ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS GENERAL SERVICE CONFERENCE OF …

Celebrating our 70th birthday in Ireland

‘Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery beginswhen one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic,

sharing experience, strength and hope’

Our raisón d’etre as a Fellowship is to carry ourmessage to the still suffering alcoholics within andoutside of the rooms of AA.

In celebrating our 70th birthday here in Irelandwe emphasize our principle of attraction. WhenAAs gather together to celebrate sobriety we showthe world how we as ‘ex drunks’ have a ‘newfreedom’ and a ‘new happinesss’ that ourprogramme promises us ‘as a result of these steps’.We can enjoy ourselves and socialize freely andeasily without the dependance on the chemicalethyl alcohol. Our self consciousness evaporateswhen we are relieved of the ‘bondage of self ’through the programme of recovery.

While the “Twelve and Twelve” states that only anact of Providence can expel the obsession to drinkwe know that through our surrender we readyourselves to co-operate with this Providentialintervention. We also have to develop, maintainand sustain a relationship with our Fellowship, ourHigher Power and our programme of recovery. Westeadfastly “keep on keeping on” a day at a time,doing what needs to be done because it’s the rightthing to do in love and service. Freely have we beengiven, thus freely we give in return.

Key elements in our recovery include HONESTY,OPEN MINDEDNESS and WILLINGNESS.We also have to develop the practice of ‘eternalvigilance’ for therein, we learn is the price of ourdaily freedom.

In making happy we experience happiness. Nomore so is this more evident than when we areprivileged to share with another alcoholic and seetheir lives transformed by the miracle of sobriety.

News Sheet Oct/Nov 2016

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS GENERAL SERVICE CONFERENCE OF IRELAND

The views and opinions expressed in The News Sheet are notnecessarily those of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous

in Ireland as a whole.

Responsibility DeclarationI am responsible.

When anyone, anywhere,reaches out for help,

I want the hand of AA always to be there.And for that: I am responsible.

While the outcome of 12 Step work is never in ourhands, we learn that whatever the outcome we arethe certain beneficiaries in that we remain soberourselves. We know we never graduate for theprogramme is a process not an outcome.

Bill W. spoke often of the ‘full and thankful heart’.Our birthday as a Fellowship on this island isessentially a celebration of gratitude. Save for thosewho went before us and struggled not alone againstthe social stigma that the very word ‘alcoholic’conjured up but also against a very different worldthat was so steeped in prejudices, conventions andarchaic mores.

Our spiritual principle of anonymity and oursafeguarding preamble were our mainstay inhelping us stay the course. We were very muchblessed by the inspired elder statesmen of our early

Newsheet Oct-Nov 2016 Draft 5 06/09/2016 11:23 Page 1


Declaration of UnityThis we owe to AA’s future:

To place our common welfare first;To keep our fellowship united.

For on AA unity depend our lives;and the lives of those to come.

history in avoiding controversy, helpful to thosewho desired our help while not threateninganyone or institution. e last seven decades ofour history have had their humps and bumps andhills and hollows but miraculously we have beensaved from ourselves and our egoic ways. We owea debt of gratitude to our elder statesmen andwomen. As with Bill and his numerous phone callson that fateful day in Akron and HenriettaSieberling’s providential intervention we also seein all humility how the hand of destiny contrivedin the founding of our Fellowship here in Ireland.When Conor F was just about to give up and withtime running out fate played its hand — as it didwith Bill W. in Akron eleven years earlier — whenonce again, and in more or less similarcircumstances, an understanding non-alcoholicwoman played a part in the birth of AA, this timein Ireland.

Her name was Eva Jennings and she was stayingin the same hotel as Conor and over breakfast heconfided in her his many problems in getting AAset up in Dublin.

She was very sympathetic towards his plight andarranged for him to meet a Dr. Norman Moorefrom St. Patrick's Hospital in Dublin whom shebelieved would be of some help.

Dr. Moore was quite enthusiastic and listened towhat Conor had to say, as he had already readabout AA in a Readers Digest article. He informedConor that he had a patient in the hospital"whom he feared he might be saddled with forlife" and was willing to introduce them bothstating: "If you can help this man, I'll believe inAA 100 percent."

e patient, Richard P. from County Down inNorthern Ireland, was sent under escort toConor's hotel and immediately they "clicked" andRichard was released from hospital.

