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Alcoholics Anonymous is no longer a fellowship of men and women, as used to be reassuringly stated at the start of every meeting.

It’s now a “fellowship of people,” because AA is embracing gender ideology, attempting to increase ethnic membership, and is bringing in a new safeguarding policy that has already taken aim at men with criminal convictions.

This fall, it will publish a Plain Language version of the Big Book, in which words are changed for “gender balance” and the program “made accessible to fifth grade reading level.”

It’s hard to think of an organization more likely to lose every ounce of its usefulness once wokeness gets to work on it.

When they have finished polishing up the messy business of getting sober to bring it into the age of hurt feelings, and made roomfuls of drunks “safe” and “equal” by today’s definition, it’s hard to imagine what will be left.

Moreover, the erosion of gritty old AA in candlelit backrooms may well happen by stealth unless more members like me break their anonymity to tell the wider world what is going on, risking a form of ostracizing akin to what happens to Scientologists who break ranks.

Traditionally, of course, what happens in meetings should stay in meetings. But when criminals who have done their time are banned under the guise of keeping women safe from possible future harm, Minority Report-style, secrecy is not the best option.

People who don’t go to AA blithely assume, I think, that it is old-fashioned and unchanging. In fact, it is changing just as much as any other organization, it’s just that its members aren’t allowed to talk about the lunacy being enacted, and all public debate is stifled, effectively, under the anonymity principle.

Having been sober 23 years and a constant attendee in all that time, I was dismayed when I encountered in Surrey, England, what turned out to be a concerted attempt from the “top” of AA GB to force a politically correct agenda on the membership in a way that ought not to be possible under its bottom-up structure, by which the grassroots membership is meant to decide everything, and a form of benign anarchy is meant to prevail.

I must point out, having reached out to AA World Services in New York, that they distance themselves from a lot of what is happening in Britain, and when I talk to my friends in America they often say, “British AA has lost the plot.”

But if that is the case, World Services might want to consider intervening to protect its brand, because it was an American pioneer who first invented this, and it is arguably one of America’s finest-ever exports.

Specifically, I discovered that a question was corporately staged at AA’s 57th general service conference in York, England, in April 2023, to promote safeguarding.

This conference, incidentally, also agonized about how to encourage more alcoholics from ethnic minorities because the membership of AA “is predominantly white.”

A debate noted the need to explore “the barriers to entry” for black and Asian people. Well, the main barrier to entry is Muslims not being allowed to drink by their own culture, I would have thought. So unless they’re suggesting we get religiously teetotal people drunk in order to then get them into AA, they should let that disparity go.

Leaving that lunacy aside, I was leaked an email trail in which the general secretary of AA GB instructs a grassroots member many months ahead of this conference, in contravention of all AA practice, on the wording and tabling of a question on the need for “safeguarding officers” in meetings.

“Just added a couple of things and amended slightly…please submit later on today if possible. With much thanks and gratitude. LIF,” writes the general secretary, with LIF being a coded sign-off meaning Love in Fellowship.

In the event, the idea met with little enthusiasm among delegates. The only decision reached was that it was up to individual groups, and even that did not gain the two-thirds majority needed to enforce it. But the debate convinced a lot of people that this was the way things were going.

When safeguarding officers then started appearing, apparently spontaneously from the membership, people accepted them. And when one that I encountered started issuing edicts, breaching AA’s hallowed third tradition (the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking), that was almost overwhelmingly accepted too.

This is nothing less than the unraveling of what stockbroker Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith invented nearly a hundred years ago in the Midwest, after Bill didn’t want to drink in the bar of The Mayflower Hotel, Akron, one night and reached for the phone, and was put in touch with fellow drinker Bob, through a series of amazing coincidences.

Learning that two drunks can keep each other in remission by talking and helping others like themselves, often going into unsafe situations to do so, they began the ever-expanding miracle of AA.

It has lasted so long both because it is so loose in its rules, and because, in terms of its central beliefs, it trades on moral certainties. I would argue it is still firmly rooted in Christian principles. Twelve Steps based on moral and spiritual aims, with promises at the end similar to those in the Bible. Twelve traditions that clearly set out that anyone can come, and members must never cast anyone out, no matter how difficult their behavior.

So what happens when those moral certainties and Christian principles are called into question by trendy secularism, by wokeism, and by a concern for safeguarding women not just from potential harm, but from hurt feelings, at the cost of an open-door policy that has always allowed felons and troublemakers access because that is the whole point?

I first became aware of the changing tone a few years ago, when the preamble started being adapted in meetings to get rid of “men and women.” I noticed a lot more members than usual were closing meetings by inviting people to join them in the serenity prayer “using the word God as they understood Him, Her, It, or Them.” So stupid.

I heard the main speaker at one meeting say, “I would like to tell you what happened to me as a child, but I don’t want to trigger anybody. I’ve been told not to share it.”

Of course, this is the way the world is going. But if you can’t share your darkest trauma in a self-help group, where can you share it?

Meanwhile, the rewrite of the Big Book has produced less a plain language version, from the leaked excerpts I’ve seen, and more a plain stupid version.

To make it “gender balanced” they have made a metaphorical mention of a jaywalker female, for no reason.

The original text is poetry. “War fever ran high in the New England town…’ is one of the best openings to any book. They say the simple version is needed because of falling literacy levels. In which case, why bother with any book?

But the worst part is the drive to protect women from encounters with men in what is arguably the most obviously unsuitable place for any woman, or man, to search for dates. No one should do it, and if you do get involved romantically with a fellow member, expect disaster and you won’t be disappointed. And yet…

Around the time of coming back to meetings after lockdown, a year before that question started being arranged for the 2023 conference, a member I knew began to be informed he was being banned from meetings—eventually over a dozen—because he was allegedly flirting with women, and because he had previous convictions relating to women. These were nonviolent and related to long-term partners.

A member calling himself “the safeguarding officer,” and whose name eventually turned up on that email exchange about the conference with the general secretary—surprise, surprise—issued a “safeguarding alert” about the banned member to 200 meetings in two counties warning women not to give out their phone number. Hysteria broke out. The banned member was verbally and physically attacked in meetings.

I fought the man’s corner, and without naming anyone but myself, I wrote about the need to defend the ability of convicted criminals to access meetings, as long as they didn’t disrupt them on the night.

So ended my unquestioning loyalty to the fellowship, for which I incurred the wrath of AA. I was approached by members at meetings and told I was considered “a problem.” I received lengthy emails from the chairman of AA GB containing pious lectures about behavior.

“What is this, Scientology? The Amish?” I kept asking, incredulous. In fact, both those organizations would behave much better. At one point a friend rang me and told me that a senior member of the board had called me a “nut job” in remarks that had gone round like wildfire. My response: “Of course I’m a nut job. I’m in AA.”

Attempting to cleanse its meetings of difficult people is obviously bad business for Alcoholics Anonymous. There will be no one left in meetings.

I should add that up until now, the history of AA is remarkably void of violence, nor have there ever been reports of incidents of prejudice.

The meetings have always policed themselves well, and they continue to do so, mostly oblivious, with the majority of the membership unwilling or unable to question what is changing.

For those long enough sober to look into it, a new safeguarding policy document reads like a child has written it, and the number of banned members grows. They include, most shamefully, a schizophrenic lady in London who had been attending for years but was voted out permanently a few months ago after she shouted at someone during an obvious breakdown.

It is so often the irony that wherever you have an organization that is banging on about inclusivity and the need to protect feelings, there you will find the most exclusive membership policy, the worst infighting, and a good deal of hurt.