What Sort of People Become Alcoholic — Dallas, TX, 1951

A little over eight years ago, I met a man. His sincerity of purpose, his deep humility, his great tolerance, changed not only my whole life, but has changed the lives of many hundreds of thousands of other people. I don’t know of a man in my whole experience that is loved by so many people as this man I speak of. Eight years ago, a noted philosopher by the name of Plutarch said, it is honorable to have distinctive ancestors, but that honor belongs to them. On its basis, I suggest it is honorable to belong to this distinctive society that is called the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. But the greatest honor of all goes to the co-founder of this great fellowship. The man whom I speak is our co-founder, Bill. So I shall now give you Bill. We all sense the great spirit that fills this hall. And we know that the name of that spirit is gratitude. Gratitude indeed is the keynote of every AA gathering. Gratitude to him who presides over all, who has delivered us, the children of the night, from this dark bondage. And today we have with us our friend, some of the many who have helped make this society what it is. Dr. Sadler is here. Mr. Tarleton is here, to say that this thing is good. They are saying something more than that, though. They are saying not only have we become sober. They are saying that we now belong again, something we always wanted so much to do. We belong. We are citizens of this great city, this marvelous commonwealth, this beloved land of ours. Indeed, we are now worldwide, 5,000 groups in all, in 52 countries. And I think that we are being welcomed and recognized as citizens of the world. It is often well said that alcoholics anonymous and its supposed virtues are not really virtues at all because they haven’t been earned. The thing that happened to us and will, we trust, happen to hundreds of thousands of more is in its essence a gift, a gift of God. Again, on behalf of our entire fellowship, I record my thanks to everyone who has come. So many of our friends being present, it seems fitting that we talk a little bit today about what sort of folks get to be alcoholics anonymous. What is this thing, alcoholism? As we alcoholics understand it, as the medics understand it, of what does it consist? How are people taken from this bondage, one of the most fatal ailments of mind and soul that has ever beset men and women, and that since time out of mind? How do we get released from this thing? What is this society all about? How did it start? How does it remain whole? How does it function? And then perhaps in conclusion, the way we may presume to lift the veil that obscures our future and take a look ahead. It is customary in the meetings to hang information on the thread of personal narrative. And so I hope you will pardon me if I give you this information, talking a great deal about myself and about my fellows. First, what kind of folks get to be drunks? While I was raised in a little Vermont town of about 50 inhabitants, my old grandpappy brought me up. I suppose in Vermont you consider those folks the most errant of Yankees, but I must observe that the governor of Texas has just made me an honorary citizen of even this state. Anyhow, my grandpappy brought me up, and he brought me up for this reason, that my mother and father had been divorced. Well back in those days, there was as much or more stigma on divorce in a small Yankee town as there was on being a town drunk, almost. So at ten years of age, I heard the gossip of the neighbors. I began to feel different. I began to feel that I didn’t belong. Then too I was awkward, physically awkward, pretty homely, just like I am now, except then I cared much, and now I don’t care a damn. I remember being very cast down as a kid, oh, from ten to twelve. And then this fierce desire to win out over these handicaps took possession of me, a desire so fierce that it turned into what the medics call a neurosis, a ten-dollar word, which means, folks, a person who is mentally sane but emotionally crazy, as I shall presently show you. So I developed a tremendous drive to distinguish myself, to be somebody that far transcended normal ambition. And the neighbors, I remember one, my old friend Barefoot Rose, she used to say, point at me, and she’d say, that Willie, he’s got a lot of persistence, he’s going a long way, that boy. She couldn’t guess how far down. My grandfather, seeing this trait in me, wanted to encourage it, so he was always proposing the impossible. One day he came in and said, Will, I’ve been reading a book about Australia. The natives have got a weapon down there they call a boomerang, and when they throw it, if it misses its mark, it returns to the caster. And Will, said he, very challengingly, nobody but an Australian can make and throw a boomerang. Well, I said what was probably the childish equivalent of, the hell you say, Grandpappy. I’m in the public library. All the books about Australia have. I’m trying to learn all about boomerangs. Out in the old shop with the lantern at night, whittling boomerangs. Well, you say any kid would have done that. Yes, that’s true. But no kid would have done that six solid months to the exclusion of everything else. Boomerangs, boomerangs, boomerangs. No schoolwork done, no wood box filled, no nothing. I had to be the first, mark this, the number one white man to make and throw a boomerang. Age 11. And finally, I cut the head out of my bed because it had just the right piece of wood to make a boomerang out of. And at the end of six months, I could make and throw a boomerang. And I called Grandpappy out to sea, cast