A letter/email from letter from Coda Ontario Intergroup dated April 18th, 2025 to the https://codatoronto.org Group of Codependents Anonymous who use the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to recover from codependency.
This email is to communicate to you that Motion #24063 entitled “New Outside Literature Policy: A New Definition of a CoDA Meeting” was passed at the CoDA Service Conference (CSC) held this past July. A CoDA Fellowship Announcement was sent out by CoDA World concerning this Motion.
CSC Motion #24063 ~ CoDA Conference endorsed literature
A new definition of a CoDA Meeting
Greetings to all worldwide members of the CoDA Fellowship …
At the 2024 CSC, Motion #24063 was presented by the CoDA Literature Committee (CLC). This motion was considered and accepted with a 2/3 majority, binding upon the Board to accept the motion unless it did not meet our legal or financial standards. The motion does meet these standards. [1]
We wish to provide the results of this motion and its effect on the Fellowship. Firstly, we express – briefly – the essence of the motion; afterwards, we provide more extensive details for those who wish to be more aware; the details are broken down into sections to facilitate reading and understanding. If you have questions or additional concerns, please feel free to contact us at board@coda.org.
The essence of CoDA Conference endorsed literature:
Motion #24063 now requires a new definition of a CoDA meeting due to a change to the policy regarding the use of ‘Outside Literature at CoDA Meetings’.
The major change as a result of this motion is that all CoDA groups, within the worldwide Fellowship, will only be able to use CoDA Conference endorsed literature during regular meetings. Outside literature will not be possible. The previous reference to CoDA groups being permitted – by informed group conscience – to use other outside literature is no longer permitted under any circumstances.
CoDA Fellowship Service Argument
A CoDA meeting is part of the twelve-step Fellowship, Co-Dependents Anonymous. Each CoDA group is made up of two or more people who come together because of their shared desire for healthy and loving relationships, with the primary purpose of carrying the message of Co-Dependents Anonymous to those who still suffer. CoDA meetings use The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Co-Dependents Anonymous as the basis for working the CoDA recovery program. In CoDA meetings, members share their personal experience, strength, and hope, gained by working the CoDA recovery program.
The use of Co-Dependents Anonymous, our basic text, and other CoDA Conference endorsed literature at meetings builds unity, trust, and shared welfare. This maintains continuity in the CoDA recovery message across all CoDA meetings. CoDA endorsed literature is written and endorsed by and for CoDA members. As such, it reflects the voice of the Fellowship of Co-Dependents Anonymous worldwide.
We find guidance in our Traditions, particularly Traditions One, Four, Six, and Twelve:
Tradition One: “Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon CoDA unity. Tradition One tells us that CoDA unity is our first spiritual principle.
CoDA’s shared welfare and unity are created by using a consistent format, readings, and literature across all meetings. This allows members to go to a meeting anywhere in the world and hear the same CoDA recovery message. Using outside literature can be divisive and is outside the scope of Co-Dependents Anonymous.
Tradition Four: “Each group should remain autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or CoDA as a whole.” Tradition Four states that groups have autonomy, but not at the expense of the rest of the Fellowship.
The use of outside literature creates confusion, particularly for the newcomer, regarding the nature of our program. It creates inconsistency across meetings, distracting from the CoDA message.
Tradition Six: “A CoDA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the CoDA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim.
“Tradition Six is clear. CoDA meetings must keep their focus on CoDA’s primary spiritual aim, as a place where suffering codependents can find recovery in the program of Co-Dependents Anonymous. Using outside literature in our meetings endorses and financially supports its author and their message instead of Co-Dependents Anonymous.
Tradition Twelve: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions; ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
It (non-Conference approved literature) creates inconsistency, confusion, and controversy and diverts us from our primary spiritual purpose. ”Tradition Twelve points us to CoDA Conference endorsed literature because our literature is written anonymously, by and for the CoDA Fellowship, and it places the principles found in CoDA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions first.
REBUTTAL TO CoDA Fellowship Service:
We alcoholics (addicts and especially codependents) are sensitive people. It takes some of us a long time to outgrow that serious handicap (liability). — A.A. p. 125
According to The Fellowship Service Manual of Co-Dependents Anonymous Part 1 disclaimer note on p. 7 and p. 8 of the “use of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after AA, but which address other problems, does not imply otherwise.”
