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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Bill W Candidate Identity Review BW0243 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bill-w-two-ny-radio-interviews-of-bill-w-weekday-with-mike-wallace-and-martha-dean-show-aa-date-unknown-archive-19128.mp3 Duration: 00:47:15
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Anonymous, an organization that is helping 150,000 men and women throughout the world to achieve continuing sobriety. Founded 21 years ago, the one purpose, one objective of AA is to help alcoholics recover from their illness. Bill, welcome to Weekday and tell us, first of all, if you will, sir, what kind of a problem, specifically, is alcoholism? First, let me thank you deeply for having us, AA, on the air.
Well, it's certainly a public problem. There are supposed to be about four million alcoholics in the country. If you know a drinker, you certainly know it's a social problem. In the early days, the doctors used to feel that there was nothing inherited. Certainly, you don't inherit a craving for grog. We do notice in AA, though, that certain families have a great many alcoholics. And it has been suggested that very likely they get emotionally bunged up and made neurotic and therefore laid wide open to alcohol.
Not because it is strictly inherited, it's more of an environmental thing. Of course, you see the parents drinking a lot and people around the home, and you fall into the habit and you may not have the capacity for evaluation. But you'd think that somebody in a family where, one, somebody older is an alcoholic, a youngster, would see the bad effect of it and all of them just stay away from it. You're exactly right.
They often do. They go to an extreme of their hatred of drinking of all sorts on the one side, or later they themselves fall victim. It usually runs to extremes. They go from former to drunk. Don't you think, Bill, that in most instances, it's a case of someone having a great disappointment or a circumstance that forces them into this? Well, in my own case, there was childhood inferiority. I was very gothy.
Kids could push me around in quarrels. And that developed a tremendous power drive to be a number one champ. You see, I had to be leader of everything. And then when frustrated, I would become depressed. And that pattern in me developed before there was any alcoholism. Well, then I found that on my first drink, indeed, during World War I, that it cured the social inferiority. People came near to me.
I came near to them. It was a solace. It wasn't just a mere relaxation. I had begun to try to cure what you might say is a neurotic pattern. And that is the case with a great many alcoholics. But generalization is dangerous. Some alcoholics are simple addicts. And there are a great many types. And as I say, this is for the doctors rather than for AAs. I can only speculate a little in my own case. Now, my understanding is that when you go to a party, for instance, you can never have just one drink, you yourself, or alcoholics generally.
No. No more than a diabetic can have one spoon of sugar. And probably he's a lot more sane about sugar than we are about alcohol because we not only have the physical sensitivity, there is this terrible obsession or drive to drink, which has to be released. And if you take one drink, it triggers the whole business again. You know, Bill, it's a funny thing how you acquire a pattern. Now, I had a similar experience as a youngster.
But I saw someone, a very beautiful woman, get drunk when I was a child. And you know, I have never had a drink. And my problem with going to parties and people who do drink, and I have my own little beverage called Water on the Rock, which I take, but my resentment is, as you say, as radical as the person who overdrinks. Now, just a second, Virginia. What do you mean you've never had a drink? We have a champagne party right here in the studio.
Listen to this. I'm nailed to the clock. I had one thimble full of champagne. And she was flying. Flying out to get rid of it. How, Bill, can you get a person to face up to the fact that he is an alcoholic? In the early days of AA, they only faced up because they laid on their backs and couldn't move. And it was do or die. In those, in that period, we dealt with last gasp cases only. But in recent years, more and more people are recognizing that they have this symptom, this compulsion to drink when they shouldn't be drinking.
This terrible hangover business. And it's just as though you went to a, your doctor came to you and said, I don't like the looks of this sore. He takes a culture, and he says, well, it's very small, but it's very malignant. It's cancer. You see? So, likewise, a lot of people are recognizing these symptoms, and they're coming in much earlier. We're getting a lot of young people. We're getting a lot of people not in any great trouble.
