ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship designed and administered by a bunch of ex-drunks whose only qualification for membership is that they can't hold their liquor and don't want to learn how. It has no rules, dues or fees, nor anything else that any sensible organisation seems to require.

At meetings the speaker starts on one subject and winds up talking about something entirely different, and concludes by saying he doesn't know anything about the program, except that it works! The groups are always broke, yet always seem to have enough money to carry on. They are always losing members but seem to grow. They claim AA is a selfish program, but always seem to be doing something for others.

Every group passes laws, rules, edicts and pronouncements which everyone blithely ignores. Members who disagree with anything are privileged to walk out in a huff, quitting forever, only to return as though nothing had happened and are greeted accordingly.

Nothing is ever planned ahead, yet great projects are born and survive magnificiently. Nothing in AA is according to Hoyle. How can it survive?

Perhaps it's because we have learned to live and laugh at ourselves. God made man. He made laughter too. Perhaps He is pleased with our disorganised efforts and makes things right no matter who pushes the button. Maybe He is pleased, not with our perfection, but with our sincerity. Or maybe He is pleased with our trying to be nobody but ourselves.

We don't know how it works, but it does, and members keep on receiving their dividend cheques from their AA investment. It is smart to be sober, and it is much easier my friends, to stay sober than to get sober.