The origin of Alcoholics Anonymous can be
traced to the Oxford Group, a religious movement then popular in the United
States and Europe. A well-to-do Vermonter named Rowland H. had visited the
noted Swiss
psychoanalyst Carl Jung in 1932. Rowland was able to admit that he was
"powerless over alcohol" and had decided to attend Oxford Group meetings in New
York City. The meetings were held at Calvary Church, under the leadership of
the Rev. Sam Shoemaker. At these meetings, Rowland met an old friend and fellow
Vermonter, Edwin (Ebby) T., also an alcoholic. Through the Oxford Group, they
were able to keep from drinking through a formula of self-inventory, admission
of wrongs, making amends, using prayer and meditation, and carrying the message
to others who suffer. One of Ebby's schoolmate friends was Bill W., a
Vermonter. Ebby sought out his old friend at 182 Clinton Street, in Brooklyn,
to carry the message of hope.
Bill W. had been a fair-haired boy on Wall Street, but his promise had been
ruined by continuous and chronic alcoholism. Bill had sought treatment at Towns
Hospital, in Manhattan, under the directorship of Dr. William Silkworth. Bill
learned that his problem was hopeless, progressive and irreversible--that
alcoholism caused him to drink against his will, and that it took only one drink
to activate the illness and set him off on a binge of compulsive drinking. Now
Bill heard Ebby's story and once again entered Towns Hospital for treatment. On
December 11, 1934, Ebby visited Bill at Towns Hospital and shared his spiritual
journey of recovery. After Ebby left, Bill underwent a powerful spiritual
experience. Although not a religious man, Bill experienced the miracle of
freedom from the obsessive need to drink. When he asked Dr. Silkworth about the
experience, the "kindly little doctor who loved drunks" did not scoff, but
encouraged Bill to "hang onto it."
After Bill's release from Towns Hospital, he began attending Oxford Group
meetings. He was buoyed by his contact with other drunks and set out, with
little success, to fix all the drunks in the world.
Eventually, Bill got a toehold in his business. In May of 1935, he found
himself in Akron, Ohio. In a crisis that many alcoholics can relate to, he
found himself alone on a Saturday night in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel. He
was sorely tempted to join the revelers at the bar, but he realized that he
needed to share his plight with another alcoholic in order to save himself and
protect his sobriety. In an historic decision for A.A.'s future, Bill turned to
the church directory in the hotel lobby and began telephoning to try to find
another drunk. He reached the Rev. Walter Tunks who might help. One of these,
Henrietta Seiberling, though not an alcoholic, immediately understood Bill's
need and told him of Dr. Bob S., a once-brilliant surgeon about to lose his
practice entirely because of alcoholism. She arranged for Bill to meet Dr. Bob
the next day, Mother's Day, at the gatehouse of the Seiberling estate. Dr. Bob,
shaking and with a terrible hangover, reluctantly agreed to give this stranger
on longer than 15 minutes. Instead of preaching, as he had done with drunks back
in New York, Bill shared his drinking experiences and told Dr. Bob of his own
need for communication. He spoke of Dr. Silkworth's insights into the illness
of alcoholism.
Dr. Bob, by coincidence, was also from Vermont, and he, too, had already sought
help from the Oxford Group. Expecting to hear the rantings of and evangelistic
do-gooder, the physician found himself sharing with a fellow alcoholic. They
talked for nearly five hours.
Dr. Bob "stopped drinking abruptly."
Dr. Bob was to go on one more drunken spree
a few weeks later, while at a medical convention in Atlantic City. He had his
last d drink on June 10, 1935, which is celebrated today as A.A.'s birthday.
Bill stayed on in Akron to try to salvage his business deal and, strapped for
funds, moved in with Dr. Bob, his wife Annie, and their two children, Bob and
Sue. Almost immediately the two men began to try to help other drunks.
After some failures, they learned that a patient was in Akron City Hospital for
the sixth time in four months and was in bad shape with the D. T.'s. They
called on him. He was Bill D., a lawyer, who became A.A. Number Three. Soon
Dr. Bob began to treat prospective members on a regular basis at St. Thomas
Hospital, with the aid of the indefatigable Sister Mary Ignatia.
Bill returned home late that year and began to call on alcoholics at Towns
Hospital. His first success was Hank P. (who later drank), and slowly a group
began to take shape in New York. The first meeting place was Bill and Lois's
house on Clinton Street in Brooklyn. They later met at the old 24th Street
Clubhouse. Here Bill would eventually meet Father Ed Dowling, who came as a
visitor. Father Dowling became Bill's close friend and adviser and one of
A.A.'s staunchest supporters.
