Ernest K. on the History of AA and the Spiritual Malady — Part 1 of 2

Not God, A History of Alcoholics Anonymous by Ernest Kurtz was published by Hazelden in 1978. Not God recounts the historical and philosophical development of AA from its beginnings in 1934 through 1971. Through extensive research in AA's archives and interviews with AA's early leaders, Dr. Kurtz has written a history that identifies the sources of AA philosophy and follows the growth of those ideas over the years. The information in this audio tape was abridged by Dr. Kurtz from the first part of his book. Dr. Kurtz is on the faculty of Loyola University of Chicago, the Rutgers Summer School of Alcohol Studies, and is a consultant to Hazelden and the Veterans Administration. In addition, he writes, lectures, and gives workshops on topics related to the field of chemical dependency. Beginnings November 1934 to June 1935 The Limitations of the Drinking Alcoholic On a dank cold afternoon in late November 1936, two men sat kitty-corner at the kitchen table of a house at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, New York. On the table stood two glasses, a pitcher of pineapple juice, and a bottle of gin retrieved from its hiding place in the toilet tank in the adjacent bathroom. The visitor smiled. His tall host laughed a bit too loudly at the announcement his friend and old drinking buddy had just made. No thanks. I don't want any. I'm not drinking. I've got religion. The host's eyes and heart dropped. Religion. He knew that his friend had been a too heavy drinker, had his alcoholic insanity become religious insanity? Uninspiring and tawdry as that scene was, both a profound significance and a deep irony lay buried within it. The significance was the birth of the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous. The irony was that the carefully groomed, dry, religion-spouting visitor, Edwin T., nicknamed Ebby, would die three alcohol-sodden decades later, a virtual ward of charity. His cynical, moody, too-loudly talking and laughing host, William Griffith Wilson, would, after this one last binge, never drink another drop of alcohol. Known as Bill W., he would give America and the world a program and a fellowship which for over one million people would be literally life-saving. Here in this kitchen on that dark November afternoon, a seed was planted in Bill Wilson's alcohol-numbed brain, a seed he eventually nurtured and cultivated into the core of the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. This seed was the idea that in the kinship of common suffering, one alcoholic had been talking to another. Three years earlier, another man, Roland H., had found himself in despair over his inability to control his drinking. He turned to one of the greatest psychiatric talents of the time, traveling to Zurich, Switzerland, to place himself under the care of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. For close to a year, he worked with Jung, finally leaving treatment with confidence. Roland soon relapsed into intoxication. He returned to Zurich and the psychiatrist's care. Jung frankly told him it was hopeless to seek further medical or psychiatric treatment, but Jung also spoke of the possibility of a spiritual or religious experience, in short, a genuine conversion. He cautioned, however, that while such experiences sometimes brought recovery to alcoholics, they rarely happened. In response, Roland had joined the Oxford Group, an evangelical movement then at the height of its success in Europe. Within it, Roland had found the conversion experience that released him from his compulsion to drink. Returning to New York City, he became active in the Oxford Group at its United States headquarters, the Calvary Episcopal Church of Reverend Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. Hearing that his old friend Ebby T was threatened with commitment to an institution because of his drinking, Roland H intervened. He and his friend Zebra G brought Ebby to the Oxford Group and to his first period of sobriety. Ebby, in turn, sought out the most hopeless and most self-destructive drinker he knew, his old friend Bill Wilson. Bill Wilson had been born, fittingly enough, in a small room behind a bar on November 26, 1895, the first of the two children of Gilman and Emily Griffith Wilson. Bill's parents had both grown up in East Dorset, Vermont, where Bill was also born. But the Wilsons' marriage was not happy, and one night in 1905, Bill's father deserted his family. Wilson's mother moved to Boston and launched herself on a career as an osteopathic physician, leaving Bill and his sister Dorothy in the care of their maternal grandparents. Fayette and Ella Griffith proved kindly as surrogate parents, yet deep within young Bill Wilson ached a feeling of rejection. Three incidents from these quiet years, a success, a discovery, and yet another failure reveal his torment. Grandpa Fayette tried hard to be a father to the boy, but he was an introverted man like Bill's father, Gilly. One evening, Fayette intuitively marked the immense sense of determination beginning to form in the boy in response to the craving rooted in his feelings of rejection. Almost casually, the grandfather thought aloud, I've been reading a good deal about Australia lately, and no one seems to know why Australians are the only people in the world who are able to make a