What is an alcoholic? How do you know if you are an alcoholic? Well, I would say that the easiest definition
[00:05:01]
hangs around the word control. If when you should control your drinking, and you wish to control it, and you still do not, that is one of the great warning symptoms. It is this compulsive desire to drink against your will and against your interest. If I go to a Legion convention where everybody was supposed to get tight, and I get tight, it's meaningless. On the other hand, if I got a business appointment and I don't need it because I'm tight, or I come in there and ball it up, I may be still a long way from the poorhouse.
I may not have been in a hospital yet. The family may still be together, but that's the telltale thing. This lack of control when there should be control, when you're trying to control and it won't. When one drink is too much and 14 isn't enough, huh? That's about the story. Now, what in the area of activities with AA, how many cures would you say have been affected, Bill? Well, I'll correct you, there are recoveries, but we think that we have 150,000 easily.
The movement is spread now into 70 countries and U.S. possessions. It goes on pyramiding. We're in a tremendous period of growth just now, one alcoholic carrying a message to another. But you're not an organization in the full sense of the word, and how does a family reach… Let's say that somebody wants to discuss a problem with a member of their family, who, by the way, is not receptive to AA. Now, this to me is the big problem, getting the offender to a meeting because they have to come voluntarily, don't they?
Well, nowadays doctors and clergymen both are very, very helpful in laying the groundwork for AA. They can raise the bottom and hit the champ with it. And most always it's best to try the doctor first. If the doctor will say, look, you have the symptoms of this thing, we're not going to force you into AA. We know that that's no way, but why don't you go and inform yourself more about this? Go to an AA meeting.
Sometimes literature falls into their hands, or it can be left around. But you cannot force people, as a general thing, into AA. They have to be attracted to it somehow, and they have to go strictly in their own interest. Your plan is a 24-hour plan, as I understand it. I shouldn't say the entire plan is, but would you explain the 24-hour plan? Well, that's one of our clichés, which is becoming notable.
It simply means that emotionally we do not live in the past or in the future. We try to live for today. Get through the next 24 hours. Let's go through the next 24 hours without a drink, and that is the springboard that most people take off from at the very beginning until they have a basic fundamental release so that the problem becomes non-existent. They go on this 24-hour basis, and the intimation is that we mustn't morbidly dwell on the past or daydream about the future.
Let's live one day at a time. I wonder if you would be kind enough to repeat for us the serenity prayer used by AA, Bill? God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Isn't that wonderful? It sure is, not just for AA. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I think the description of the prayer, as Bill said before, is that it's like a tent that encompasses and covers all of us. Thank you so much, Bill, for being with us. Again, our great thanks to you people. And God bless you in your work. Tomorrow we start a new guest book series on higher education in America. Our guest at that time is going to be Dr. Eugene Austin, who is the president of Colby Junior College up in New London, New Hampshire.
Wicked headnuts, you. That's the opening date for the benefit of the March of Dimes. Tuesday, April 12th at the Roxy. A good picture for adults. The man in the gray flannel suit. And now our second program in the series, They Help One Another. There are no formal introductions today, that is, no last names. I agreed to abide by the rules of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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But Bill, co-founder of AA, is here, and so is Eve, a member. I find it not too difficult to sit here and call them by their first names as they ask me to do, because they both seem to be definitely trying to be sure that I'm comfortable about the whole thing. Good morning, Bill. Good morning to you. Thanks very much for having us on the air with you. Well, I'm glad you're here too, Eve. Well, I'm enjoying it very much.
Bill, do you want to just start right out by telling us how and when you founded AA? Yes. If you don't mind, I'll start a little bit in the middle. All right. In the summer of 1934, I lay in a drying out hospital on Central Park West, Charles B. Towns Hospital. My wife was downstairs talking to the doctor. I had been there before. It was the end of a long road. And she was asking the doctor why I couldn't stop drinking.
And the good man was advised to tell her that I had an obsession of the mind that condemned me to drink against my will, a sensitivity of the body, which he called an allergy, so that if the drinking was continued, I would be destined to go mad or die. In fact, he told her frankly that she would soon have to lock me up if my life was to be saved. It was the end of the road, and I knew it. I was a hopeless alcoholic, and in those days the chance of recovery was rated at one, two, or three percent.
