Looking at the ACA Traditions from a secular perspective
1) Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on ACA unity.
2) For our group purpose, decision making is guided by a well-informed group conscience based on member participation. Our leaders are but trusted servants they do not govern.
3) The only requirement for membership in ACA is a desire to recover from the
effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family.
4) Each group is autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or ACA as a
whole. We cooperate with all other Twelve-Step programs.
5) Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the adult child
who still suffers.
6) An ACA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the ACA name to any related
facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert
us from our primary purpose.
7) Every ACA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8) Adult Children of Alcoholics should remain forever non-professional, but our
service centers may employ special workers.
9) ACA, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or
committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10) Adult Children of Alcoholics has no opinion on outside issues; hence the ACA
name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11) Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we
maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, films, and other
public media.
12) Anonymity is the core foundational principle of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to
place principles before personalities.
The Twelve Traditions are reprinted and adapted from the original Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and
are used with the permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Adult Children of Alcoholics®/Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, Inc.
www.adultchildren.org | acawsoec.com | information@acawso.com | +1(310) 534-1815
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