boomerang. And so young Bill set to work, reading library books, speaking with woodcutters, covering every available scrap of paper with diagrams, and finally sawing, carving, whittling, and throwing. Some six months later, the boy led his grandfather to the church graveyard. Using a boomERANG fashioned from a three-foot plank filched from the headboard of his bed, the boy threw, stood waiting, and succeeded. I did it, Bill shouted. Our Willie, his grandfather observed, the very first American to do it, the number one man. The success was to be recognized and called a number one men. Whenever his proud grandfather reported the tale in Bill's hearing, all the lights in the room seemed to come up higher. He was filled with a kind of power, and when they went on about his accomplishment, he could feel it growing, spreading through his body as if some potent drug had been released. In later years, Bill Wilson often harked back to that phrase, that quest. On the one hand, it was the story of his alcoholism. Onthe other, it was a source of Alcoholics Anonymous. The discovery was more complex. One dry but chilly afternoon, Bill stopped by a tavern and drank hot cider, apparently non-alcoholic. But he also drank in something more, the atmosphere of a rural New England tavern on a summer afternoon. It was a vivid emotional memory, his feeling for the men, his feelings for the people, his feeling of being at home. Sometimes in later years he could think of nothing else. He wanted it again. His experience of failure marked the end of Bill's childhood. At Burr and Burton Academy, a co-educational school, he discovered Bertha Banford, the most charming girl in the school. He fell completely in love, and Bertha loved him. Then, while Bertha and her family were visiting New York City, the usual daily chapel routine at Burr & Burton was broken. The headmaster stood to announce that Bertha Bamford had died. At Bertha's funeral service, Wilson had a revelation of failure. He knew now that his wanting and desire meant nothing to the terrible ongoing forces of creation, and he would never forget this truth which he saw and accepted that night. In the summer of 1917, at a party before he shipped overseas as a soldier, Bill took his first remembered drink of alcohol. The effect and therefore the meaning of that first drink proved profound. He could feel his body relaxing, a stiffness going out of his shoulders as he sensed the warm glow seeping into all the forgotten corners of his being. Soon he had the feeling that he wasn't being introduced to others, they were being introduced in his life. They were being used to him. He wasn't joining groups, groups were forming around him. It was unbelievable. At the sudden realization of how quickly the world could change, he had to laugh and he couldn't stop laughing. It was a miracle. All his life he had been living in chains. Now he was free. From that moment, Wilson devoted his life to recapturing that elusive and illusionary sensation of freedom. The route after his marriage to Lois Burnham and brief army experience led through Wall Street, that famous shortcut either to wealth and power or to poverty. When the stock market crashed in 1929, Wilson looked with disgust upon the bankrupt people were then jumping from high buildings, but he himself began sinking. Finally, he was not drinking to dream dreams of power. He was drinking to numb the pain and to forget. From 1930 through 1934, Wilson's life became an alcoholic hell. Wilson was admitted to the Charles B. Towns Hospital, a drying out facility on Central Park West, four times during 1933 and 1934. It was apparently on the second of these visits that Bill first came under the care of Dr. William Duncan Silkworth. At their first meeting, Silkworth, later to be immortalized in AA history as the little doctor who loved drunks, provided Wilson with an understanding of his alcoholism. It was an illness. Wilson had become physically allergic to alcohol, yet his mind remained obsessed with it, condemned to drink against any will of his own. But the doctor also held out a slim hope. They could work together toward Bill's overcoming, or at least living soberly with the obsession. His new understanding temporarily sustained Bill, but soon he began drinking again. The doctor informed Lois of her choices, to have Bill locked up, to watch him go insane, or to let him die. Alcoholic that he was, Wilson found hope in this proclamation of hopelessness. Knowing this, he surely would never drink again. Never lasted only the few weeks until Armistice Day. Bill accepted a bartender's offer of a drink on the house. After all, he had been in World War I 16 years before. Thus began Bill Wilson's last binge, the one interrupted by the late November visit from his friend Ebby, whom he, Bill Wilson, had labeled hopeless. Yet here was Ebby, sober, who had just declined to drink with a smile. Confronted by that fact, Bill Wilson found hope. He was more aware, however, of confusion. Ebby's using the word religion troubled him deeply. Of Bill's earlier exposure to religion little is known, probably because there is little to know. Bill Wilson had left his church at about age 12 on a matter of principle. Ironically, the principle concerned a required temperance pledge. Given his alienation from formal religion, Bill knew that he would not tolerate being preached at. Yet his pain