I'd been raised in a small country town, had gone to the World War, had been beset with a lot of inferiorities and a corresponding power drive. Returning here, I got into Wall Street, made money much too fast for one so young. I suppose in those days I drank in order to feel more grandiose and to cover up these inferiorities. After the crash, when all was swept away, I tried to start again and of course could not.
I was thoroughly discredited, and therefore I began to drink for oblivion. And that finally, by progressive stages, brought me to the pass I've just described in the hospital. Meanwhile, my wife stuck, as the wife of many an alcoholic does. We were otherwise happily married. No one could understand the thing. It was really a deep mystery at that time, the true nature of this malady. Meanwhile, other forces were gathering themselves to create the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Perhaps in the early 30s, a certain American businessman was being told by Carl Jung in his office at Zurich after a year's treatment, which was a failure, that nothing could be done for him, that his only possible chance of recovery was through a spiritual experience. And our friend said, but I'm a good Episcopalian. The great and humble Jung said, no, that isn't enough. I mean a transforming spiritual experience that will eject this obsession to drink that you have.
I can do nothing for you. This friend finally found such an experience in the Oxford groups of that time, a society to which AA owes very much, although some of their tenets we have since discarded. In his turn, he brought some basic ideas to a friend of mine, a schoolmate, who was also in a very bad way, about to be committed for alcoholic insanity. And in turn, this friend, who I shall call Abby, came to me in November of 1934 following this sentence of the summer.
And he appeared at my house on Flint Street, Brooklyn. I was home drinking. Lois was working then in the department store supporting me. And I was very much open to any way to get out of this thing. He appeared in the door, and I remember how he looked. I can remember it now, even through the haze of gin, which I constantly watched. I realized that something had happened to him. He sat down at the kitchen table. I offered him a drink. He said, no, no thanks.
And I said, Eddie, what's got into you? And smiling when he looked at me and said, I've got religion. Well, I was raised in one of these modern schools that teaches that man is God.
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This was very disappointing. I asked him what brand he'd got. It soon fell out he'd been in touch with the Oxford groups. And again, he disclaimed some of their teachings, but said that others had made all the difference. And these, in brief, are what they were. He had been advised to get honest with himself, as he had never been before. He was advised to make an inventory of his defects, confide these to another in confidence.
He was advised to make restitution to the people that he had harmed. In other words, a sort of internal and external housecleaning or catharsis, if you please. And then he was advised to go and try to be helpful to others without any demand for reward, the kind of giving that has no price tag on it. And hence he had come to me. Well, this all sounded good so far, and I said, well, where does the religion business come in?
Well, he said, I had to take that very easily. He said, I had to pray to whatever God there might be. Curiously enough, as soon as I became willing to admit that I was helpless, became willing to follow these simple precepts, which indeed might have been found elsewhere than in the Oxford groups, I was unaccountably released from my drinking as my friend Roland had been before me. Also, the impact of Dr. Jung, this man of science, saying that he couldn't do anything about Roland's condition had made a deep impression on me.
So there I was, opposite my friend, looking at him over the kitchen tape. And then and there, in all probability, the spark that was to be Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. Shortly afterward, I went back to the hospital. The doctor took me off liquor. My friend visited me there. At first, I was suspicious. I was afraid I was going to be evangelized. Again, I asked him what his simple little formula was.
Again, he repeated it. Get honest with yourself. Confess your faults. Make amends to those you've harmed. Try to help other people without any thought of reward. Pray to whatever God you think there is, if only as an experiment. It was just as simple, yet just as mysterious as that. When he had gone, I fell into a terrific depression. And in the bottom of that depression, I cried out, even as a small child might, If there is a God, will he show himself?
Instantly, the place lit up electric white. It seemed to me that I stood on the top of a mountain. The great wind was blowing, which I realized was not of air, but of spirit. When the ecstasy subsided, I lay on the bed. It seemed to me that I was now in a new world, where everything was all right. A great peace settled over me. Well, then my scientific education got busy, and I said, Hey, Bill, you're hallucinating. You better get the doctor down here.
