If you're like me, you shudder when you hear the phrase "This is a selfish program".

Usually this phrase will be followed with a statement about one's behavior - quite often, totally reasonable and unselfish behavior (to my way of thinking), but behavior that the speaker seems to feel guilty about, and thus wants to plead mitigation for because (as he was told) "this is a selfish program".

But a problem here is that newcomers hear this, and then go out and engage in some pretty selfish stuff, because somebody told them that "this is a selfish program". I've heard of folks telling their family members that they have to get rid of their booze or demanding other accomodations from their friends or employers, all because "this is a selfish program".

Now, as we've already discussed, selfishness is the problem, not the solution. And the Big Book itself tells me that I cannot recover at another person's expense - that's why the Fifth Step must be done with someone who will "understand, yet be unaffected", and the Ninth Step can't be done if it will injure the recipient, or a third party.

For a long time, I just sort of internally shook my head; while it's my responsibility to explain about this to anyone that I work with, it's not my job (and not my privilege) to chase anybody else down and explain it to them; besides, I've often noted that, if one thinks that they've been given a license to behave selfishly, it's difficult to derail that sort of thinking : )

But not too long ago, when this topic came up during a meeting, it suddenly hit me -

"And it come to me
It come like a flash
Like a vision burnt across the clouds" -- The Motorcycle Song (The Significance of the Pickle) - Arlo Guthrie

-- this can't be a selfish program, because it works.

The Big Book tells us, on page 60, what happens when we act out of selfishness - there's a whole paragraph of what I call "the signs and symptoms of self-will.  It says "what usually happens? The show doesn't come of very well....he becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying...is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?"

None of these things are what happen while we are avidly following the program - therefore, the program can't be selfish.

Contrariwise - if we think that we're "working the program" and these things happen AS A RESULT OF OUR EFFORTS, then we're off the beam entirely.

I'm glad we had this little talk :)