at this moment opened Wilson to something. Ebby was proving his friendship by not urging his newfound religion upon Bill. Something else was happening. In the kinship of common suffering, one alcoholic had been talking to another. Wilson decided that he could think all this out more sharply if he were dried out. He set off to Towns Hospital and Dr. Silkworth. Dr. silkworth was unenthusiastic about what little he could make of Wilson's ravings about a plan, but he gave Bill a bed. On the second day, Ebby stopped by. When asked by Bill for his formula, he repeated it. Realize you were licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to the care of God. Wilson nodded about all he could do, and Ebby left. Later, Wilson wrote of what happened next. My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the bottom of the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a power greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, If there is a God, let him show himself. I am ready to do anything, anything. Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me in the mind's eye that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of presence, and I thought to myself, so this is the God of the preachers. A great peace stole over me, andI thought, no matter how wrong things seem to be, they are all right. Things are all right with God and his world. The doctor came, and Bill related what had happened. Silkworth listened, then advised, Whatever it is you've got now, hang on to it. Hang on to It, boy. It is so much better than what you had only a couple of hours ago. The next day, Ebby brought him a copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. James thought nearly all spiritual experiences had the common denominators of pain, suffering, and calamity. Complete hopelessness and deflation at depth were almost always required to make the recipient ready. Still awed by the sobriety of the once hopeless Ebby T., Bill associated himself with the Oxford Group and began a lifelong friendship with the Reverend Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. Within the Oxford group, Wilson's alcohol-dulled drive to be a number one man quickly reasserted itself, and he announced to his new associates that he was going to sober up all the drunks in the world. Since he felt more at home with a small group of struggling alcoholics at a neighborhood cafeteria than he did at Oxford group meetings, Wilson extended that contact. Some he brought home to Clinton Street to live with him in the long-suffering Lois. Alcoholics struggling against their obsession with booze seemed to do better if they spent time talking with others engaged in the same struggle. Their talk was of spiritual things, the Oxford group principles of the necessity of conversion and restitution, or their efforts to attain the group's four absolutes, absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. They seemed to do better, but better proved not good enough. All but Bill himself soon went out and got drunk. As she saw her husband's mounting frustration over the failure of his efforts, Lois suggested that Bill express his concerns to Dr. Silkworth. Drawing upon his deep knowledge of alcoholism, the physician pointed out, Look, Bill, you're having nothing but failure because you're preaching at these alcoholics. Silkworth pointed out the frightening aspect, especially to alcoholics, of the Oxford group absolutes, the apparent weirdness and disconcerting nature of the hot flash conversion experience that Bill insisted on describing to each potential recruit. You've got to deflate these people first, so give them the medical business and give it to them hard. Coming from another alcoholic, one alcoholic to another, maybe that will crack those tough egos deep down. Wilson needed time to think. He began again to frequent Wall Street. In early May, a proxy fight in Akron, Ohio required a small group of aggressive hagglers on the scene and Bill jumped at the chance to demonstrate his skill. The proxy struggle was resoundingly lost. Discouraged, the others left Akron, but Wilson's persistence moved him to stay on in search of some last loophole. On Saturday, May 11th, Wilson moped in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Akron. At one end of the hotel lobby, the bar gleamed dimly as it filled with late Saturday afternoon revelers. At the other end stood the hotel church directory. As Bill paced, the friendly buzz from the bar grew louder and began to intrude on his self-pitying consciousness. God, he thought, I am going to get drunk. And in that thought began the final founding moment of Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson panicked. One idea rose out of all his recent experience. I need another alcoholic. So Bill Wilson turned on his heel, purposefully striding away from the bar and towards the church directory. The listed Episcopalian minister was the Reverend Dr. Walter Tunks. Frantic, Bill called and poured out his tale, asking to be put in touch with any Oxford groupers in Akron. Tunks furnished a list of ten names, and Wilson commenced calling. He had reached the last name on the list, that of Norman Shepard, before he found someone who seemed to understand his concern and desperation. No, Sheperd told Bill, he himself was not an alcoholic, nor did he really know any alcoholics. But a friend of his, Mrs. Henrietta