one around the churchyard. It circled it, slid back down, and Grandpappy ducked or was cut his poor old head off. Well, that was the boomerang business. Interest all evaporates then in boomerangs. I’d done it. Next thing we know, Grandpappy says, Well, Will, I don’t think you got much ear for music. Well, he was stating a fact. I hadn’t taken the slightest interest ever. But he said, Uncle Clarence’s fiddle is up there in the trunk. You know, he died of TB out there in Denver. When he was a boy, your Uncle Clarence could, well, he could play the fiddle. He could play the jew’s harp. He could play the harmonica. But Willie, he said, I don’t think you’ve got any ear for music. Right up to that trunk, out with the fiddle, one string on it. Put a chip on it for a bridge, and I start sawing on that fiddle. Now, to be what? The first violin of the high school orchestra. I’m going to be. Lessons, no. I’ll learn myself. Get some wire strings at the grocery store, and I fiddle, fiddle, fiddle until I drove them just nuts. And I did become the leader of the high school orchestra, and an awful bad band it was. I’m arrived now at boarding school. I’m awkward. So, because I’m awkward, I’ve got to be an athlete. A boy throws a ball. I don’t get my hands up to catch it. It hits me in the head. I’m knocked down. Well, I wasn’t physically hurt, but how bitter I was when I saw those kids stand in a circle around me and laugh. And I got up and shook my fist, and I said, I’ll be captain of your damn ball team. Number one. Number one. Well, I was. I’ve got a crooked arm here from throwing rocks so much it telephone poles. Then something happens that gives you the other side of this coin. The other side of this implacable urge. Going way beyond any normal ambition. To excel. To dominate. To be famous. See the other side of this coin. I was awkward, as I said. I had terrible inferiority about the gals. None did pay much attention to me until I began to get along in athletics. Finally, the minister’s daughter, well, she sort of took me up. You know, women do it that way. So now, you see, in boarding school, I’m deliriously happy. I’m a success. I’m the number one fellow all over the place. In that period, I think people would have called me extremely egotistical. But actually, deep down, I was driven by this perpetual fear, inferiority, and still haunted by the feeling that I didn’t quite belong. But if I couldn’t belong, I would rule. So now, the picture is complete. I’m in love for the first time. One morning, the principal came into the chapel with a very long face. And he said, I don’t know how to tell you the terrible news that Bertha Bamford died last night, suddenly stricken. I still tremble as I remembered that. For me, the end of the world had come. I fell into a deep depression. It lasted for months. It lasted for years. Was there anything normal about that? No. If I had been an average kid, oh, I would have felt very badly. But I would have brushed away the tears, and 90 days later, I would have had my arms around another one, wouldn’t I? But not me. Now I’m depressed. I can only saw on that feather. No athletics, no interest in anything. I don’t graduate from school. And three years later, the wonderful woman who was to see me, almost to hell and back, came into my life and tenderly raised me up out of the bog in which I was. Up to this time, not a drink of liquor. World War breaks out. I’m in a military school now. People think I need the discipline. I guess they were right. Well, in Vermont, it’s a tradition that everybody bears arms. So I’m presently off to the wars as a young officer. We land down in New Bedford, a cotton town. And the society people take us up down there, us young officers. Well, as I say, I came to a small town, about 50 houses. Back doorstep, one of the conveniences, you know. I felt again this terrible sense of being ill at ease. I didn’t belong. This terrible awkwardness, this shyness, this terrible inferiority. And then somebody handed me my first drink. I’d refrain, hitherto, because there was a tradition in my family that most of the Wilsons were drunk, and I’d better not start it. But this time, under these conditions, I was given a cocktail. How well I remember, it was a box. And boy, I liked it. Another, another. And then a miracle seemed to happen. That strange barrier which had stood between me and other people seemed to fall. For the first time, I felt that I belonged. People drew nearer to me. I drew nearer to them. There was communication of a kind I’d never had. Ah, I thought I, I have discovered the elixir of life. Now, all the drunks here really know what I’m talking about, a little aside to our friend. You see, at once, liquor meant more to me. Even then, right then, I was not using a drink for relaxation. I commenced to use it to solve my life problem. And the problem of that moment was my fear and inferiority of all these strange and, I suppose, very superior people. So that started. I began to drink. That started. I guess I got drunk that very night. I remember being terribly drunk in the officer’s club there in the Bedford, having to be carried home. Then came the World War. Going abroad, I’m sitting in the bottom of the hole on guard during the night so that if a torpedo hit, the men wouldn’t panic. I had orders to shoot them. All of a sudden, there was a terrible crash. I thought we were hit. And up to this moment, I felt I was a coward, that I’d let my state down because I’d joined the artillery instead of the aviation. And yet, feeling that we were gone, I did draw my gun, stopped the panic, and a great exultation seized me. After that, the war was kind of