Addicts in the Alley Step Study meets Tuesdays at 7:30 pm in Concord, California, USA. We adopted this name for our group when we had to move from a church where we had been meeting since the group first started over fifteen years ago. The church decided not to host evening NA meetings due to problems caused by bad behavior at other meetings in the facility.

We only had a week to find a new place, so we had an emergency business meeting. Several people researched new locations, and we gave the group secretary a vote of confidence to choose the location and negotiate rent. Three days later, a local bowling alley agreed to rent meeting space to us. The owners were grateful for the help one of their family members had found in our fellowship, so they didn’t want to accept any rent; but our secretary explained the Seventh Tradition and negotiated a reasonable rent.

Our meeting format was changed a number of times over the years without benefit of group conscience, and we began to have concerns about behavior in front of the meeting place. We voted to make a few changes in the format, including the addition of language on the Fourth Tradition from It Works: How and Why. We also decided the secretary must have completed work on all twelve steps in order to be elected, and each speaker must have worked the step they are asked to share about.