If CoDA is patterned after the AA program, particularly the 12 Step Program for Recovery and the 12 Traditions for Unity, then it behooves us to examine the thoughts from the authors of the original 12 step program to point out how contradictory it is to posit threats of compliance and conformity as CoDa does in Motion #24063 from the 2024 CSC: Outside literature will not be possible. The previous reference to CoDA groups being permitted – by informed group conscience – to use other outside literature is no longer permitted under any circumstances.
This kind of discourse is a form of codependent bullying and intimidation.
According to Twelve Step foundational texts, “No A.A. can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery are suggestions; the Twelve Traditions which guarantee A.A.’s unity contain not a single “Don’t.” They repeatedly say, “We ought..” but never “You must!” —Twelve Steps Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous p. 129
“As we discovered the principles by which the individual alcoholic (addict) could live, so we had to evolve principles by which the A.A. groups and A.A. as a whole could survive and function effectively. It was thought that no alcoholic man or woman (or group) could be excluded from our Society; that our leaders might serve but never govern; that each group was to be autonomous and there was to be no professional class of therapy.” A.A. p. xix 4th Edition.
The irony of CoDA or Codependents Anonymous seems to teach what it needs to learn the most. Rather than encourage independence and inter-dependence, the fellowship would rather dictate compliance and conformity.
The Upside-Down Organization of CoDA points out that the groups are on top and the trustees at the bottom. Bill W. wrote in Concept I: “The A.A. groups today hold ultimate responsibility and final authority for our world services…”
Service committees ought to be making every effort to serve the individual groups, rather than making individual groups conform to service committee requirements, especially when such requirements impede our primary purpose: Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to other codependents who still suffer.
Tradition One: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon CoDA unity.
According to CoDA: shared welfare and unity are created by using a consistent format, readings, and literature across all meetings. This allows members to go to a meeting anywhere in the world and hear the same CoDA recovery message. Using outside literature can be divisive and is outside the scope of Co-Dependents Anonymous.
The irony here is CoDA seems very fear based… threatened by the original A.A. literature and its attendant principles that spawned hundreds of 12 Step based fellowships around the world including CoDA.
Tradition Three: The only requirement for membership in CoDA is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.
“…that we would neither punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, that we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything…The answer, now seen in Tradition Three, was simplicity itself. At last experience taught us that to take away any alcoholic’s full chance was sometimes to pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his own sick brother?” —AA, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, P. 141
Tradition Four: “Each group should remain autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or CoDA as a whole.”
According to CoDA: The use of outside literature creates confusion, particularly for the newcomer, regarding the nature of our program. It creates inconsistency across meetings, distracting from the CoDA message.
Tradition Four means a Group’s business answers to no other authority than its own Group conscious as specified in our Tradition Two: For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
Bill Wilson on Tradition Four: “With these concepts in mind, let us look more closely at Tradition 4. The first sentence of Tradition 4 guarantees each A.A. group local autonomy. With respect to its own affairs, the group may make any decisions, adopt any attitudes that it likes. No over-all or intergroup authority should challenge this primary privilege. We feel this ought to be so, even though the group might sometimes act with complete indifference to our tradition. For example, an A.A. group could, if it wished, hire a paid preacher and support him out of the proceeds of a group night club. Though such an absurd procedure would be miles outside our tradition, the group’s “right to be wrong” would be held inviolate. We are sure that each group can be granted, and safely granted, these most extreme privileges. We know that our familiar process of trial and error would summarily eliminate both the preacher and the night club. Those severe growing pains which invariably follow any radical departure from A.A. tradition can be absolutely relied upon to bring an erring group back into line. An A.A. group need not be coerced by any human government over and above its own members. Their own experience, plus A.A. opinion in surrounding groups, plus God’s prompting in their group conscience would be sufficient. Much travail has already taught us this. Hence we may confidently say to each group, “You should be responsible to no other authority than your own conscience.” —The Language of the Heart: Bill W’s Grapevine Writings. pp. 80-81
Tradition Six: A CoDA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the CoDA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim.
According to CoDA: “Tradition Six is clear. CoDA meetings must keep their focus on CoDA’s primary spiritual aim, as a place where suffering codependents can find recovery in the program of Co-Dependents Anonymous. Using outside literature in our meetings endorses and financially supports its author and their message instead of Co-Dependents Anonymous.