Sieberling, could perhaps prove helpful. Desperate, Bill tried her number. To the softly southern voice that answered the phone, he gushed forth the beginning of his story. I'm from the Oxford Group, and I'm a rum hound from New York. Henrietta Seberling, the daughter-in-law of the founder and one-time president of the Goodyear Rubber Company was not an alcoholic. But as a deeply committed Oxford Group member she had devoted the past two years of her life to sobering up Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, a prominent Akron surgeon whose wife was her close friend. She invited Bill to her home on the Seberlin estate. Dr. Bob and his wife Anne were invited to visit Henrietta Seberling and her strange Oxford Group visitor from New York the next afternoon. Bill Wilson spent the next day meditating on the advice Dr. Silkworth had given him. You've got to deflate these people first, so give them the medical business and give it to them hard. Fine, Bill thought, but here he was about to speak to a medical doctor. What could he, Bill Wilson possibly tell him, Dr. Bob Smith? When they met, Wilson told Smith the tale of his experience with alcohol, the hopes, the promises, and the failure of both. The drinking camaraderie in hotel rooms and the painful dryings out, the loving devotion of his wife and how she had to take a clerk's job to support his boozing. A tall, rigidly erect, stern-looking man, Dr. Bob Smith studied Bill Wilson as he sat listening, fascinated. When the surgeon had agreed to visit Henrietta, his wife promised they would not stay longer than 15 minutes, but now he wanted to hear more. Yes, here was somebody who really knew how it was. This stranger from New York had been there. He had felt the obsession of craving, the terrors of withdrawal, the self-hatred over failure, all the things Dr. Bob had experienced and was experiencing even as he listened. Something happened within Bob. No one had ever heard him talk about himself. But here was someone who understood, or perhaps at least could. This stranger from New York didn't ask questions and didn't preach. He offered no you musts. He had simply told the dreary but fascinating facts about himself, about his own drinking. And now, as Wilson stood up to end the conversation, he was actually thanking Dr. Smith for listening. I called Henrietta because I needed another alcoholic. I needed you, Bob, probably a lot more than you'll ever need me, so thanks a lot for hearing me out. I know now that I'm not going to take a drink, and I'm grateful to you. Bob could bear the strain no longer. He'd listened to Bill's story, and now by God this rum hound from New York was going to listen to his. For the first time in his life, Dr. Bob Smith began to open his heart. He had been born on August 8, 1879, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the only son of parents prominent in civic and church activities. His first drink of alcohol had been at age nine when he had found a jug hidden under some bushes. Even then, he had liked what it had done for him. At Dartmouth, he was the school's champion beer drinker. He wanted to be a doctor so Bob enrolled in the pre-medical program at the University of Michigan where he was promptly elected to star membership in the school drinking fraternity. At Michigan, he began to change. Smith who had boasted so often of never having a hangover began to suffer morning after shakes. Life became one binge after another. Bob quit school to dry out then decided to return only to learn that the faculty had other ideas. He transferred to Rush Medical College in Chicago, but the binges continued. Yet somehow he managed to stay dry for two quarters and obtained his M.D. degree. At least a dozen times he admitted himself to various sanatoria to no avail. Smith developed two phobias, fear of not sleeping and fear of running out of liquor. His life became a squirrel cage, staying sober to earn enough money to get drunk, getting drunk to go to sleep, using sedatives to quiet the jitters, staying sober, earning money, getting drunk. For 17 years this nightmare had gone on, his wife Ann and their two children living in a shambles of broken promises. Few patients were willing to trust their bodies to a surgeon whose hands trembled. Sometime in 1932, a friend of the Smiths called Henrietta Sieberling to request that something be done about Dr. Smith. Henrietta called her friend Ann Smith and urged her to bring Bob around to the Oxford group meetings. For the next two and a half years, Bob attended their meetings but continued to get drunk regularly. The group did fascinate him. Religious philosophy had been his hobby. Unfortunately, his own best ideas seemed to come only when he was well lubricated with alcohol, and invariably he forgot them by the next day. Now as he finished his story, something began to dawn on Dr. Bob Smith. The spiritual approach was as useless as any other if you soaked it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself. The purpose of life wasn't to get, it was to give. For all his dabbling in religion and philosophy, Dr. Smith had never before realized that simple obvious fact. By now it was nearing midnight, and Dr. Bob's need to give had overwhelmed his craving for alcohol. He invited Bill to return home with himself and his wife. So began three weeks of intensive Oxford group living. Early in June, it