Despite having a strong SA community in my region, the Fellowship here is facing a serious problem that I believe could one day lead to disaster.

For over six years we’ve had a member who says he has a psychiatric disorder that requires psychiatric and pharmacological care. However, he has told us he has not received adequate professional care for many years. His displays of rage, including threats of physical violence, have increased to a point where he is literally holding hostage the SA Fellowship in this area. To be in a meeting when he has an outburst of rage is a truly frightening experience. He has even threatened some members with physical harm.

This member’s behavior poses two problems. The first is obvious: this behavior clearly destroys the safe haven the meeting is supposed to provide. The second is not so obvious, but even more frustrating—trying to find a practical, fair solution in an atmosphere where other members come to the “rageaholic’s” defense. At a group conscience called immediately after the rageaholic used highly offensive language and threatened the physical well-being of a member during a regularly scheduled meeting, another member said the rageaholic was within his right to share as he wished as long as it helped keep him sober!

Share?! Sober?!

The rageaholic, who has not stayed sober for more than a couple of months at a time in years, is harming not only the group, but the regional Fellowship.

Tradition One says: “Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon SA unity.” One interpretation reads: “Our individual sobriety depends on the group. The group depends on us. We soon learn that unless we curb our individual desires, impulses and ambitions, we can damage the group.” (The Twelve Traditions Illustrated, Copyright 1971. AA World Services Literature.)

The AA publication continues: “Our brother the noisy drunk affords the simplest illustration of this tradition. If he insists on disrupting the meeting, we ‘invite’ him to leave, and we bring him back when he is in a better shape to hear the message of recovery. We are putting the common welfare first. But it is his welfare, too; if he is ever going to get sober, the group must go on functioning ready for him.”

In fact, the real loving and caring SA approach should not be one of enabling. It is precisely one of those cases we learn about in the press every day when it is already too late.