So in came my doctor, who will be known someday as a medical saint, Dr. William B. Silkworth. Many a physician might have said, Well, my boy, you're hallucinating. You better take something. He questioned me very carefully, and at length he said, Bill, something has happened to you. There has been some profound psychic upheaval here. I have read about these things in the books. Whatever it is that you have, you had better hang on to it.
It's better than what had you an hour ago. So instantaneously, I was released from this terrific obsession to drink, which would have presently landed me in an asylum, and haven't been seriously tempted to this day. Immediately, I began to speculate on why this had all happened. I wondered why other alcoholics couldn't have experiences like this, these transforming experiences. Curiously enough, at that time, somebody brought me a copy of William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.
William James, as you may know, is considered one of the fathers of modern psychology. And here was the account of many such an experience as mine. Not all of this brilliance, not all with this speed, but the essence of them all was that they started with calamity, and they ended in a transforming experience that enabled the individual to do that
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which he just couldn't do on his own motor power. At once, you began to wonder, well, what alcoholics really need is more deflation, perhaps one alcoholic talking to another over this bridge of common understanding, across this kinship of a common suffering. Maybe that's how it happened to me. My friend, Ebi, was an alcoholic. The man who had talked to him, who had been pronounced hopeless by Carl Jung, was one alcoholic talking to another.
So I began frantically working with alcoholics. Briefly, I joined the Oxford group, but those good people were more interested in saving the world than alcoholics, and they'd had rather bad luck with us. And the work kept on. We filled our house in Brooklyn with them, but nothing happened for six months. We had no success whatever. About that time, it was thought I'd better get back into business. I went to Akron, Ohio on a business deal.
It fell through. When I was left with not enough car fare home in the Mayflower Hotel there, and then I had one of the few temptations to drink. And suddenly I remembered how much it had meant to me to help another alcoholic. Even those I had tried to help, who hadn't made any recovery, had nevertheless helped me. So I got off my high horse of preaching and of talking so much about this strange experience of mine and remembered the advice of Dr. Silkworth, who said to me, Bill, you can soften these people up if you will pour it into them how hopeless this really is.
An obsession of the mind that condemns one to drink and an allergy that condemns one to go mad or die. Why don't you throw that dose into them first, and then maybe they will buy this moral psychology of yours. So I remembered that. I called up a preacher in town, saw his name on a directory in the lobby of the hotel. He referred me to some Oxford groupers who I thought might be in touch with some alcoholics.
But none would see me except one, to the very end. And she came to a noted family there in town. She was not an alcoholic. But she said, you come right out here. And when I arrived, told her the story, she said, I know just the man. He's a doctor in this town. Used to be a noted one. His house is about to be foreclosed. His wife is a semi-immolated. He's tried everything. He just can't make a mistake.
Next day, this doctor, who all A's know as Dr. Bob, now dead since 1950, and my partner in this thing, appeared at my friend Henrietta's house with his wife Ann. And I remembered what Dr. Silkworth had said. And although my friend Dr. Bob was a physician and surgeon, he knew really nothing about alcoholism. And when I told him the nature of this disease, after identifying with him by reciting my own experience and symptoms, apparently that struck him deep.
And he was shortly released from his drinking, never to take a drink until 1950. I went to live with that family briefly to pursue this vain business venture. And his doctor said, well, shouldn't we work on some alcoholics? I'll call up the city hospital. They're always coming in down there. Well, one had appeared. He'd been an Akron attorney. He'd been in the hospital six times in the last four months, couldn't even get home sober.
He was strapped down, having blacked the eyes of one of the nurses, and the nurse said, well, how would that one do, your doctor? Forthwith, Dr. Bob and I went to see our first customer, the one in AA known as the man on the bed. He shook his head and he said, it's too late for me. I'm afraid to get out of here. I'm a man of religion. I don't think that'll do it. I believe in God, but certainly he doesn't believe in me.
