RULE 62 “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously” –
Sept. 10, 2025 – In 1960 Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and author of its famous 12 Steps, did something that would be unthinkable in today’s attention economy: He declined an invitation to be on the cover of Time magazine.
The editors offered a compromise: What if Wilson were pictured with his back to the camera, making him unidentifiable? Again, he refused. Such publicity was out of the question for any AA member, not just its architect. Enshrined in the program he’d co-founded in 1935 was the mandate outlined in the 11th Tradition—that AA’s members “need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.”
Wilson believed that public anonymity would inoculate the organization against members’ exploitation of AA for personal or professional gain and keep it free from controversy and embarrassment. Maintaining “100 percent personal anonymity” was vital to the future of the group, he argued. Without it, the damage to the organization could be “irreparable.” Anonymity is so important that it’s codified in the 12th Tradition as “the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”
