Spinning the Wheel of Humanity

How changing AA commitments reveals the beautiful, messy, and sometimes hilarious nature of service and recovery

Last Wednesday night, we changed commitments at my Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) home group. What’s a commitment? And how do you change them?

(I’m not answering What’s a home group?” because if you’re a long-term reader, you should know by now. Ok, scroll to the bottom for the answer. :-) )

A commitment is a chore you are responsible for in your home group, usually for six months, although some commitments may last two years. (Each home group has its own rules and regulations.) The commitments can be simple, like greeting people at the door, making coffee, putting away the chairs at the end of the meeting, or more complicated, like representing your home group at the AA district meeting. (Please don’t ask me, “What is a district meeting?” I’m almost 14 years sober and haven’t yet grasped what goes on there. It’s on my recovery To Do list.)

Any member of the home group is eligible for a commitment. However, commitments that involve a higher level of responsibility, such as being the treasurer, have a “time requirement.” You can’t be five days sober and then handle all our Seventh Tradition¹ money. We believe in the power of redemption, but we are not stupid. But you can be five days sober and make coffee. Or fold chairs at the end of the meeting. In fact, we encourage it!

We break up these chores into the smallest jobs possible. For example, there’s a commitment to bring the cookies and there’s a commitment to brew the coffee when clearly one person could do both. Why? So that all members of the home group have the opportunity to be of service.

Having a commitment at a home group is one of the safety nets put in place to help keep us sober. Service to the home group means accountability. Accountability helps you show up at the meeting. The meeting keeps you sober.

There have been many nights when I’ve been sprawled on my couch and had not wanted to peel myself away from our latest TV binge for a meeting. But the fact that I am responsible for some small part of the meeting, such as tech host for Zoom, usually forces me up and out the door. And I’m ALWAYS happy to have gone to a meeting. It’s like going to the gym. You rarely want to go, but you always feel better after you have.

(By the way, despite having a membership to our local Y, I never go. Maybe I need a commitment at the gym. I think I just created a new business idea.)

Plus, all these chores keep the meeting running. Whenever I think cranky thoughts like “We don’t need greeters” or “People can bring their own coffee,” I think about what would happen if one of my kids needed recovery. Wouldn’t I want this meeting still running so they can find their way in and find hope?

Despite being grumpy about staying late to switch commitments, I love our commitment swap. It’s fucking humanity at its best, man. Someone once shared from the podium that if aliens came down and said take me to the place that best represents the human race, you could take them to an AA meeting. And I felt that.

Here’s how it works: Every six months at our home group’s business meeting (I’ll answer “What’s a business meeting?” in another post), we settle in our aluminum chairs to give up our previously held commitments and volunteer for new ones.

Since I’ve been a member in 2011, our home group has gone through various iterations of how we do this. We used to nominate people. But that became a popularity contest which goes against the tenets of AA. The disheveled loner in the corner needs the greeter commitment way more than the shiny, happy, three-year-sober dad. So we stopped doing that and started putting names in a hat. But then the pandemic came, and we switched our method to accommodate our virtual meeting. Even though we are now hybrid, we’ve kept our new system. We spin a wheel of names.

Our leader stands at the podium and describes the commitment and time requirements. Then, you raise your hand if you’d like to volunteer. Oftentimes, this is encouraged with a strong elbow jab from your sponsor. Your name gets entered into the wheel, along with all the other “voluntolds,” and tick tick tick tick, the wheel spins. My friend A. announces the “winner,” and we all applaud. I think I’ve mentioned before that there is a lot of applause in AA meetings.

This ritual performed every six months is such a strange mix of silliness, reluctant responsibility, lofty ideals, good-natured ribbing, and willingness to stay sober while still dragging feet. Like I said, it’s a showcase of humanity, and oh man, I love it so much.

For example, the tattooed, pierced punker who never wanted the frigging celebration cake commitment in the first place has settled into his cake duties and doesn’t want to give it up now that he’s perfected it. And the middle-aged mom who you’d think could handle this responsibility in her sleep all of sudden gets panicked about choosing a cake, and asks the tattooed dude fretful questions like: “Where should I get the cake? Chocolate or yellow? Buttercream or cream cheese frosting?”

By the way, the cake commitment is serious business. A good cake is a necessity at a celebration, and people have opinions. We sober folks don’t have much left, but we do still have sugar.

This past Wednesday, I gave up the Grapevine commitment I’ve had for six months. What’s Grapevine? Grapevine is AA’s International Journal that provides inspiring stories, books, and publications to help AA members achieve sobriety. Not to brag, but I have been published in its monthly magazine. :-) For my commitment, at our monthly business meetings, I would report on Grapevine’s current calls for submission, announce their new publications, and any promos or sales they were having. I even helped a friend submit a story on amends. (We are still waiting to hear if he got accepted!) As a writer, it’s the perfect commitment for me, but now it’s time to give it to someone else. That person will do a great job as well. For the next six months, I’m in charge of the cookies. And I’m starting to stress. Do I bring store-bought or homemade? Do I need gluten-free options? What about vegan cookies? Oh goodness!

One last side note before I wrap up. Last week, as we left the commitment swap, my friend L. said goodbye to me in the parking lot and said, “Liz, I always think of you when the Sponsee Liason commitment comes up.” “Yes,” I chuckled, remembering a funny moment we shared.

About eight years ago, during a commitment swap, L. and I happened to be sitting next to each other. She was newly sober and a nervous wreck. Her sponsor strongly suggested that she get a home group commitment.

L. was fretting about which one to raise her hand for. And I told her to go for Sponsee Liason. “It’s so easy. All you do is stand up before the meeting to indicate people should see you if they want a sponsor, but literally no one ever does! I had it and loved it. No one talks to you!”

I could see by the baffled look on her face that perhaps I shouldn’t have expressed these thoughts. In her mind, with my five years of sobriety under my belt, I shouldn’t be talking like this. I shouldn’t be encouraging her to find an easy commitment. When we both understood what was happening when she realized that I was like, “Oops, maybe I shouldn’t offered my flippant view of the commitment requirement to this newbie,” we both started laughing. And then, because when you’re not supposed to laugh, you laugh more, we laughed and laughed. And when you are in a room full of drunks that are there because their disease destroyed their life, and you can laugh? I mean, an honest, heartfelt belly laugh. That’s the best fucking feeling in the world.

Anyway, I gotta go Google some cookie recipes. Or maybe I’ll just buy some Oreos on my way to the meeting. The important thing is I show up.

What’s a Home group? It’s the meeting an AA attends every week, the one they don’t miss. It’s where you get a commitment and celebrate sober anniversaries. Read more at FAQs: A Beginner's Guide to AA and Find a Meeting, Find Hope.

Disclaimer: To err is human. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. I employ Grammarly, but mistakes happen. In this world of AI, they're my way of keeping things delightfully human.

1. AA’s Seventh Tradition states: “Every AA. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.” Volunteer contributions support the group and AA worldwide. A few bucks in the basket helps pay rent, cookies, literature, etc.