Nevertheless, we poured it into him how medically hopeless this was on one's own resources. And curiously enough, when we appeared the next morning, he was saying to his wife, who stood there, fetch my clothes, we're going to get up and get out of here. And he never had a drink until the time of his death, I think in 1953.
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Therefore, the first AA group was formed, though he didn't know it then. Well, I mustn't take up too much time. I think that Fran Deeve here perhaps ought to tell a story about herself. It was those three in Akron, Ohio, really? That was the original AA group from which this whole thing spread. And those were the forces that played to form the synthesis that is now AA. Up to now, as I said, there are 150,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That's right. And I think just from the date of my own coming into AA, it's interesting to note the growth. I mean, Bill and Dr. Bob had their first meeting in 1935. I came into AA in the fall of 1944. And I recall very distinctly at that time, they were talking about their annual banquet to be held in New York and how excited they were because the membership had reached 10,000. Well, that was almost a period of 10 years since the initial AA group in Akron was only three.
And the membership had then reached 10,000, but only a little bit more than 10 years further along. And the membership is now over 150,000, so you can see the way this thing has spiraled. Did you join AA in Akron, too? Oh, no, I'm a New Yorker born and bred, and I joined here in New York. And I had reached that same point that Bill was speaking about, utter hopelessness. I mean, that desperate feeling that I must be crazy because why was I doing this when I didn't want to?
I think that's the thing that's so difficult for us to accept. And I remember I was very fortunate when I first came in. I had a chance to hear Bill, one of those first street clubs, and a phrase that he used caught my view immediately because he said, we are not forced to drink against our own will. And I had had all the concepts that everyone does have about alcoholism, that I must use my willpower, that I must just take two and drink like a lady and stop, and all these things.
And yet, time and again, even though I had planned not to take more than one or two, and I had planned to drink like a lady, and I had planned not to get drunk, I would wake up in the morning with this ghastly hangover and wonder why. And of course, it was this obsession to drink against my own will because once we take that first drink, we set up this allergy that forces us to go. As long as we stay away from the first drink, we have a choice.
And after we've been in AA for a while, that choice is to stay sober. Well, what happened to you that made you go to AA in the first place? And did you immediately stop drinking? No, I had a short slip, as we call them. I personally prefer the word relapse. If we're going to consider alcoholism, which I think most people do now, a sickness, I think the word relapse is more suitable over the colloquialism around AA is you have a slip.
Well, the AMA has declared, and I think that's what you said, alcoholism to be a disease. Recognize it as a disease. Oh, yes, the world… When I was at home, I allowed myself to get terribly, terribly angry, and I hadn't yet learned in AA that anger and resentment and frustration, self-pity, and a few other things are things as alcoholics we can't afford to indulge in. And I indulged in a quick rage and drank myself a half a tumble of whiskey just to vent that rage, and of course that constituted a relapse.
It took me about two weeks to get back on the program, but thank God since then I have not had a drink. But there was a feeling of belonging when you first contact AA that I think is one of the things that makes us feel that this is hope for the first time. As alcoholics, most of us have had the experience of being spoken to by people who love us, by family, by friends. And naturally, without the understanding of the problem, the approach is one that makes us resentful because deep down inside, I think we're terribly conscious of the fact that we are doing something with our lives, with ourselves, that we shouldn't be doing, and yet we don't know what to do about it.
The result is that when our loving friend or relative says, why don't you stop drinking? You're drinking too much. You say, well, don't be ridiculous. I can stop any time I want to. I've said that a thousand times. And of course I could stop. The problem has always been to stay stopped. I mean, there were periods of going on the wagon. And since I've been in AA, I have really come to the conclusion, this is a personal opinion, that almost anyone that has to take the measure of going on the wagon may have a problem, because the person who has no difficulty at all with handling liquor never stops to think about going on a rag and either takes one or two drinks, or he doesn't.
It's of no import. When I went to AA, of course, I went solely for the purpose of doing something about my drinking problem.
