A few blogs back, we talked about ”Friends of Bill W.” Bill Wilson, or “Bill W.” was a Wall Street banker who drank away his career and his marriage, eventually having to spend several stints in a hospital due to alcoholism.
AA began in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, as the result of a meeting between Bill W., a New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith. an Akron surgeon. Both had been hopeless alcoholics.
Both Bill and Bob had each been in contact with the Oxford Group — a mostly nonalcoholic fellowship group that emphasized universal spiritual values in daily living. Under the influence of this group and an old friend, Bill had gotten sober. He maintained his recovery by working with other alcoholics, but before meeting Dr. Bob, none of the other alcoholics had actually recovered.
At the same time, Dr. Bob’s Oxford Group membership, in Akron, hadn’t helped him enough to achieve sobriety. When Dr. Bob and Bill finally met, Dr. Bob found himself face-to-face with a fellow sufferer that was succeeding. Even thought he was a physician, Dr. Bob didn’t know that alcoholism was a disease. He responded to Bill’s convincing ideas and soon got sober (apparently never to drink again.) This sparked the founding of AA.
Both Bill and Dr. Bob set to work with alcoholics at Akron’s City Hospital. One patient quickly achieved complete sobriety. These three men make up the nucleus of the first AA group — although the name Alcoholics Anonymous was not yet used.
In the fall of 1935, a second group of alcoholics began to take shape in New York, and in 1939 a third group was started in Cleveland. Early in 1939, the Fellowship published its basic textbook — Alcoholics Anonymous. The text was written by Bill and reviewed by many of the early members. The book explained AA’s philosophy and methods — the core of the book is now well-known as the Twelve Steps of Recovery. The book also included case histories of thirty recovered members.
By 1950, there were an estimated 100,000 recovered alcoholics, worldwide. Also in 1950, AA held its first International Convention in Cleveland. Dr. Bob was a speaker and spoke, in what would be his final talk, of the need to keep AA simple. He saw the Twelve Steps enthusiastically adopted for the permanent use by AA throughout the world. Dr. Bob died on November 16, 1950.
Today, in almost every city in America, there’s likely to be an AA meeting happening.
I’m not sure who said it, but it seems appropriate for everyone — not just alcoholics: “I have found that the process of discovering who I really am begins with knowing who I really don’t want to be.”
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