Both men then set about arranging the first closedmeeting in Dublin, which took place two weekslater on Monday, November 18th, 1946. efollowing Saturday they placed a notice in eEvening Mail for the first public "open" meetingthe next Monday. Neither man was ever to drinkagain. Richard died sober December 19th, 1982,and Conor F. died in Philadelphia on July 8th,1993, 50 years sober.

Sackville attended his first A.A. meeting there ona Monday night, April 28, 1947, and never tookanother drink. He was a "retired" major from theBritish Army, having served for twenty-six years.A British officer - that is, until brandy "retired"him. is proved only a temporary setback. Hesurvived to become a mainstay of A.A. in Ireland.

Sackville M's story appeared in the 2nd and 3rdeditions of Alcoholics Anonymous as "e CareerOfficer."

Getting off to a shaky start, the group secretaryand a dozen others got drunk in the summer of1947. ree remained sober, Sackville amongthem, who had joined in April. ey re-formedthe group in August with Sackville as secretary.

Sackville was a good organizer who had clear anddefinite ideas of what they should do. Hesuggested they switch the open public informationmeeting from Friday to Monday, the better tocatch men coming off a weekend drunk. He alsoworked hard to get information about A.A. to thenewspapers.

Since the vast majority of the Irish population wasRoman Catholic, Sackville knew it was importantto win the goodwill of the Catholic clergy. Heconvinced a professor of theology at St. Patrick'sCollege, Maynooth, to publish an article favorableto A.A. in the college paper e Furrow. Bill W.later referred to the publication of this article asan impressive step forward in A.A.'s relations withthe churches.

In 1948 Sackville began a small group paper, eRoad Back, which did much to give the group asense of identity. A bi-monthly group newslettercelebrating birthdays and group news, it alsocarried recovery sharing in a simple unpretentiousfive-page format. He edited it for more thantwenty-eight years. e Road Back magazine isstill being printed, similar to the Grapevinemagazine in the U.S. Sackville died in 1979, 32years sober.

So we see how through adversity and mostfortuitous circumstances our Fellowship wasestablished Ireland.

Each of us are guardians of a special bequest i.e.our three legacies of Recovery, Unity and Service.ey are like the legs of a stool. Take one away andthe whole structure collapses!

Happy 70th Birthday!

Visit us at: www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie

Excerpts used from “Ireland — the first European nation to accept the Messageof Alcoholics Anonymous” herewith acknowledged - author unknown


View your News Sheet online at www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie

2016

1946

7Conor F, who brought

AA to Ireland, withSackville

Drawing of the Country Shop, an ICA tea Room in Stephens Greenwhere it all began. (a tea totallerʼs retreat)

(courtesy of Dún Laoghaire Group of AA)

Dr Bob & Bill W, co-founders of AA

Newsheet Oct-Nov 2016 Draft 5 06/09/2016 11:23


General Service Office of Alcoholics AnonymousUnit 2, Block C, Santry Business Park

Swords Road, Dublin 9Telephone: (01) 8420700 Fax: (01) 8420703

[email protected]

The News Sheet is intended as an aid to SERVICE throughout the Fellowship in Ireland.Your suggestions as to form and content of the News Sheet will be especially welcome.

Service Structure of The Fellowship in Ireland

Intergroup

A.A. GroupsEach Group is entitled tosend two GSRs to AreaEach Area send four membersas Delegates to Intergroup

The Board itself is made up of four AlcoholicTrustees and three non-Alcoholics Trustees.

Alcoholics Anonymous has been

called an upside-down organization

because, as the structure chart shows,

the Groups are on top and the Trustees

at the bottom.Bill W. wrote in Concept 1 “The AA Groups

today hold ultimate responsibility and final

authority for our world service..... “.Then in

Concept 2, Bill made it clear that the Groups

“delegated to the Conference complete authority

for the active maintenance of our world ser vice and

thereby made the Conference... the actual voice

and effective conscience for our whole society”.

Bill’s early vision was of a worldwide structure.

However, the Conference structures in countries

outside of the U.S./Canada evolved as

autonomous entities.

Four Delegates, known as ConferenceDelegates, represent their ProvincialIntergroup at ConferenceAA Conference includes The Board,The Board Secretar y, the four IntergroupDelegates and Intergroup Secretarytogether with our two World Service Delegates

Area

Board

Conference

Confidential 02/09/2016 Page 1

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Visit us at: www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie


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