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By this time, I recognized the fact that I had one, that I was an alcoholic. And at the beginning, that was all I hoped to get from AA. Quite desperately, I hoped to find some means of staying sober. I had three children, a son and two little girls. At that time, the little girls were only two and five, respectively. But my son was fourteen, and he'd been pretty badly hurt. And all I wanted was just to find some way of staying sober.
And the miracle to me in AA is the fact that when you stay sober, the dividends are so great. You get so much more from AA than just sobriety. You get a totally new approach to yourself, and to the world around you, to your relationship to the world. You find a new way of life. It's a happy way of life. This is the important thing that you all do for one another. In fact, to the title of this series, they help one another.
Well, you really do much more for one another than stop the drinking. Most likely. And our discovery is that we are uniquely able to do it because we belong to this kinship of a common suffering. That is the only new thing that we've picked up, if indeed that is new. All of these other principles have come from medicine and from religion. As a fact, nobody, Martha, really invented AA. It just grew like cotton.
There's a basic sharing that is so wonderful for us particularly, I think, because most of us as alcoholics have gotten so defensive, have gotten so locked in, and so unable to make contact with people. We're living in a world of our own, and we're ashamed, and we're remorseful, and we feel full of guilt, and we're afraid to approach people. So that when those barriers first go down, you make contact in AA, and the other person, instead of saying, oh, gee, that was terrible, now next time you do better, and only take three drinks instead of 53, or whatever it is, instead of that, the other AA member says, oh, really? Well, you should have seen the time that I did this and such, and did something entirely worse, and it begins to relieve that terrible feeling of guilt, and gives you a feeling of hope that if this person could recover, then you can.
And I think that's one of the reasons that the meetings are so important, and that is the fact that when you go to an AA meeting, you hear stories of individuals who've had a drinking problem, and who have made a recovery through AA. And this gives the new person hope, because very frequently, especially nowadays, the person who's been in AA for a period of time will have had a far worse drinking history than some of the new people who are approaching AA now.
Therefore, the new person can say, well, I have not gotten to this point, therefore, if this person can recover, there's hope for me. And I know that that was one of the things that opened up the door for me, I mean, this feeling of hope, because, of course, I thought I was utterly hopeless. I didn't think anyone in the world had the kind of a problem I did. I didn't think anyone in the world did the things that I did.
And to find that I was not alone, that there were others like me, that others had been helped, and that therefore I could be helped. That was the first step for me of an awareness that AA would give me the answers. And then after a while, as I said, I found that there was so much more. The steps that we use in our recovery program are actually tools, tools that if we work with them, we can rebuild ourselves.
Most of us have broken personalities to a certain extent when we come in, and we can rebuild those personalities by using these steps and become whole people again instead of distorted people. And for me, it's been a miracle from the very beginning. And I recognize the fact that without AA, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this. And therefore, I love the fellowship very, very much. Is the percentage…
You don't use the word cure, I know that. Yes. Is the percentage of people who come to an AA meeting or two and then stay with it and do stop drinking, it's very high, isn't it? Yes. If you measure it by the same standard that the doctor would, measuring it by the people who really take the treatment, I think it's fair to say that a half of them, no matter how serious the obstacle is, will sober up immediately.
A quarter of them will make it after some difficulty, and the other quarter, if they stay around, will improve. However, the percentage is even better than that, because a great many people come and look in the door and being afraid of getting god-bitten, let us say, or having been forced in, will take a peek and go away. But me and Marlee have learned the nature of their malady from other alcoholics.
They have been struck deep, so that further drinking starts turning up the school on them to the point where they have to jump back into AA or out the window, and happily most of them come back. I would think almost two out of three of those. That reminds me, Bill, of a story that I used to hear you tell
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at early meetings, which always tickles me, and he used to get up there and say, We in AA can't stop you from drinking, but we can sure louse it up for you. And that's true, because you do. You feel that this is a wonderful thing, and if you have a relapse, well, then you're not enjoying it at all. You feel that you've let yourself down, and AA. Well, you may not go back to another meeting for a year, but drinking between that time won't not be any fun at all.
