Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net

The rule is everyone goes and no one talks about what happens inside the walls.

It is a very well known AA meeting.

The biggest of the big celebrities attend, but homeless people and those scratching on a daily basis to get by are there too.

It is the great equalizer and everyone knows the rules.

Apparently the permanent A list mostly movie actor got tired of those rules though and tried to ban everyone who wasn’t famous and then tried to get people to stop attending and instead have the meeting at his place.

The actor is not well liked for his actions.

Brad Pitt

Did Brad Pitt break the first rule of AA — by talking about AA?

Brad Pitt is on top of his game, professionally, with two major films out this awards season. Emotionally, he also seems to be in a good place, opening up in interviews about how his bitter, high-profile divorce from Angelina Jolie forced him to stop drinking.

In his latest interview with the New York Times, Pitt goes a bit further in describing his recovery process. The star of “Ad Astra” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” discloses that he “spent a year and a half” in Alcoholic Anonymous, where he was part of an all-male recovery group that helped him learn to better process his feelings and be more authentic with himself and others.

“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard,” 55-year-old Pitt told the New York Times. “It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.”

Pitt’s work on himself sounds admirable. So does his willingness to let his fans know that his glamorous movie star life wasn’t always so great — that he had a common problem shared by millions of regular people, and that he took steps to address it.

But anyone familiar with the basic tenets of AA will wonder if the “Fight Club” star opened up a bit too much — by saying he was in AA.

The international recovery fellowship has “anonymous” in its title for a reason. The 11th of its 12 traditions states: “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.”

For members, especially celebrities, this usually means that it’s OK to talk publicly about overcoming an addiction or being in recovery — but they should avoid affiliating themselves with Alcoholics Anonymous.

The 11th tradition isn’t a hard-and-fast rule — and AA won’t kick Pitt out for violating it — but those writing in the comments section of the Times profile felt the actor needed a reminder that another tradition says: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions.”

“Great that Brad wants to share his story of recovery (and he seems like a sincere person), but he is violating a basic tenet of AA here,” one commenter wrote. “Members are specifically asked to maintain anonymity at the level of ‘press, radio, or film.’ It’s a fundamental spiritual principle that helps the program function. Thanks for sharing, buddy.”

Co-founder Bill Wilson wrote in 1946 how anonymity is a concept that goes beyond maintaining the confidentiality of people one encounters in meetings — a practice that no doubt relieved Pitt of the fear that his personal secrets would wind up in the tabloids.

Anonymity also is a way for people in recovery to check the ego and arrogance that kept them drinking self-destructively, Wilson said. Staying anonymous encourages humility, a necessary component for recovery, he added.

“The word ‘anonymous’ has for us an immense spiritual significance,” Wilson wrote. “Subtly but powerfully, it reminds us that we are always to place principles before personalities; that we have renounced personal glorification in public; that our movement not only preaches but actually practices a true humility.”

This is a message that should be heeded by newly sober people who want “oodles of accolades simply because they’ve stopped self-destructing,” a writer, using a pseudonym, said in a 2015 post for the recovery site The Fix. The post asked, “What the Heck Does Anonymity Mean?”

An AA member told The Fix: “I don’t resent celebrities who declare their recoveries in AA publicly, but I do think it’s a foolish thing to do. They position themselves as the representatives of AA, so that when they relapse (as so many of them do), they may give some people the impression that AA doesn’t work.” – Source


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