fun. And it was powered all through by liquor. Well, then I found that I got along well with the men. All the time in this period, I was drinking to dream greater dreams of power, of ambition. When I got home, I was like all the vets coming home now. I had to start at the bottom. I’m no longer an officer. I’m clerk in the New York Central Railroad. They tossed me out of that because I can’t keep books. I’m a socialist. I study law, nights, and begin to say to the people in the great city, I’ll show you. While I was taking the law course, I became an investigator for an insurance company. That took me into Wall Street. That was a quick shortcut to fame. Meanwhile, the drinking building up, and up, and up, and up. Well, in those days, it was a good man’s fault. But my poor wife, Lois, knew it to be something much more than that. As I came home, having crawled under a subway gate because it didn’t have a nickel being rolled. That sort of thing had begun to happen. Oh, yes, we were living in a very swell apartment. But she knew that I had something more than just a habit. Alcoholism had already laid hold of me. Well, more money came in than was good for me. Then came the crash. It was all swept away. I remember the contempt with which I regarded people who were committing suicide by jumping from the towers of high finance. And I remember beating on my chest and said, I have done this once, I can do it again. And again, the old fierce desire to succeed seized me. This I will do. The drinking went up and up, to dream more and more. But now I begin to run over onto the other side of the road. When I signed that contract, I really meant it. And my new friend said, Bill, with this new prospect, surely you’re not going to drink this up. But please sign a contract that if you take one drink, your contract will be over. I knew this to be the greatest financial opportunity I might ever have. I believed I could do it. I did not yet realize that I was already possessed of an obsession that condemned me to drink against my will, against my desires, against my home, against all my interests. An obsession that condemned me to go on drinking, and an increasing physical sensitivity that guaranteed that one day I would go mad or die. Inside of three months, I was drunk again. I was with some people, and they had some Applejack, Jersey Lightning, they called it. And I refused it several times with great ease. And then with equal ease, I suddenly said to myself, well, you never had any Jersey Lightning, Bill. Never, never in all your drinking, one little bowl of Jersey Lightning won’t hurt you. Three days later, I’m dead drunk in the hotel, and my contract was in a net. And then again, the bottom fell out. My progress down was so fast that soon the doctors were saying, well, not much hope. One cure after another. And finally, on a summer’s day in 1934, a doctor who was destined to play a great part in our society was obliged to tell Lois, I’m afraid he’s going to be like all the rest, nearly all the rest that passed my way. What do you mean, doctor, said she, how bad is this? Well, he said, I thought that Bill was one of those people I could reeducate. He has been a man of immense willpower. I thought if he better understood the malady, well, maybe he’d be one of the few. She said, doctor, but what do you mean? Well, he said, I hate to tell you this, but Mrs. Wilson, if you expect him to live long or to stay sane, I think you will have to lock him up. Condemned by an obsession to go on drinking. Condemned by a physical sensitivity to go mad or die. That was the dilemma, and I’d hit bottom. And my God of science, for I worship science, having had an engineering training, having been brought up with one of those dandy modern educations which had declared that man was God and could do anything. But here now was my God of science saying, but I’m hopeless. At last, I got the full import of that. Fear possessed me. I left that place. By dint of the greatest vigilance, I avoided liquor. I stayed sober for several months, something unheard of for me. I even went to the street and made a few dollars. I felt quite all right, perfectly well, lost still at work. And then again, suddenly, on Armistice Day in 1934, I’m again caught in the toss. The obsession got me. One drink wouldn’t hurt me. I’m dead drunk, wander around all day and all night, coming home dragging a golf bag with a great cut in my head. Lois going to work finds me in the morning. Well, November 11, 1934, marked the beginning of my last debauch. I went on drinking steadily. I start a bathtub a day, sometimes two or three. Bathtub, my friend, means a species of gin made in Prohibition time. When one afternoon the telephone rang, an old schoolmate was on the other end of the wire. I hadn’t seen him for years. I had never known of his being New York City sober. And long since I had recognized that he was one like me, caught in this fatal trap. And here he was in New York sober. I said, hello, Abby, come over. And I thought to myself, when he comes, we’ll drink together over the kitchen table, as in the old days. And I thought to myself, we’ll talk about the good old times. A very significant and neurotic remark there, because now I wanted to live in the past. The future was not to be, and the present wasn’t there. So Abby and I would talk about the past. And there, praise God, he sits right in the front seat down there now. I go to the area way. I open the door. I suspect we drunks are a little psychy. I sensed there was something different about him or in him. I couldn’t make out what he was. He was sober all right. He came in. I looked across the kitchen table. I