was time for the annual medical convention held that year in Atlantic City. Dr. Bob left and nothing was heard of him for several days. Then one morning his office nurse called. She had picked up the doctor at the railroad station at four that morning. He was drunk. Ann and Bill fetched Bob home and put him to bed, learning in the process that he was scheduled to perform a vital operation three days later. His wife and his new friend sat up with Dr. Bob around the clock, tapering him off in order to minimize the effects of withdrawal. On the morning of the scheduled surgery, Ann and Bill drove Bob to the hospital. Wilson handed the surgeon a bottle of beer as he alighted to help steady his nerves and hands so that he could hold a scalpel. Then they returned to the Smith home, and they waited. Noon passed, and the afternoon wore on. Still no word from Dr. Bob. Finally, late in the afternoon, the telephone rang. It was Bob. The operation had gone well and had been completed quickly. Feeling the awful strain lifted, recalling what he had learned from his conversations with Bill, the doctor had left the hospital determined to begin living what he it absorbed from his acquaintance from the Oxford Group. Visiting first his creditors and then others whom he had harmed by his behavior, Dr. Bob Smith had made his rounds, confessing to each what he knew of the honest reality of his illness, then planning a practical program of restitution in each case. The published landmarks in AA history record the date's significance. 1935, June 10. Dr. Bob has his last drink. Alcoholics Anonymous found it. Sitting in that parlor of the Seberling Gatehouse on the evening of May 12, 1935 Bill presented to Dr. Bob four aspects of one core idea. Utterly hopeless, totally deflated, requiring conversion and needing others, the drinking alcoholic was quite obviously not perfect, not absolute, not God. Hardly a profound or original idea, but it was how Bill Wilson announced it that gave this message sufficient strength to reach the alcohol-soaked head and heart of Dr. Bob Smith. Wilson said, in effect, you, a drinking alcoholic, are not God, as I, a drinking alcoholic was not God, and I am not God even now as a sober alcoholic. I still need others, but now I need them because I have something to give. Precisely because I accept my alcoholism, my weakness, my limitation, I have found I have Something to Give from that very limitation. Thus, I am still not God. But now there is a hyphen in it. It is a positive identity. I am someone who finds that the opportunity for strength and wholeness arises from the very weakness of my limitation. And for the alcoholic, Bob, that is the meaning of sobriety and of life. First Growth, June 1935 to November 1937, The Limitations of the Sober Alcoholic On June 11, Dr. Bob suggested they start working with other alcoholics. Their first client rejected their message but on June 28, 1935 Bill and Dr.Bob confronted Bill D who was to become the third member of Alcoholics Anonymous. A prominent attorney and former city councilman as well as former church deacon, Bill D had just begun his eighth detoxification in six months by physically assaulting two nurses, leaving them with black eyes. Dr. Bob guessed they would not have too difficult a time if he wanted to stop drinking. Bill D did want to stop. Bill W and Bob probed their new acquaintance's sense of hopelessness. Did he think he could leave the hospital and not drink again on his own? With seven recent failures of just such a resolution in less than six months under his belt, Bill D harbored no illusions on that score. Wilson and Smith then stressed that they had to give their program to someone else if they were to stay sober. So was Bill D really certain that he wanted it? Because if he did not, he was endangering their sobriety. Bill D declared emphatically that he wanted the program. But when Wilson and Dr. Bob began to speak of a spiritual approach and a higher power. He shook his head. No, it's too late for me. I still believe in God all right, but I know mighty well that he doesn't believe in me anymore. Well, one of them said, maybe you'd like to think about it. The co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous returned for several more visits. Finally, one morning Bill Dee related how during the previous night hope had dawned on him. He had his spiritual experience and had grasped at the thread of faith, hope, and a muted charity. If Bob and Bill can do it, I can do it. Maybe we can all do together what we could not do separately. Wilson exulted. The saving message had been shared successfully a second time, and he noted a suffering alcoholic need not necessarily be already familiar with Oxford Group principles. Grateful as he was to the group and to its teaching, Bill could not yet put his finger on exactly what about the Oxford Group approach troubled him, but a deep instinct told him there was something. For the remainder of the summer of 1935, Bill Wilson stayed in Akron attending weekly Oxford Group meetings and living with Dr. Bob and Ann Smith in their Ardmore Avenue home. Progress in their work with alcoholics was not smooth. Gratefully then they accepted the invitation of T. Henry and Claris Williams to bring whatever alcoholics they could muster to the regular Wednesday evening Oxford group meeting at Williams' home. At first, there were