My Pacific Region AA Service Assembly (PRAASA) panel talk 2026

Communication Breakdown: Are Groups Hearing from Service Bodies – or Tuning Out?

Hi everyone. I am Dan, and I am an alcoholic.

I have the profound honor of serving as the Panel 76 Delegate for Area 92. My homegroup is Northern Lights in Spokane, Washington, and by the grace of a Higher Power and this fellowship, my sobriety date is January 10th, 1979.

We are here today to talk about communication. Specifically: Are our groups actually hearing from their service bodies, or have they simply started tuning us out?

In our efforts to handle the business of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always try to keep the spirituality of this program at the absolute forefront of my mind. It is, after all, a spiritual program that saved my life. The power of AA is practically implemented through our 12 Steps, our 12 Traditions, and our 12 Concepts. But to make those Concepts work, we rely on one very fragile, very vital thing: an informed group conscience.

A massive part of that group conscience relies on how we discuss and share information. It’s incredibly helpful for me to remember that sharing my informed opinions with my fellow AA members is a lot like doing a 5th Step. When I share honestly, openly, and accurately with another alcoholic—whether we are sitting in a regular meeting or hashing things out in a business meeting—that vulnerability allows the God of my understanding to actually participate in the discussion.

And I’ve found that when I keep that spiritual principle in mind, I can feel completely at peace when an action is taken, even if I personally voted against the outcome.

So first I need to be honest about some things: I know I have not always taken the time to be informed. And worse, being uninformed has rarely stopped me from loudly expressing my opinion.

When I act that way, it doesn’t promote spirituality for me, and it certainly doesn’t promote it for anyone else. It’s exactly like those times when I am spiritually disturbed, but instead of taking my own inventory, I just want to air out my resentments. In those moments, I am not looking for solutions; I am just looking for hostages. I want to find other people to agree with me.

As alcoholics, we are masters of rationalization. I can easily rationalize my anger into a fantasy, telling myself, “I just have a deep passion for the good of AA!” I can even justify attacking other members of this program who happen to disagree with me. I mean, isn’t that what social media was made for?

Because of this communication breakdown, we start to hear the rumor mill churn. Oh, the things I have said in meetings, and the things I have heard from other old-timers over the years. You may have heard some of these too.

• “They got rid of the ’24 Hours a Day’ book because it had too much God in it.”
• “The Plain Language Big Book is just a secret effort to get God out of AA.”
• “The change in the Preamble? That’s just AA trying to go ‘woke’ and get God out of the program.”
• I even heard a meeting chair announce that they had free literature in the back, but added, “It’s from the 70s and would be great to just get rid of it.”

The most heartbreaking example for me happened in a meeting packed with newcomers. Another old-timer, someone with time like me, shared how he was terrified that AA was going to end because of the “drug talk” allowed in some meetings.

As he spoke, I looked around at the newcomers and thought about how terrifying that statement would have been to me when I was newly sober. Imagine: you finally drag yourself through the doors of AA, you finally find a tiny glimmer of hope, and a guy who has been here for decades tells you the whole thing is falling apart and going away.

All of this chaos, all of this fear, is caused because I and others like me don’t want to make the necessary effort to be informed about what is actually going on.

So, how do I make amends for my past behaviors in service? Like most amends with the people I love, it usually takes more than one attempt to get it right.

My First Attempt looked something like this: I would take all the information I gathered, pass it on to other general service workers, and maybe read a little bit of it myself. I’d rationalize that I didn’t need to deeply inform myself because I “trusted them to do the right thing.” And that worked great – right up until they did something I didn’t agree with. Then, the resentment was back.

My Next Attempt was a little better: I passed on all the information, and I actually read it all myself. But then, I sat back and watched others. I watched them either not pass it on, or pass it on and not read it. I’d rationalize that “it’s all in God’s hands,” but deep down, I was playing the martyr. I resented the uninformed members, mostly because I felt they didn’t appreciate all the hard work I was putting in.

My Last Attempt – the one I am practicing today – looks different. Today, I get informed. But I don’t just dump raw data and information onto the groups and expect them to care. If we just dump data on them, they will tune out.

Instead, I try to help put some context to the information. I try to explain why it is important, how it impacts the alcoholic who still suffers, and why their Higher Power needs to be present in their discussions and decisions. When I am clear on how the 12 Steps work in our service structure, I can be a helpful part of the discussion without portraying myself as some kind of authority just because of my experience, my sobriety time, or my service position.

I am still a work in progress on this last attempt. But like all things in AA, when I ask for help, I get a lot of it.

I have an amazing fellowship and incredible general service members in Area 92 who are committed to helping me be prepared for this year’s conference. Our past delegates, elected and appointed officers, DCMs, Alt-DCMs, district chairs, GSRs, and everyday AA members are stepping up to the tasks at hand.

I also want to highlight our technology servants. They are doing the heavy lifting to open the doors for all AA members to be informed and have a voice – whether that’s through our website, our communication platforms, online meetings, or hybrid assemblies and quarterlies. They are keeping us connected. Our standing committees are focused on taking action rather than just talking about taking action.

I am so deeply privileged to be a part of my Homegroup, District, Area, the Pacific Region, and Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole.

Sometimes, the hardest thing for me to express is the sheer depth of my gratitude for AA. My father died with 33 years of sobriety. Because of this program, I got to experience what it was like growing up in a drinking alcoholic home, and later, what it was like to grow up in a sober alcoholic home. I have other family members with more sobriety, and family members with less sobriety than me.

I owe my life, my family, and my sanity to Alcoholics Anonymous. We do this service work, we share this information, and we try to communicate better for one simple, absolute truth:

No one deserves to die of this disease.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for your service.