pushed him a tumbler of gin. He said, no, thanks. I said, what? No, thanks. He said, I’m not drinking. I said, you on the water wagon? No, he said, I wouldn’t say that. I said, I’m just not drinking. I couldn’t make it out. In a way, though, I was pleased because my gin supply was rather long. And at length I said, look, Abby, what’s gotten into you? And he looked across the table at me, and with a half smile, he said, well, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not religious. Gee, he might as well have hit me in the face with a wetting mop. Oh, boy. What a disappointment. Well, I said at last, rather weakly, what brand is it? Well, he said, I wouldn’t call it a brand. It’s just common sense ideas that I picked up from a group over here. They call them the Oxford Group. They’re a little too evangelical for me, but I got certain ideas over there, and I heard a kind of fix you’re in. And six months ago, I got released from my design. to drink by practicing very simple principles. Well, I said, let’s have it. So he dished out this simple, neat little formula, which lies at the heart of the AA program today. For it ought to be said right here, that from those dear Oxford groupers, we learn both what and quite as importantly, what not to do. But this, according to Abbot’s version, is what to do. Number one, you admitted that you were late. Number two, you got honest with yourself as you’d never been before. Number three, you talked this out in confidence with another and quit this accursed business of living long. Number four, you made a survey of the damages you’d done, the wreckage you’d caused, and you went to people in the spirit of making amends, doing so if you could, promising what you couldn’t. So you had a kind of an inside house cleaning, cleared away the debris of the past, and then what were you to do? Well, number five, you thought about helping another human being without any demand for personal reward, either of money or prestige. You just gave of yourself as best you could. Sort of giving, as we in AA say, that has no price tag on it. And then finally he came to the God business and he said, well, he said, I know you’ll gag on this, but I wasn’t much on religion myself, but why don’t you pray just as an experiment to whatever God you think there is? Such was the essence of what passed over the kitchen table there in Brooklyn on a bleak November day in 1934. And that is the essence of what now passes. For my friend had come to me really with the outlines of everything we have in AA today. He came to me with a means by which I might become sober, a means by which I might become whole, and a means by which I might serve God and men. Recovery, unity, service, that was his legacy to me. And the story of Alcoholics Anonymous is how those legacies under the grace of God grew and were transmitted from one to another of us, chain fashion, in all the years since. Well, I was impressed by it. I’d heard all these principles before. They might have been got in a dozen religions or out of a lot of philosophies. But why did they make such an impact on me? Because there was present the element of one alcoholic talking to another. One that I knew had been hopeless was talking to me, and I could see that he was not merely suppressing his obsession by an ever-failing willpower. I noticed that he used the word, I have been released. It seems to me that this thing has been taken out of him. Released. Yes, he had. That was the singular quality that I’d noticed. Someone has said, well said indeed, that AA is a great simplicity which nevertheless enshrines the deep mystery, which is indeed the grace of God. Well, I still gagged on the God business. Frankly, I didn’t like it. The rest of it I could go for, but not this God business, please. I drank on and on. And then, like many of us, all of us probably, I came to this conclusion. If I am as sick as science says I am, and as hopeless as I feel, who am I to choose how I will get well? Am I not a person more hopeless than a cancer case? Not only do I have a physical ailment, that’s not the worst of it. No, I have an emotional cancer. A mental cancer. And if there be such a thing, perhaps a cancer of the soul. Therefore, if there be any great physician, maybe I’d better seek him out. Then caution overtook me. After all, you’re one of these Vermont Yankees, mustn’t have any emotional conversion experience or anything like that. It’d be very bad. Better hustle up to the hospital where the doctor can look you over and take the alcohol out of you, where you can again consider what your friend has said. And boy, I had done nothing but consider it after he left. In no waking hour could I get it out of my mind. Why? Because another alcoholic had struck me deep as no one else could. So I arrived at the hospital very drunk. You know, you always get stewed on the way to get sober at those places. My dear old friend, the doctor, Dr. Silkworth, that great medical saint to me, was pretty discouraged. I was waving a bottle, crying, doctor, this time I got something. And rather woefully, he said, I’m afraid you have, my boy. You better get upstairs and go to bed. Well, since I’d got to this place about three months ahead of the delirium treatment, I wasn’t in too tough shape. And three days later, I was all out of the influence of alcohol or any sedative, but horribly depressed. When suddenly one morning, quite early, my friend, Debbie, down there stood in the door. I thought to myself, gee, this is wonderful. This fellow practices what he preaches. Sure, he’s a friend, but I haven’t seen him for years. He’s got a lot of obligations. Why is he interested