In 1940, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. hosted a dinner "in the interest of Alcoholics
Anonymous." The dinner was held at the Union Club in New York City, and was
attended by many of the rich and famous. Bill dreamed of a well-financed global
network of drying out stations, with himself as the humble head. He told the
story of the low-bottom drunks as only Bill could do. His hopes were dashed
when Nelson Rockefeller, pinch-hitting for his ill father, assured the
millionaire guests that A.A. was a spiritual program that might be spoiled by
money. After the penniless founders recovered from their disappointment, they
realized that Mr. Rockefeller had helped them discover that spiritual recovery
was more important than money--thus, the principle of self-support had been
born!
The Rockefeller dinner also resulted in a much needed wave of newspaper stories.
"The effect," said Bill, "was to give A.A. a public status of dignity and
worth." It was followed in 1941 by the momentous Jack Alexander article in The
Saturday Evening Post, which brought Alcoholics Anonymous to national attention
and brought about a new wave of "converts."
In 1938, Bill W. had begun work on the text that was to become Alcoholics
Anonymous. He attempted to describe "How It Works," and he also included the
recovery stories of the early members from New York and Akron. During this
process six steps were written, based on the ideas of the Oxford Group. Bill
felt that the six steps were essential, but that they had to be expanded in
order to "broaden and deepen the spiritual implications of our presentation."
In Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Bill tells the story of his hard work and
inspiration in writing the Twelve Steps. "There must not be a single loophole
through which the rationalizing alcoholic could wriggle out. Maybe our six
chunks of truth should be broken up into smaller pieces." In a burst of
late-night energy, Bill wrote out the Steps, noting almost by coincidence that
the number came to twelve--the same as the twelve apostles. The Steps were
included in Chapter 5 of the Big Book after the usual heated debate.
In Bill's words, "There were conservative, liberal, and radical viewpoints."
The second cornerstone of our Fellowship, the Twelve Traditions, also written by
Bill W., were formally introduced at the International Convention in Cleveland
in 1950, when the membership voted unanimously to adopt them. Bill and Dr. Bob
conceived the need for the Twelve Traditions as a means of guarding A.A. against
itself, and preserving the principles of A.A. for the future. As Bill wrote in
A.A. Comes of Age: "They represent the distilled experience of our past, and we
rely on them to carry us in unity through the challenges and dangers which the
future may bring."
AA Everywhere--Anywhere©: pages 10-17
Our Fellowship was very poor in the early
days; sobriety was often a fragile and scarce commodity. In 1938, a nonprofit
Alcoholic Foundation was formed through the efforts of Dr. Leonard Strong,
Bill's brother-in-law. The first Foundation consisted of three nonalcoholic
members (Willard Richardson, Frank Amos and John Wood) and two alcoholics, (Dr.
Bob and a New York member who later drank). Such was the fragile nature of the
early membership.
Soon after Alcoholics Anonymous, which came to be known as the Big Book, was
published, the Foundation assumed ownership of Works Publishing Co. The first
Foundation office was cubbyhole at 30 Vesey Street, New York City, staffed by
Bill and a nonalcoholic secretary, Ruth Hock, who typed the first manuscript of
the Big Book. Ruth also answered many of the thousands of letters for help that
began to arrive as A.A. became known.
During the 1940's, Alcoholics Anonymous grew at an almost geometric rate. The
Foundation office and the trustees were at the center of the growth, as requests
for help flooded the tiny office. The wide use of the Big Book, the expansion
of pamphlet literature, pleas for help, and the response to requests for
guidance on group problems all constituted a growing service to the world of
A.A.
In 1944, the office moved from Vesey Street to 415 Lexington Avenue, opposite
Grand Central Station, where it became a mecca for thousands of A.A. travelers
and visitors. As the decade waned, Bill and Dr. Bob saw that the Alcoholic
Foundation had no tie to the A.A. membership except through the co-founders.
Who would take their place when they passed on? The idea they came up
with--selfless and brilliant--was to turn responsibility for the Fellowship over
to the Fellowship, to form a service structure through which the A.A. groups
would govern their own affairs.
It was proposed that the groups exercise this responsibility by electing
delegates who, along with the trustees and office staff, would meet annually.
This would be called the General Service Conference.
