(printable version)

Tradition Three:
The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.

1. In my mind, do I prejudge some new AA members as losers?

2. Is there some kind of alcoholic whom I privately do not want in my AA group?

3. Do I set myself up as a judge of whether a newcomer is sincere or phony?

4. Do I let language, religion (or lack of it), race, education, age, or other such things interfere with my carrying the message?

5. Am I overimpressed by a celebrity? By a doctor, a clergyman, an ex-convict? Or can I just treat this new member simply and naturally as one more sick human, like the rest of us?

6. When someone turns up at AA needing information or help (even if he can’t ask for it aloud), does it really matter to me what he does for a living? Where he lives? What his domestic arrangements are? Whether he had been to AA before? What his other problems are?