in me so early in the morning? Practices what he preaches. Carries this message to other people. Oh no, maybe he’s going to evangelize me. Maybe he’s going to pour on the sweetness and light. Better look out. Well, Abby was possessed of that great Christian virtue of prudence, which carries a very high rating. He knows my prejudices. So he just said, well Bill, I hear you landed up here, and I thought I’d come up and pay you a visit. So we talk about this and that, and he forces me to again ask him, what’s this neat little formula? Oh yeah, you get honest with yourself, you get honest with other people, you make restitution, you work with others without any demand for reward, and you pray best you can. Very. I have to dig it out of him. Well, when he was gone, I suddenly sunk into the most terrible depression I’ve ever known, which is saying something. And in that depression, I suppose momentarily the last trace of my prideful obstinacy was crushed up. I was utterly deflated at great depth, because another alcoholic had hit me where I live, and because my God of science had said, yes, we too say you’re hopeless. And still I didn’t believe. So I cried up as a child in the dark. Now, now I am willing to do anything to get well, to be rid of this insanity. And if there is a God, will he show himself? And then came to me the great central event of my life. It is an incredible business. It seemed to me the place lit up blinding white. I was caught in an ecstasy for which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me that I stood on the top of a mountain, a great wind was blowing, a great clean wind. And suddenly I knew this is not air, this is spirit. After a time, the ecstasy subsided. I find myself on the bed. But now I lie in a new world, a world in which everything just seemed to be all right. A world… world in which ultimate rightness would triumph, now or sometime. All was right no matter how wrong it was. And I knew that I had been released from the insanity of alcoholism. I was a free man. Somehow I felt I belonged in this cosmos, that I was a part of things at last. And a great peace stole over me. And I said quietly to myself, so this must be the God of the preachers. And I lay there a long time, in wonder and in peace. But at length, my scientific training got the better of me. I began to be frightened. I began to say, my God, this is a hallucination. Better get the doctor. He’s good on these mental cases. The old man hustled up, looked at me through his china-blue eyes. I told him this story. And then came a great event for alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Suppose that man had said, well, Bill, you’ll feel better in a day or two. This is really nothing to worry about. Just a little, you know, detail, a little hallucination. But no, he questioned me very closely. And finally that great little man of science said, now, Bill, you’re not crazy. Now, you’re not crazy. Something has happened to you. I can’t put my finger on it. I can sense it. Some profound psychic event has occurred. All I’ve read about these things in the books, it’s what they call a conversion experience. Sometimes these experiences fix drunks. I think maybe this is the time for you. And in any case, dear boy, what you have got now is so much better than what had you only an hour ago. You’d better hang on to it. Well, I’ve been hanging on since. My friend, Ebby, had a little tougher luck with it, as valid as his experience is. Praise God he’s with us today, partly because of the great generosity of the AAs of this state. And for that, I want to record my thanks. Now let me pick up the story. Soon somebody comes to the hospital carrying a book. Now I begin to show you that AA has many founders. Nobody really invented them. You remember here were the Oxford Group friends. Here was Dr. Silkworth telling me the medical nature of alcoholism. And now came a man out of the past, already in his grave in the shape of William James, the author of Varieties of Religious Experience. And he brought, this book was shown me, and it’s hard reading. But here were a whole lot of cases, as many cases of religious conversion as Heinz’s got pickled. And I looked through and found experiences like mine. Sometimes I saw they were sudden. Sometimes I saw they occurred very slow. Sometimes they occurred under a religious auspices. Sometimes people just looked out the window in despair and said, my God, this tree can grow and respond to the law of its nature. Why can’t I, oh God of the universe, help? And then perhaps suddenly, perhaps very slowly, this mystic transformation sets in, which enables us to do that which we could not formerly do on our own resources. I make haste to say that this experience of mine was identical with whatever a good AA gets, except usually his or hers is spread out over six months or a year or so. But if all the experience that each of us had was condensed up into six minutes, let us say, I think all of you out there would too have seen the stars as I did. Well, all of a sudden I’m possessed of a great desire to work with drunks. My old characteristics promptly reappear. In spite of this gift, I’m soon heard saying I’m going to sober up all the drunks in the world. I start working at them. I’m very much disappointed. I go down to the Oxford group. They don’t like these medical ideas. They don’t like so many drunks around. You can hardly blame them. They’d had hard luck with them. Nothing happens. They don’t sober up anybody. A very proper deflation. And one day I’m back up at the hospital and Doc Silkworth said, look Bill, you’ve been telling people about this hot flash in this conversion