That's often so, but I make haste to say that we are not evangelists and reformers in the usual sense at all. We are only interested in helping people who want to be helped, and we don't spend two minutes trying to persuade anybody to stop drinking. They have to figure that out for themselves. In fact, you don't do a thing. You won't proselytize. You wait until the man comes to you. That is right. That is right, because curiously enough, alcoholics are people who just don't like too much reform, and they don't like that approach.
We just don't make it that way. I also want to ask you, Bill, about the name, Alcoholics Anonymous, and about anonymity, and a couple of other things about this organization that I would like to have our listeners know about. Before that, though, I wanted to sort of turn to the news for a second or two. And by the news, I mean the New York Times. What else? I really don't know how you can have a better time for 40 or 45 minutes each morning for five cents than with a copy of the New York Times to go along with your second cup of coffee.
The New York Times gives you all of the news, as you very well know, and gives it to you accurately. It's there, and it's perfectly reported, and it's well written, and you read it, and then you make up your own mind about what you think about this and that. The news in the New York Times is not pre-digested for you. It's there for you to see both sides of every question, if you want to read. Special interests, you find these in the New York Times, too.
If you're a gardener, they have a wonderful gardening section, if you like to take special pride in your cooking, if you're interested in fashions, if you collect stamps, if you like the theater, if you like motion pictures, whatever your special interest is, you will find something about it of interest in the New York Times, I'm sure. And, of course, most of us read the ads in the New York Times before we start any kind of shopping tour.
We usually save quite a lot of money by reading the ads before we start out to buy whatever we need for our homes or for our wardrobes. And then when you save money by reading the ads in the New York Times, you know what I like to have you do with it? I like to have you get it into the Bowery Savings Bank, the old, reliable, established bowery with four conveniently located offices in New York, and you can do all of your banking business by mail if you want to, and the bowery makes this particularly easy for you.
In fact, the bowery pays the postage both ways, and there are three nice people with whom to do your banking business. More than $9,200,000 is the sum the Bowery Savings Bank paid in dividends for the quarter ending March 31st, and your deposits made at the bowery on or before April 13th will begin earning dividends from April 1st. That's 13 extra dividend days of savings opportunity, really, and your balance of $5 or more earns dividends at the bowery.
You can start your account by telephoning the Bowery, Oxford 71414, or if you live outside the New York area, write to them, the Bowery Savings Bank. And just a note to the Bowery Savings Bank, East 42nd Street, New York, we'll reach them, but the telephone number in New York is Oxford 71414, the Bowery Savings Bank. Now we get back to our guest, who, as I told you, is one of the co-founders of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a member.
Bill, do you want to talk about anonymity a little bit? Let me give you a little historical background. There are a number of these traditions. I think the public often wonders what sort of an organization this is, and by what principle it operates as a society. When that first little group started in Akron, the going was very tough for years. In fact, that began in 35, as I told you, and by 1937, although a group had started in New York and there was a beginning in Cleveland, we could count scarcely 40 members, the number of failures was so terrific.
And then, we began to think that to spread the thing, we would need some sort of publication. We were pretty sure of what the essential technique should be, and so we put these in a book, which was named Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the basic text of the society. I guess 300,000 copies of that are now in circulation, and it is the backbone of our
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effort. Meanwhile, it was by no means proved that we could hang together. As the psychiatrists often pointed out, our neurotic explosive potential was very high. So, when it was proved that people could recover, the next point was, well, could this thing really hang together without blowing up? And could it function? Could we function as groups, as areas, as a whole? And what would we do about money, and about professionalism, and about membership, and about all of that sort of thing? And who would run it?
Now, after the publication of the book in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, in the spring of 1939, Planndaler, with that paper, ran a series of pieces about us that so electrified the town that hundreds of prospects clamored for admittance into a little group which was only about 20. And in a matter of months, that group had expanded into many groups in Cleveland, oh, the membership had gone up to 500 or 600 in a matter of months, and that was a piece of proof that we very badly needed.
