One of the oldest continuously running Young People's AA groups in the state of Minnesota, is the Thursday Night Young Peoples' AA Group, affectionately known as TNYPAA (pronounced Tin E Pa). This article describes how the group has survived for nearly a half-century.
TNYPAA will celebrate its 49th anniversary in June 2025. The group officially started in December of 1975. However, it wasn't registered as an AA group until six months later. When we think about a particular group of people in AA, young people don't jump to the top of the list as the most committed or responsible. In fact, the trend for YPAA meetings is they start off with a lot of enthusiasm but slowly dissipate over time until finally the group folds. So, how did this group beat the odds? What did they do that kept the group running for so many years.
One of the key cornerstones of the group has been service. When the group started in 1975, the founding members understood that their survival was dependent upon others coming to the group. Although not a one of them had read the book Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book) at that time, they instinctively understood this AA axiom, "We alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone." (BB Appendix I, The A.A. Tradition, p.561)
Thus, they set out to let others know about the group. The founding members went on talk radio shows, they wrote newspaper articles, they spoke in treatment centers, they sponsored newcomers who in turn sponsored more newcomers. They went into Detox and spoke to people there. They kept service work at the forefront of their efforts for they intuitively understood what Bill W. discovered so many years earlier in a hotel lobby in Akron, Ohio, “You need another alcoholic to talk to. You need another alcoholic just as much as he needs you!” (Question and Answers on Sponsorship, pg. 7).
The members of TNYPAA understood the importance of having fun in sobriety. People are gung-ho for the program when they have probation officers, judges and therapists hanging over them, but once the pain and consequences subside what keeps them coming back? TNYPAA members knew that euphoria and intoxication were alluring. They also knew that if they didn't offer a healthy, sober alternative to parties, members would begin to backslide. So, they focused on the fellowship aspect of the program.
At first, fellowship was nothing more than going out to coffee after the meeting. Soon, it morphed into game night where TNYPAA members played cards and held late night Risk games. As the meeting grew, they started hosting sober dances and movie nights. They started going to comedy shows, baseball games and live theater. In the summer there were softball games and beach parties, and in the fall, there were touch football games. Founding members attended the International Conference of Young People in AA and they would make annual trips to the newly founded Gopher State Roundup and the New Year's Eve ALKATHON. Many in the group would exclaim that they never knew sobriety could be so much fun.
As an off shoot of all these fellowship activities, the members of TNYPAA started meeting on Saturday nights. The meetings started off as very informal gatherings with members getting together to decide what to do that evening. Eventually, someone suggested that they start another YPAA meeting. Thus, the Saturday Night Young People in AA (SNYPAA) (pronounced Sin E Pa) started in 1980. It was an Open AA meeting inviting all those who were young, or young at heart and who had a desire to stop drinking. 45 years later the meeting is still going.
A year after the SNYPAA meeting started, members from both YPAA groups started attending classes at the local university. Quickly upon arriving they noticed that one of the favorite activities of the college students was drinking. The YPAA members said to themselves, “What better way to carry the message of AA to our fellow students, than to start an AA meeting right here on campus.” Thus, the Campus AA meeting formed right in the heart of the University. It was a very successful meeting that had students, faculty and staff all in attendance. No titles like doctor or professor were used in the meeting. Members would just introduce themselves by saying, “My name is ___________ and I’m an alcoholic.”
With great growth comes great pain. Ecclesiastes 1:18, states, "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief". This was especially true for TNYPAA. It seemed like the more people the group attracted, the more its problems grew. Turnover was high, home group members found other groups, and the group kitty was pilfered every few months. Members started using the group as a dating service and the focus of the group shifted from unity, recovery, and service to fellowship. Meetings consisted of the topic du jour and resembled pseudo group therapy sessions. The room was blue with language and smoke. The meeting was more of a mess than a message.
Despite these growing pains, the group survived. At times membership was low and the basket had to be passed more than once in a meeting to make rent, but it endured. How?
Group members knew that their survival and the group’s survival were inextricably intertwined. If they were to survive, the group had to survive and vice versa.
Group members got back to basics and started carrying the AA message into treatment centers, schools and universities. They took meetings into institutions and hospitals. They got involved with service through their local Intergroup. They changed the group format from whatever was on someone’s mind to a study of AA literature, e.g., the “Big Book”, “12 Steps and 12 Traditions” and “As Bill Sees It.”
One of the major changes the group went through was reaching out to AA members who were older in age and sobriety. They encouraged them to start attending their meeting. As one member described it, “Having a young person with 60-days of sobriety try to teach a young newcomer how to stay sober wasn’t the best formula for success. It was akin to the blind leading the blind. By having older AA members in our meeting it gave us stability, reliability and a source of wisdom we could draw upon.”
A few years ago, a person arrived at the TNYPAA meeting just a few minutes before it started. He asked if this was the Young Peoples’ meeting. Members responded it was and that he was welcome. They asked if he had been to the meeting before and he responded, “Yes. Twenty years ago.” TNYPAA members knew their longevity was paying off.
TNYPAA was one of the first groups in Minnesota to openly address the problem of sexual predation within AA groups. Members felt strongly about protecting the vulnerable who walk into the rooms of the fellowship. Members sent in a petition to ask the General Service Office (GSO) to establish “Safety Guidelines for AA” a whole two years before GSO published the “Safety Card for A.A. Groups.”
Today the group is as active in service as they were 49 years ago. Group members focus on giving back freely that which was given to them. The group emphasizes sponsorship and getting in the middle of the service triangle of Unity, Recovery, and Service. As one member is fond of saying, “If you’re in the middle, you can’t fall off the edge.” Ultimately, group members understand viscerally, emotionally and intellectually, that nothing will so “insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.” (BB pg. 89)