business and exhorting these guys to get good and be good. You’ve got the cart before the horse. Why don’t you give them the scientific medical business first? Why don’t you show them out of the mouths of science that this is an insanity that condemns them to go mad and die? And why? And then maybe if you push that out over a bridge of identification with the other drunk, it’ll strike him deep just like your friend Debbie hit you. And then bring in these other things, but soften them up with the medical business first. You’ve got the cart before the horse. Now you see here with science coming in with an indispensable ingredient for alcoholics and non-alcoholics. It’s something like a farmer’s three-legged milk stool. One support being religion, another support medicine, and the other the drunk’s own experience and his ability to transmit where none others can. Pull out one leg and it won’t work. Right here old Dr. Silkworth was putting in the scientific leg of the milk stool. The religious leg had been supplied by Abby’s Oxford Group friends, and now we were getting experience as drinkers transmitted. About this time, with no success whatever, except that I stayed dry myself. I fell into a business deal which took me out to Akron, Ohio. I set great store by that deal, but it collapsed. Left me penniless in the Mayflower Hotel, feeling terribly sorry for myself, and for the first time since my sudden experience, I felt tempted to drink. But I had been restored to sanity because I got scared. I wasn’t usually scared to get drunk. You rationalize yourself into it, you know. I’m scared. And then I remember how much working with another alcoholic had done to help me, even though there had been no success. And I thought to myself, it’s about time you started preaching and teaching my friend. You’d better look up another alcoholic because you need him as much as he needs you. And through a strange change of what must have been providential circumstance, I’m brought face to face with dear old Bob, my co-partner in this thing, Dr. Bob Smith of Akron, Ohio, who took his leave of us in 1950. A friend, again a non-alcoholic comes in the picture, where others had refused to help me find an alcoholic, she had the time and cared, and she found such a person. And Dr. Bob and his dear wife Ann and I and my new friend Henrietta sat in Henrietta’s park and she put us off in a side room. And instead of preaching at Bob and telling about this strange experience, I dwelled at length on the medical nature of alcoholism and its utter hopelessness and gave him a full description of my background as a personality and my drinking experience. He’d come to stay five minutes because he was badly hungover. Well, he stayed five hours. And right then and there, I know that the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. And then I went to live with those good folks. And soon Bob said to me, hadn’t we better be helping some other drunks lest we fall in the toils again? For Dr. Bob, as I may say, was to become the prince of all twelve-steppers. And the twelve steps, dear friend, is the one in which we carry the message to the other drunk. So he called up the city hospital, knew a nurse down there. The nurse knew his condition, know he’d been bounced off that staff, know that his poor wife Ann was a semi-invalid, know that his practice had fallen apart, and here was Dr. Bob calling a nurse in the receiving ward and he said, there’s another guy along with me, we think we got a new cure for alcoholism, we’re looking for a drunk to work on. With some sharpness, the nurse said, well, Dr. Smith, why don’t you try it on yourself? But soon, we were at the hospital. She said she had a dandy, came in on a stretcher, had been on the city council, well-known lawyer there in Akron, gone all to pieces, had been in the hospital four times in six months, had come in in delirium, had beaten up one of the nurses, and said she, how do you think that one will do you? Would you like to try that one? Yes, we would. And two or three days later after he got out of its fog a bit, Dr. Bob and I saw the first man on the bed. The man on the bed said, no, I’m a religious man, I had a religious training, I believe in God but he doesn’t believe in me. And then we told him again of the fatal nature of this malady and what it was all about and that it was an illness. We’re to blame for getting sick, but once sick, God knows we’re crazy. And he began to understand a little and he said, will you come back tomorrow? I can’t quite believe it. On tomorrow we came, and there he was, his wife talking to me, to him, and she was saying, Bill, what’s hit you? You seem different already. And he pointed to us and he said, yes, they’re, they’re, there they are. They’re the ones who understand. They’re the fellows who talked to me yesterday. And soon he was heard to say, wife, fetch me my clothes. We’re going to get up and get out of here. And he got up and he got out. He went into a political campaign. In and out barrooms, up and down the city hall steps, making speeches, kissing babies, all these things you know about. He got badly beaten too, politically, but he never got drunk again. A.A. number three, Bill Dodson of Akron. So you see, the ancient story was about to be reenacted. Two or three were gathered together under the grace of God. A little group developed in Akron that summer. Two or three of us, more joined up. The amount of failure, however, was immense. You couldn’t hook one in a hundred of these people. I went. Day in the fall of 1937, Dr. Bob and I sat in his living room, and we began to count notes. And in all three of the little groups, we