In other words, could this be done on a mass production basis? Then in 1941, the Saturday Post ran a piece about us, their feature article in March of that year, and it created such a terrific sensation that 6,000 frantic inquiries from alcoholics and their friends hit our post office box here in New York, and we began to wonder just what would happen. How could all these people with nothing but literature and mail from headquarters and traveling salesmen out of an experienced group, how could this possibly get underway?
And for a long time, it looked like we were going to present every community in America with a society of alcoholics who didn't wish to stop drinking. But again, it was a do or die thing, and like the individual, the group had to hang together or they would hang separately. And during this period of adolescence, you might say, of Alcoholics Anonymous, the tradition was formed. And the tradition in essence declares that the welfare of the whole is greater than the welfare of any individual because we must survive as a group or nobody will survive.
When it comes to membership, we used to make a lot of membership rules. We wanted to keep out people with complications. Now, today, a person is a member of AA, if they say so, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what the complications are. Then there came the question of money. Should we have a professional class? And at length, we turned entirely against that. Nobody in all the length and breadth of AA is paid for carrying this message one to the other.
We can hire a secretary in an office, or a cook in a club to fry a hamburger, and they even pay me royally for being an author. But for personal therapy, face to face, nobody, but nobody in Alcoholics Anonymous is paid. It took a long time to thrash that one out. Then the question came, what would we do about contributions? People wanted to give us money. But we soon found that our needs as a society were very small.
We needed a meeting place to pass the hat. If we had clubs, well, we supported those. We needed a headquarters in New York to issue literature and to carry the experience from one group to the other and make translations to spread this thing abroad. All of that had to be done. Didn't require much money per capita. We found our earning power was very high. Alcoholics have usually learned a special trade or vocation well, so that when sober, the earning power is high. I suppose that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, their collective salaries today are a half a billion dollars a year, of which we require two dollars a year to keep the New York headquarters going, and that's only voluntary. So luckily, our needs for money weren't great.
Well, we formed another tradition that we should not get into public controversy, that our public relations should proceed by attraction rather than promotion. That is the basic reason for anonymity. Anonymity is the key to all these traditions because it symbolizes the kind of personal sacrifice that each member would like to make for the whole. I was a member cursed by the desire for power and for money.
I suppose I could be a household lord any day.
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But if I refrain from doing that, I set an example and other people don't fall into the temptation to break our anonymity to public level and perhaps fall on our faces and disgrace the society or use the name of the society to promote our own interests. Also, anonymity is a guarantee to the person coming in that he needn't fear that the skeleton is going to walk in the street. It's a protective thing.
And in essence, though, it's a deeply spiritual thing because it symbolizes the spirit of sacrifice that runs all through the tradition, giving up something for the benefit of the whole. And that's about it on the tradition. Meanwhile, we will spread across the world. Perhaps you could run in word about that eve. I don't know how much time we have left, but it is going all over the world. We just compiled our directory.
And we have beachheads of AA, as well as large groups in Australia, Africa and Scandinavian countries. And you're always listed in the telephone book. You can always look in the telephone directory of every city and just look up Alcoholics Anonymous and there it is. If it's not there, generally the police or the newspaper or a minister will know where AA can be contacted in a community. In large cities like New York, there are local offices where contact can be made. But in small communities, we do find that generally a preacher or a police officer or a policeman will know where the AA group can be contacted. And I should think perhaps the family worried about some member who's drinking entirely too much and who seems to them to be afflicted with this disease might do well to get information from AA. At least the family members, the family would then know what not to say to the alcoholic. That is perfectly true. To me, that's as important as what to say. That's perfectly true. Plus the fact that the alcoholic himself, as Bill said, must have the desire to do something about the problem. Now there are also Al-Anon family groups.
Preachers can be contacted in case the member of the family who has the problem doesn't want to do anything about it. I wish we had a lot more time, but I haven't. I'm so grateful to both of you for coming up here and telling us about AA. We're grateful to have the chance to do it. Thank you indeed. We're very, very grateful. Well, I'm the one who's grateful. I really do appreciate it. Before we go, I wanted to remind you of a couple of things. One is Shraft Catering Service.