March 20th, 2026
401-438-8860
Unity
Tradition 4 – Long Form
Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence, we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
Group Anniversaries
Fri March 27th No. Kingstown- STEP INTO LIFE-Mt. Veron Masonic Lodge, 1515 Ten Rod Rd. 21st Anniversary. 7PM Guest Speaker and Buffet.
Sat. April 4th Attleboro, MA- HONEST WOMEN TRYING– Murray Universalist Church, 505 No. Main St., 10AM- 11:15 AM. (20th Anniversary) Breakfast , Speakers , and Raffles
Sat. April 4th Warwick- TRANQUILITY– St Paul’s Lutheran Church, 389 Greenwich Ave. (50th Anniversary) 10AM. Guest Speaker and Buffett
Wed. April 15th Gloucester/Chepachet- NEW FREEDOM-St Eugene’s Church, 1251 Putnam Pike, (45th Anniversary) 7PM Food/ Fellowship Guest Speakers 8PM.
Fri. April 17th Westerly- WESTERLY FRIDAY NIGHT – Westerly Senior Center, 39 State St. (79th Anniversary). Guest Speakers at 7PM with dinner to Follow
Mon. April 27st Warwick-NEW WAY OF LIFE-St Paul’s Lutheran Church, 389 Greenwich Ave (52st Anniversary) 7PM Guest Speakers & Refreshments
Mon. April 27th Attleboro, MA- JEWELRY CITY– Murray Universalist Church, 505 N. Main St., (72nd Anniversary). 7:30PM Guest Speaker and Buffett
Fri. May 1st Lincoln- FOOTPRINTS– Lincoln Woods State Park 2 Manchester Print Works Rd., ( At Gazebo) 7 AM (12th Anniversary) Followed by May Breakfast
Sat-. May 2nd Kingston– KINGSTON SATURDAY NIGHT-St. Augustine’s Church,15 Lower College Rd. (51st Anniversary) 7:30PM Meeting Guest Group/Buffet to follow.
Group Changes
Lincoln- FOOTPRINTS– has reopened for the season. Lincoln Woods State Park 2 Manchester Print Works Rd., (At Gazebo) 7 AM Daily
Disbanded Groups
Warren- SERENITY BY THE BAY– St Alexander’s Church, 221 Main St., Saturdays at 7:30PM
New Groups
Westerly- 24 HOURS A DAY MORNING MEETING-Open Literature/ Discussion. Franklin Lodge, 20 Elm St., Daily at 7:30 AM
West Warwick- ONE DAY AT A TIME– Open Discussion. Anchor Recovery Center, 1229 Main St., Wednesdays at 7PM
One Day / One Night Only
Providence-BOOZE BUSTERS– St. Augustine’s Church, 635 Mt Pleasant Ave. will not meet on Saturday, April 4th
Kingston-KINGSTON SATURDAY NIGHT– St Augustine’s Church, 15 Lower College Rd. will not meet on Saturday, April 4th
Portsmouth-SUNDAY MORNING– will meet at Tremblay’s Restaurant, 504 Park Ave.on Sunday, April 19th at 11AM
Service
R.I.C.S PI/DUI Committee is recruiting a pool of Volunteer Speakers willing to occasionally share at State Driver Retraining Classes. We will be answering requests from all CCRI Campuses (Lincoln, Warwick, Newport and Providence). If you would like to volunteer for this vital service or would like more information please contact Gordon E. at Gordone1256@gmail.com or call the Central Service Office
RI CENTRAL SERVICE Treatment & ACCESSIBILITIES Committee will once again provide AA meetings for both the Detox Unit and the Dual Diagnosis Unit at Roger Willams Hospital. Any Groups or Individual member willing to provide AA Speakers for a monthly commitment please contact RI Central Service
RI Central Service is always in the process of up-dating our 12-STEP LIST. Anyone willing to be added to the list should contact their Group Secretary or call Central Service. “When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there and for that I am responsible
The next regular meeting for Central Service Delegates will be held Via Zoom on Wednesday, April15th, 2026, at 7:00 PM. Zoom Meeting ID: 312 255 2726 – Password Meeting ID and links will be sent to all registered Central Service Delegates
We need volunteers to help with our monthly mailing – takes less than one hour. The next mailing will take place at Central Service, 1005 Waterman Ave, E. Providence Wednesday, March 22nd, 2026, at 9AM
The Area 61 Treatment and Accessibilities Committee (TAC) is looking for groups to share their experience, strength and hope across RI in various treatment and detox facilities. Please visit the “Treatment and Accessibilities“ sub-committee page on AAinRI.com (found under the “Area 61 Subcommittees” button in the main navigation bar) and click the “Submit Group Interest in Facility Commitment” button to see facilities in need of commitments. Please complete the required fields in the form and submit. A TAC member will respond within 72 hours with available day/time openings for the facilities
So RI Intergroup is always looking for members willing to volunteer to do 12 Step Work. Manning the Office, Answering Phones, Rides, as well as people wanting to become involved in Committee Work. There are several Opportunities for Service Available Contact So RI Intergroup at 401-739-8777 for more information
***Please note the deadline for submitting any information for the next today is Friday, April 17th, 2026
Recovery
RICS will sponsor a virtual “OPEN MIC NIGHT NITE” Saturday May 2nd Starting at 8PM. Zoom Meeting ID: 856 8703 0297 Passcode:891419 Anyone interested in performing or needing more information should contact Austin D Email: 1wholestep@gmail.com
Central Service will sponsor our annual RICS Golf Scramble on Monday, June 29th.at the Swansea Country Club299 Market St., Swansea, $145 per person includes Greens fees, Carts, Golf balls, Prizes, Continental Breakfast, Snacks and great BBQ Chicken and Ribs Lunch Registrations have been sent to all registered group secretaries or are available at the office
All sorts of outfits have tried to move in on us, including communists and heroin addicts, prohibitionists and do-gooders of other persuasions. Nearly all of these people, who happened to have an individual problem with alcohol, not only failed to change AA, but, in the long run, AA changed them. I have a number of them among my closest friends today, and they are among the best AAs I know.