could reckon maybe a score and a half or two scores. Who had been sober a year, two, or nearly three. Enough time had elapsed on enough cases to show us on that fall afternoon in 1937 that indeed God had thrown a new light into our dark world where dwelt the children of the night. And then we said, well, how can this be spread? Meanwhile, of course, we had been making many friends. I must pause here to tell you a little more about what went on in Akron. I beg of you to believe that my part in this has always been exaggerated. As far as you’ve seen as we’ve gone along, many people have contributed indispensable things. At about this period, there was a little nun in Akron, Sister Ignatia. The other hospitals wouldn’t have drunks. She began to bootleg them into St. Thomas Charity Hospital in Akron, literally bootlegged them in. And in all the years since, that little nun and Dr. Bob, who treated all those cases up there medically free, treated something like 5,000 cases of alcoholism between this time in 37 and the time Dr. Bob died in 50. And 60% or more of those people are sober today, which makes Dr. Bob the prince of all 12 steps, the developer of really the first group. But to come back to that afternoon in the living would we spread this? We needed a book. Otherwise, the message would be garbled. Maybe some of us needed a subsidy. You know, they couldn’t all come to Akron or New York City or Cleveland. Maybe we needed a string of hospitals. All we need is a lot of money, we thought. Returning to New York, I tried to raise money. I went to the rich. They said, well, isn’t the Red Cross better? Why scrape up drunks? Finally, through a queer coincidence, again providential, VAAs are sure, I reach a friend of John D. Rockefeller. He becomes very interested. So does Mr. Rockefeller. We think we’re going to get great sums of money for the missionaries, for the chain of hospitals, and to publish this forthcoming book. Indeed, these friends formed themselves in 1938 into a board of trustees. But Mr. Rockefeller said, no, I’m afraid that money will spoil us, although I must confess that it strangely affects me, this discernity of alcoholics. I’ll give just a little bit to help these two men along briefly, but I’m afraid that money will spoil us, said John D. Rockefeller, and that was a great turning point in the destiny of this society. Nevertheless, his friends continued to help us, to encourage us, but not with money. They gave us themselves. So finally we alcoholics gave up the idea of missionaries, we gave up the idea of drunk tanks that we would own, and that decision, you see, divested us of all of the temptations and responsibilities of property, money, and men. And we concentrated on getting a book done. And by chipping in among ourselves, giving the story writers and me and other helpers time to work on it, we produced, by the spring of 1939, a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. For long since, we had left the good Oxford groupers, and we had been a nameless society to them. And then, the name Alcoholics Anonymous caught on. More friends rallied around us. Harry Emerson Fosdick reviewed the book. Fulton Owsler, later to become a trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, many years later, printed a piece about us, for he was then editor of the magazine Liberty. Inquiries began to pour in to our little office in New York City. Then came Jack Alexander. The editors of the Post had been talking this thing over. And finally, they tell me, Mr. Curtis Bach said to them, I know one of these miracles myself. I think we ought to print that piece. And that decision of those editors put our beloved Jack Alexander, now one of the editors of the Post, to work on a piece about Alcoholics Anonymous, which was the feature of the March issue, 1941 of the Post. And it gave our little box number in New York. And that piece so deeply affected the whole public, especially the drinking section of it, and their wives and friends, that we were besieged with thousands of frantic appeals, which came from all over North America, and some from foreign shores. And we began to send these people the book and the pamphlet. We began to get track of traveling salesmen. We had lists of drunks and problems in every city of the land. And by writing, and by sending in our traveling members from the going groups, the older centers, this thing began to spread like wildfire. So it was established. That the first legacy was sound and secure. The alcoholic could get well under the grace of God and under the ministration of his own kind. But our second legacy of wholeness or unity as a society was by no means guaranteed. Here we were suddenly brought together. People of every kind of description, of every possible religious point of view. Society people. The lowliest workers. People with terrible jail sentences. We were scared to death. We had a period of talking about the pure alcoholic. That was the AA period of respectability. It was years before we could write a tradition to say that anybody, no matter what he has done, can be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if he says so. But they poured in. These groups began to form rapidly. The thing went by a geometric procession, swept all over this country and Canada, and was soon touching foreign land. Then our little office was beset with group problems. Problems of money, problems of property, problems of leadership. Yes, we even had the little red riding hood and the big bad wolves. And each of these problems in turn we thought surely would disintegrate our society. And it was on thousands of anvils of such hectic experience that