In the Fall of 2017, in response to a rising level of concern within the GreySheeters Anonymous fellowship about the increasingly extreme variations in interpretations of GreySheet abstinence, the GreySheeters Anonymous World Services Board of Trustees commissioned the GreySheet Committee. The Board of Trustees believed that these variations threatened the unity of our fellowship and therefore the foundation of our common solution.
The President of GreySheeters Anonymous World Services appointed the members of the committee. Each member had at least 20 years of back to back GreySheet abstinence and many got abstinent in the original Cambridge community.
The Board gave the GreySheet Committee the task of capturing in writing the oral tradition of the original Cambridge GreySheet community on which GreySheeters Anonymous is based. Specifically, the Board directed the GreySheet Committee to do three things:
- Clarify the definition of GreySheet abstinence
- Provide guidelines for sponsors to support this clarified definition
- Make recommendations for how the clarification and guidelines might be used by GreySheeters Anonymous.
The GreySheet Committee met twice a month from January 2018 to July 2020. The committee identified areas on the GreySheet that might have led different members of our fellowship to different interpretations of GreySheet abstinence. The committee received questions and suggestions from the Board of Trustees and the fellowship. The board also provided the committee with a clarifications and guidelines document drafted in 2018 by the trustees of the Phone Bridge Intergroup and the Literature Committee. The committee produced a set of clarifying statements and guidelines each of which was approved with substantial unanimity.
In September 2019, the World Service Conference approved the following motion:
GreySheeters Anonymous World Services publish a Report on the Clarification of GreySheet Abstinence written by the GreySheet Committee.
The conference agreed that GreySheeters Anonymous World Services would distribute the report to the fellowship via their Group Service Representatives and Intergroup Service Representatives.
The GreySheet Committee submitted this report to the Board of Trustees in August 2020. The Board distributed this report to members of the fellowship by means of the ISRs and GSRs. The GreySheet Committee held an open Q&A for members about the report at the October 2020 Video Forum and published the answers to those questions.
In accordance with the GSA principle that the GreySheet food plan always comes with a sponsor, the report is not published on this website or elsewhere. It is meant for individual sponsors to use in guiding their sponsees. If you are a GreySheeter with 90 days of back-to-back abstinence and need a copy of the report to help you with sponsoring, please ask your own sponsor or your group's GSR to send you a copy.
See Why We Don't Change the GreySheet to learn why the GreySheet Committee did not discuss or propose any changes to the food plan itself.