Bill W., March 1972
Print PDF Copy Of Today
*Please Check this Page regularly for Changes / Updates indicated by green print
Tradition Four
Volume 9 Issue 3
August 1952
“Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.”
AUTONOMY is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us, it means very simply that every AA group can manage its affairs exactly as it pleases, except when AA as a whole is threatened. Comes now the same question raised in Tradition One. Isn’t such liberty foolishly dangerous?
Over the years every conceivable deviation from our Twelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That was sure to be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individualists. Children of chaos, we have defiantly played with every brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and, we think, wiser. These very deviations created a vast process of trial and error which, under the grace of God, has brought us to where we stand today.
When AA’s Traditions were first published in 1945, we had become sure that an AA group could stand almost any amount of battering. We saw chat the group, exactly like the individual, must eventually conform to whatever tested principles would guarantee survival. We had discovered that there was perfect safety in the process of trial and error. So confident of this had we become that the original statement of AA tradition carried this significant sentence: “Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety-may call themselves an AA group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.”
This meant, of course, that we had been given the courage to declare each AA group an individual entity, strictly reliant on its own conscience as a guide to action. In charting this enormous expanse of freedom we found it necessary to post only two storm signals. A group ought not do anything which would greatly injure AA as a whole, nor ought it affiliate itself with anything or anybody else. There would be real danger should we commence to call some groups “wet,” others “dry,” still others “Republican” or “Communist,” and yet others “Catholic” or “Protestant.” The AA group would have to stick to its course or be hopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In all other respects there was perfect freedom of will and action. Every group had the right to be wrong.
When AA was still young, lots of eager groups were forming. In a town we’ll call Middleton, a real crackerjack had started up. The townspeople were hot as firecrackers about it. Star-gazing, the elders dreamed of innovations. They figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, a kind of pilot plant AA groups could duplicate eve1ywhere. Beginning on the ground floor there would be a club; in the second story they would sober up drunks and hand them currency for their back debts; the third deck would house an educational project. Quite noncontroversial, of course. In imagination the gleaming center was to go up several stories more, but three would do for a start. This would all take a lot of money… other people’s money. Believe it or not, wealthy townsfolk bought the idea.
There were, though, a few conservative dissenters among the alcoholics. They wrote the Foundation, AA’s headquarters in New York, wanting to know about this sort of streamlining. They understood that the elders, just to nail things down good, were about to apply to the Foundation for a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.
Of course there \vas a promoter in the deal. . .a super-promoter. By his eloquence he allayed all fears, despite advice from the Foundation that it could issue no charter, and that ventures which mixed an AA group up with medication and education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To make things safer, the promoter organized three corporations and became president of them all. Freshly painted, the new center shone. The warmth of it all spread through the town. Soon things began to hum. To insure foolproof, continuous operation, 61 rules and regulations were adopted.
But alas, this bright scene was not long in darkening. Confusion replaced serenity. It was found that some drunks yearned for education, but doubted if they were alcoholics. The personality defects of others could be cured maybe with a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was just a question of taking care of the
- lonely Sometimes the swarming applicants would go for all three floors. Some would start at the top and come through to the bottom, becoming club members, others started in the club, pitched a binge, were hospitalized, then graduated to education on the third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all right, but unlike a beehive, it was confusion compounded. An AA group, as such, simply couldn’t handle this sort of a project. All too lace that was discovered. Then came the inevitable explosion… something like chat day the boiler burst in Wombley’s Clapboard Factory. A chill choke-damp of fear and frustration fell over the group.
When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter wrote the Foundation office. He said he wished he’d paid some attention to AA experience. Then he did something
. else that was to become an AA classic. It all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover read: “Middleton Group No. One. Rule No. 62.” Once the card was unfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to the eye: “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously.”
Thus it was chat under Tradition Four an AA group had exercised its right to be wrong. Moreover, it had performed a great service for Alcoholics Anonymous, because it had been humbly willing to apply the lessons it learned. It had picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to better things. Even the chief architect, standing in the ruins of his dream, could laugh at himself. . .and that is the very acme of humility.
Bill W, 1952, in the Grapevine
This has been reprinted with permission from the Grapevine Inc.