the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous was formed, that set of principles that we hope will hold us in unity for so long as God will need us. The alcoholics here know what those are, but I’ll give them a quick rundown for you. We in AA believe that the survival of this great society is much more important than the welfare of any single individual. We believe you, that the conscience of this society, once properly informed and spiritualized as it is, will be wiser in its own behalf than any inspired leadership. That was a hard one for me to learn, to become a pupil of this thing. The only authority in Alcoholics Anonymous is God as he speaks in our group conscience. I spoke of our tradition of membership, why we had so many membership rules to keep out undesirables. Today our tradition states flatly, the only requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is a person’s own declaration he’s an alcoholic. He can declare himself in, nobody can turn him away. Group autonomy, ten dollar word means each group can run its own business the way it wants to. No endorsements or alliances. Another one, we’re self-supporting. Another one, we mustn’t engage in controversy at the public level. Still another one, no fees, no dues, no professional worker. Some here may ask, how do you live? Well very plainly, I have a royalty on the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Secretaries in our office are paid a salary for doing the secretarial work. I’m paid for being an officer, just like the cook in the club maybe is paid for frying a hamburger. Nobody from top to bottom in this whole society is paid one thin dime for carrying the message personally to the other alcoholic. Not one. Non-procreation. Public relations? Well, our friends of the press, our friends of religion, our friends of medicine have all conspired to say good things about us. Not because we have gone and demanded these things. They have come willingly, attracted to what seemed to be going on here, and have talked about us, and have said good things, and have spread the news throughout the world. Indeed, they have made us, and I record our thanks now for that. And then this queer business about anonymity. In the beginning, of course, we were anonymous because there was a terrible stigma on drinking. We were like secret society. Now, everybody’s proud to join A.R.A. The stigma has been lifted. People understand this malady for what it is. Why are we still anonymous? Well, at this level, we aren’t anonymous. Everybody in this place knows I’m Bill Wilson. I’m glad to have you known. I can only say to newspapers here, though, don’t print my name in a newspaper or my picture. So we’re anonymous at the general public level. Why? As a protection to the society. You see, we can’t stand too much inflation or too much notoriety or too much fame. It would be perilous to this society if our old-time members were made household names. Also, our anonymity is a guarantee to the press. And quite a refreshing one, they say. Because it guarantees that nobody here has any angle. We only want publicity of this thing to spread the news of it and its result. And then there is a deeper reason for the anonymity at the public level, a spiritual one. It symbolizes, so far as the tradition goes, the spirit of sacrifice. Displacing our principles ahead of personality. And while this development was moving forward in our time of adolescence, little by little we learned how to function. By groups, by areas, and laterally our board of trustees, those old friends plus some of us who have been looking after our world services, our literature, our magazines, our overall public relations, that sort of thing, have now become accountable to delegates meeting once a year with whom they sit and to whom they are accountable. And to them. And those delegates, we AAs who helped originate this thing, and I’m only one of many, are turning over all of our authority, actual or implied. There will be no succession to the originators of this movement excepting the movement itself. Today, we stand on the threshold of maturity. So far as I know, we have not an enemy in the world. All religions have said good things about us. We laymen have repeatedly been permitted to read medical papers, for such bodies as the American Medical Society, New York State Medical, American Psychiatric, a host of others. Everybody has rallied to this cause. We have been able to do together, science, religion, medicine, the press, plus AA, what we couldn’t do separately. It is a great cooperative effort. And this must show you that the founders of AA are men. And that nobody invented alcoholics or not. So here we are with these firmly established legacies of recovery for the alcoholic, of wholeness for him and his society, and now laterally we are becoming sure of how we ought to relate ourselves to the world outside and function as a whole. So in effect, you see, God has been constructing, if you will, a cathedral of the spirit. And on the great floor where are now inscribed the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, there already stands some 150,000 of us spread all over the world. And then, as you have seen during our time of adolescence, the sidewalls to this cathedral, buttressed by our twelve traditions, went up, ensuring we trust our unity for so long as God shall need us. And in recent times we have been putting a spire in place, a spire of service, at the top of which is the cathedral. It is a beacon of light which we trust will continue to shine into the darkest caves where dwell the children of the night and to the furthest beachheads of the earth.