It seems to always come down the money aspect in 12 Step fellowships. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous reads quite well when you substitute terms and phrases related to alcohol, drinking and alcoholism with codependent thinking and acting out behaviours. To any codependent seeking to understand their problem and more important a spiritual-moral approach to solving it, the Big Book of A.A. is a great recovery text. Unfortunately CoDA can’t collect revenue on A.A. recovery texts so it needs to create its own literature to generate revenue streams above and beyond the voluntary contributions of its members.
Moreover, CoDA’s Tradition Six argument contradicts Tradition Five which states: “Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to other codependents who still suffer. “ The Tradition says “ITS MESSAGE,” that is the GROUP’S MESSAGE NOT ‘the message in the CoDA handbook, or the message of the Fellowship Service Conference.
Tradition Twelve: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions; ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
According to CoDA: It (non-Conference approved literature) creates inconsistency, confusion, and controversy and diverts us from our primary spiritual purpose. ”Tradition Twelve points us to CoDA Conference endorsed literature because our literature is written anonymously, by and for the CoDA Fellowship, and it places the principles found in CoDA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions first.
As a fellowship we don’t burn books. Just because literature is NOT Conference approved DOES NOT make it Conference disapproved. CoDA’s argument suggests that as CoDA members we’re inclined to view differences with our Groups and each other with animosity, confusion and division rather than love and tolerance for one another in the multitude of ways to be helpful to the codependent who is suffering.
Lastly…
Once again, CoDA panics in fear and hemorrhages tears of the martyr at the thought that any one CoDA Group walking on the “broad highway of recovery” should try a CoDA unapproved way to carry its message to the codependent who is still suffering without the expressed approval CoDA’s bleeding deacons, who’s battle cry is, “The Group must change to our way of thinking, otherwise we fear our identity is threatened.” CoDA could learn much from the relationship matrix below, and yes its non-conference approved.
What are your thoughts on this matter? Comments?
Another article on 12 Step Fundamentalism: https://bigbooksponsorship.org/spiritual-interventions-inside-a-a-s-fundamentalist-healing-program-of-faith-with-works/
Cameron,
I want to thank you for speaking up and sharing FACTS with world service CODA. This fellowship is very sick as I have had to start big book coda meetings and not be listed because many were dying in a diluted watered down version of the 12 steps. CODA’s response is not aligned with Bill W’s Vision for You chapter where it clearly states on page 159 a meeting for everyone and anyone to attend who wants a spiritual way of life.
You did the right thing by creating the fellowship you crave. Big book sponsorship has its own CODA meetings spearheaded by this fellowship using the 12 step Big Book Sponsorship Guide.
These very sick members in CODA, making unauthorized decisions and hurting the fellowship, will pay a very severe price for blocking God’s children from freedom and love. The spirit world is real. God always rights wrongs. This Spearhead will continue to sponsor codependents using the big book sponsorship workbook because it works.
As a codependent who goes into suicide/homicide mode when I can’t control the universe I would be dead without the big book, the BBSponsorship fellowship and you my trusted Sponsor.
Thank you for defending the truth and this program. Many codependents around the world owe their freedom to you and this program. Thank you Cameron for taking the time to let these monsters at world service CODA know they are DEAD WRONG!
Will pause, pray and run to God in hopes that truth with prevail.
Conference Steps, Traditions, and Concepts Committee:
Questions from the Fellowship
Question from the Fellowship (Committee Reference #2019-7):
It has been brought to my attention that our Intergroup wants to remove the word “codependents” from our meeting list on the SLAA website. I heard this was voted on. I’m wondering why one SLAA meeting has been able to list their meeting on the SLAA website as “Facing codependency in SLAA” for many years with no trouble or issues ever being brought up?
This, in my opinion, is becoming a personality above principles issue. For Intergroup to constantly harass our meeting is in violation of a few traditions.
Other meetings have been able to invite, support, and welcome codependents for years; why is this such a problem for our big book meeting?
This harassment needs to stop immediately. Intergroup is here to service the meetings, and this is not happening with our group.
If Intergroup is going to remove the word “codependent” from our meeting listing on the website, then other meetings must do the same. What is good for one must be good for all.
Response #1:
My simple response is that as a 12-step fellowship, SLAA adheres to Tradition 2, and hence FWS does not govern. This means FWS does not police the activities of any IG, intervene in their decisions, impose rules, or sanction for non-compliance.
Instead, I suggest the member attend the Intergroup meeting and advocate on behalf of the group to maintain their listing in its original form, if that’s what the majority of the group conscience wishes to do. All of us are but trusted servants; we do not govern.