Bernard Smith, a nonalcoholic lawyer who was to serve as the first chairman of
the Conference, helped Bill to formulate the Conference Charter. Since several
of the trustees and many of the groups had expressed grave doubts about the new
Conference plan, Bill embarked on a personal crusade to see the idea. In the
midst of this effort, Dr. Bob, who had fallen ill with cancer, died on November
16, 1950.
The following year, the first A.A. General Service Conference was held in New
York. It was agreed to try the Conference idea for five years to see if it
could function as the collective voice and conscience of A.A., yet have
absolutely no governing power over any individual A.A. member or group. In
spite of obvious problems, the General Service Board was named as the
replacement for the Alcoholic Foundation at the Second International Convention
in St. Louis
in 1955.
Bill felt that the final step in the shift of responsibility should be to change
the ration between nonalcoholic and alcoholic trustees on the General Service
Board, and he pressed hard for this change for many years. Finally, in 1966,
the Conference recommended that the ratio be changed to seven nonalcoholic
trustees and 14 alcoholic trustees (eight regional trustees, four general
service trustees and two trustees-at-large). This is the composition of the
board today. (1995) Meanwhile, the General Service office continued to grow. It
was to move four more times; it is now (1995) located on Riverside Drive and 120
St. Early nonalcoholic secretaries were replaced by A.A. staff members, and a
paid general manager replaced the volunteers. Although he had stepped down from
active leadership, Bill continued to come to the office one day a week and
attend board meetings and Conferences.
His health began to fail in the late 1960's; Bill died on January 24, 1971.
AA Everywhere--Anywhere©: pages 18-21
The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is
probably the most important single factor in the recovery of most alcoholics who
seek sobriety in A.A. It is also one of the nonfiction bestsellers of all
time. And yet, it was almost not written.
In 1937, Bill and Dr. Bob met in Akron and tallied the results of their two
years' work. They counted together some 40 sober alcoholics, and "saw that
wholesale recovery was possible." They agreed that they needed a book that
would explain the program to alcoholics and therefore prevent distortion of
their word-of-mouth message. Meeting with 18 members of the Akron Group, they
proposed the book. The idea was met with substantial opposition; many were
against any publicity, turned thumbs down on any printed material, and argued
that "the apostles hadn't needed books." But Bill and Dr. Bob persisted and,
"by the barest majority," the Akronites agreed that they should proceed.
By the summer of 1938 Bill had drafted the first two chapters. Harper and
Brothers offered to publish the book. But, after much consideration by the
trustees of the Alcoholic Foundation and much discussion in the group, it was
decided that A.A. should control and publish its own literature--a decision, as
it turned out, of tremendous importance for the future of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In her memoir, Lois Remembers, Bill's wife, Lois, describes the great tension
that Bill went through as he wrote the Big Book.
"As Bill finished each chapter, he read it to the group that met at Clinton
Street. After these members had discussed it, going over every detail and
making suggestions, Bill sent it to Akron for the opinions of members there.
"The pros and cons were mostly about the tone of the book. Some wanted it
slanted more toward the Christian religion; others, less. Many alcoholics were
agnostics or atheists. Then there were those of the Jewish faith and, around
the world, of other religions. Shouldn't the book be written so it would appeal
to them also? Finally it was agreed that the book should present a universal
spiritual program, not a specific religious one, since all drunks were not
Christian....
"When he finished writing and reread what he had put down, he was quite
pleased. Twelve principles had developed--the Twelve Steps.
"But when he showed them to the group, the old discussion was resumed.
There was `too much God,' it was said; and
`For Pete's sake, take out that bit in Step Seven about getting on your knees.'
They thrashed it out this way and that with Bill as umpire. Finally they hit
upon the phrases `God as we understood Him' and `a Power greater than
ourselves.' These expressions were ten-strikes; they could be used by anyone
anywhere....
"Then the question of the title arose. By that time 100 or so members had been
sober for two or three years, so the name `One Hundred Men' seemed appropriate
until one woman, Florence, joined the group and objected, `The Way Out' was
very popular for a while, but Bill thought it trite and had Fitz, who was often
in Washington, look it up in the Library of Congress. There were already twelve
books registered under that name.
"At one time Bill was tempted to call the book `The W--Movement' (using his last
name and to sign it as author. This natural but egoistical impulse was soon
overcome by more mature reasoning."
Finally, the Big Book rolled off the press in 1939, published under the imprint
of Works Publishing. Today (1995), the Big Book--which they could hardly give
away in 1939--is available in 30 languages, as well as in Braille and in video
in American Sign Language, and is fast approaching a distribution (in English of
15,000,000 copies.
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