. He goes on to say : "You mentioned recovery circles, so I figured you must know something about getting sober." And this is where the "no-brainer" decision point comes about breaking anonymity: another alcoholic is directly asking for help. I gave him my number and told him that if he'd like to go to a meeting, call me anytime. I saw him today and he gave me a huge hug. Told me that he was doing really great for now and that he still has my number. I don't know whether or not he got to a meeting on his own or if he even stopped drinking; what I do know is that the hand of AA has been extended to him if he wants what we have.

And for that, breaking anonymity is priceless.