Response #2:
Tradition Two states that the only authority is a loving higher power and that our higher power’s will is expressed through the group conscience. Our leaders (including the Intergroup officers) are trusted servants; they do not govern.
So the real question here is: Is this Intergroup attempting to govern by imposing its will on the group in question, telling them how they can and can’t conduct their meeting? Or is it carrying out the group conscience of its member groups by simply maintaining guidelines for how it lists meetings? It sounds to me like it could be a little of both…
Tradition Five states that our primary purpose is to carry the message to the sex and love addict who still suffers. In this case, could the group and the Intergroup set aside the idea of who’s right and who’s wrong, placing principles before personalities, and instead try to come to a compromise that furthers our primary purpose, carrying the S.L.A.A. message?
I am not a great historian, so I am offering my opinion as just one individual, personal experience as one of the remarkable number of early SLAA long-timers who are still present at today’s meetings. But in no way do I think my opinion matters more than any other one! I apologize in advance for the long preface below, so feel free to jump to the last three paragraphs. Or laugh at me and delete without reading at all.
When I was going through the huge spiritual and psychological crisis of finally achieving awareness that despite five years of solid A.A. sobriety and short rounds of ALANON, EA, and OA, I was deep in the swamp of addictive behavior and had just changed the location from bars to AA meetings. Two weeks and two contacts with an AA member who told me his story of sex and love addiction put me into one day at a time withdrawal. Going to an SLAA meeting put the stamp of certainty on my surrender to the pattern of sexual acting out that was my own, and which was now on my first bottom line. With a history of four marriages, three of them completely free of infidelity and a kind of “for better or else I am out of here” attitude, I identified with my obvious sex addiction, but not love addiction. At meetings, many SLAA members identified themselves as one or the other, not both, so it was comfortable for me to do that as well.
Some years passed before I recognized the denial that had covered up what was clearly love addiction (finally!), but only with the help of a sponsor who fired me and refused to let me continue the service role I had taken on. Fast forward. My addiction to that relationship lasted painfully for three years until I recognized I could pick the wrong women just as skillfully as I picked the wrong men. More withdrawal and a significant period of clean celibacy. Lots of meetings. Another year of celibacy, and a six-month try at a sober relationship ended (without my being the cause) with my sobriety intact. Another 2.5 years of voluntary celibacy was followed by another couple of celibate years while I tried—and failed at—a couple of dating tries that never got to or beyond kissing. More celibacy for a couple of years. I did a fifth step with both AA and former SLAA sponsor, who said it sounded good, but I still wasn’t his sponsee anymore. More celibacy.
Then I found myself being courted by someone who seemed to trigger none of my addictive patterns and who fully supported my deep commitment to recovery and meetings. Twenty-three years later, I am legally married and very happy with that same woman, still thanking God and the level of my spiritual growth earned with often painful self-searching, for my years of what I know is clean sobriety from my original bottom lines, and from the additional, absolutely necessary bottom lines that I added or revised over the years. The last one was interesting because I had to abstain from codependent motives, which were the only ones I had left, but necessary before my wife and I could reconcile after five years of separation while maintaining faithfulness to our marriage vows.
What I believe is that at the roots of my addictions, every one of them (overeating, certain emotions, alcohol, addictive use of substances, sex, and love addiction) is fear of emotional and spiritual intimacy with myself and others. Today it feels like the last piece of my tricky and shifting addictive patterns, along with the others which I recognized earlier, are truly in remission, dependent on my willingness to use the help of God, prayer and meditation, meetings, and truly intimate relations with at least a few recovery friends and my wife, with honesty in all other close relationships.
To accomplish the blessed state of freedom from gut-wrenching accompanied by the floods of tears that accompany peeling an onion layer by layer, I spent over two years in a disciplined journey through the 12 Steps (again), this time with a strong HOW sponsor, discovering that codependency was my last (Please, God?) addictive style escape from myself and a Higher Power. When I attend any Twelve Step group, I am “Barbara, gratefully recovering from addiction to (whatever this Fellowship is about).” When I share, I include that “I also use help from other 12 Step Fellowships.” That comes from the intent to Keep It Simple but fully honest, while I keep current on the issues this meeting is about.
If I was only able to attend one fellowship, it would be SLAA. But it seems to me that one is free to choose one’s primary or only home group(s). That is how I keep outside issues in check, out of respect for all those who continue to help me STAY in recovery. I also believe, as others have already shared, that as long as any two or three people gathering for recovery using the Twelve Steps and Traditions we borrowed and rewrote with the permission of AA, try to remain faithful to those principles, they can affiliate that group with SLAA if those folks say they identify with and want to recover from sex and love addiction. Codependency, sexual and/or social anorexia, obsession with a fantasy, self-stimulation, etc., and compulsion are all familiar to me. I do not think diversity in our meetings threatens SLAA as a whole in any way. Their affiliation and local practices will succeed or fail by their own strengths and weaknesses, just like those who use all literature except what is SLAA and conference approved, in spite of FWS recommendations. Fear of diversity should not make our decisions for the Fellowship. I think we can trust God for this one.
Response #4:
Tradition Four provides the primary guidance for this situation. Each group is autonomous, with the exception being when the decision or action could affect other groups or SLAA as a whole. The decision made by this Intergroup would not seem to have any effect on other Intergroups or the fellowship in general. So, this Intergroup has made the decision in keeping with Tradition Four.
Concept Four also provides some guidance. It reflects our grassroots democratic process with the Right of Participation. The Right of Participation ensures that all members have a vote up to the level at which they are trusted servants. If there are members in a group who disagree with the decision, they have the right to take a vote in the group concerning the matter. If the vote goes in their favor, then the group members can instruct their Intergroup Representative to request a new discussion and vote at the next Intergroup meeting. If enough Intergroup Representatives and other voting members at Intergroup agree, then the decision to remove the word “codependents” can be overturned by a new vote.
Lastly, Concept One provides clarification as to the authority of the FWS and Board of Trustees (BOT). This Concept states that ultimate authority and responsibility lies with the Fellowship. SLAA does not utilize a typical business model of governance, but instead relies upon the “Inverted Triangle” principle originally detailed in the AA Twelve Concepts. The FWS and BOT do not tell groups what to do, but instead take their direction from the groups.
Response #5:
We recover one addict talking to another addict. We recover as a Fellowship of addicts working a spiritual program. We are not our service structure. We are not an organization. We are a society, a fellowship. There is a difference between our service structure and the Fellowship. The service structure exists to provide support for addicts who are trying to get well. It does not give orders. The Fellowship is represented by our meetings, which can behave as they see fit, even ignoring the Steps, Traditions, and Concepts if they decide to do so.
The most relevant response regarding this question is Tradition Nine, which is often misunderstood. It reads: “S.L.A.A. as such ought never to be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.”
There is an overlap, of course, with all the Traditions. A close reading of the Concepts is also in order. Issues of substantial unanimity, insistence that no member has authority over another, that we have the right of appeal, and that we are democratic in thought and action are critical practices for us and relate directly to the question.
In my experience, it has at times been easy for the service structure to get in the way, for some trusted servants to act unskillfully, and even for personalities to supersede principles. When these things happen, we have the power to vote for other trusted servants, to stop funding those service structures, to form new service structures, or start new meetings/new Intergroups.
It is unclear to me what actually happened here. Where is the harassment? Is it harassment (an emotionally charged word) or an instance of the Intergroup overstepping its authority?
It is clear that there is upset, disturbance, and disappointment. As others have said, there is no authority within our Fellowship to address bad behavior. We do not give orders, we do not determine who can or cannot be a member, we do not charter or vet meetings or intergroups. That is, we’re not organized (Tradition Nine). Our Intergroups, Committees, our Office, our Board are there to serve our membership and the still suffering sex and love addict. If our groups don’t like the way they are being served, they are free to create new service structures or simply to ignore the ones in place. They are encouraged to vote for servants who comply with the principles of the program and to vote in new ones when necessary.
It is good to keep in mind that anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. The Intergroup in this case appears to have made a mistake, although we haven’t heard their side of the story. While no one can dictate a solution, those who feel they have been harmed can organize and vote. Although it’s slow and frustrating, more discussion and debate is the recommended solution.
Is it OK to use non-conference approved literature in meetings?
See Article: https://bigbooksponsorship.org/articles-alcoholism-addiction-12-step-program-recovery/twelve-traditions-group-conscience-mob-rule/nonconference-approved-literature-meetings/
It’s funny that an organization centered around understanding and overcoming codependency via independent and inter-dependent roles in relationships should employ overt codependent strategies and tactics such as, bullying, conformity, compliance and towing the “party-line” to hold CoDA Groups to the “CoDA mob” account.