precious few alcoholics to bring. In mid-July, Lois Wilson journeyed west to visit her husband and to meet his friends. Her brief visit proved long enough to renew her love and deep faith in her husband's abilities, which had somehow survived the 17 years of his destructive drinking. Certain more than ever that her Bill was a great man, she returned to New York determined to cooperate in every way possible. Early in September, Bill departed for New York. He left behind Dr. Bob and two other sober alcoholics. Bob's words echoed in his mind. Bill, keep it simple. Back home, Wilson shared his hopes with Lois, who agreed that above all, her husband must explore his developing ideas by continuing the work he had begun. Bill conceived a new plan, one made possible by Lois' decision to give up her job at a local department store. If alcoholics who did not have the advantage of such loyal love as Lois and Ann had given him and Dr. Bob were to get the program, perhaps such an environment and atmosphere of home-like caring would be needed. And so the large old house at 182 Clinton Street was opened to any alcoholics Bill could find for whom he might sense a glimmer of hope. For six months, Bill and Lois carefully dry nursed a variety of alcoholics brought to Clinton Street from the Calvary Church mission. The results were nil. From all this, Bill learned one important thing which he later developed into one half of his philosophy about alcoholism. He said, Lois and I continued to find that if we permitted alcoholics to become too dependent on us, they were apt to stay drunk. Slowly, except for very special cases, the activities at Clinton Street were cut back to an open house evening each Tuesday. Wilson shifted to seeking out likely prospects at Towns Hospital and taking them to the Oxford Group meetings at Sam Shoemaker's church. Two of Wilson's prospects, Hank P. and Fitz M., soon achieved sobriety. Meanwhile, Bill's own role within the Oxford group was becoming more ambiguous. Although those with whom Bill, Hank, and Fitz were successful began to attend the Oxford Group meetings, the Tuesday gatherings of the alcoholics at the Wilson home were clearly far more important to them. Not only the newcomers but also Bill himself limited their participation in the group to attending meetings in order to seek out other alcoholics. But the Oxford group self-consciously aimed to convert the socially prominent, and thus Bill's and his friends' attention to alcoholics, whether socially prominent or not, struck most of the other group members as an aberration. Increasingly then, Wilson's drunks felt that Tuesday evening meetings at Clinton Street did a lot more to keep them sober than the more structured Calvary Church Oxford group gatherings. Wilson became increasingly uncomfortable. He truly loved Sam Shoemaker, the kindly cleric who had introduced him to the Christian life. To separate himself from Sam would cut his spiritual taproot just when he was beginning to see that alcoholism was a threefold disease—physical, mental, and spiritual. Yet his drunks were rebelling against the pressures imposed by the Oxford group. Absolute hell! I just want to stay sober today, became a more frequent statement as the newly sober began speaking about their newly found salvation. Bill was discovering, meanwhile, that new prospects could get sober by believing in each other, in the strength of what they shared. Whatever occurred among them, they came more readily to accept a power greater than themselves away from Oxford Group pressures. They did not need the Oxford Group, so the yet unnamed group of New York alcoholics struggling for sobriety separated from it. At AA's 1955 20th anniversary coming-of-age convention, Wilson set out to record the exact nature of his and AA's debt to the Oxford group. In a historical perspective, it is clear that the contributions of the group to AA were both positive and negative. As Bill himself put it, from the Oxford Group, Alcoholics Anonymous learned not only what to do, but more importantly, what not to do. Among positive contributions, the use of informal settings to convey pleasant fellowship and the refusal to embrace specific theological positions seem most obvious. Both supported AA's claim to be spiritual rather than religious. The Oxford Group concept of a changed life was also significant for it provided a way of understanding sobriety as something positive. rather than as the mere absence of alcohol or drunkenness. Further, the group's insistence that its workers never be paid for their efforts, its emphasis that one worked with others primarily to change one's own life, also profoundly influenced A.A.'s self-understanding. Perhaps somewhere in between positive and negative contributions, Alcoholics Anonymous, in its twelve steps, absorbed the ideas but left behind the jargon of the Oxford Group's five C's of confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance, and five procedures of 1. giving in to God, 2. listening to God's directions, 3. checking guidance, 4. restitution, and 5. sharing or telling one's sins. The Oxford group belief that one got rid of guilt feelings through the discovery that others were bedeviled by the same conflicts became one, but only one, foundation of the key practice of storytelling in Alcoholics Anonymous. Four negative Oxford Group contributions merit consideration. AlcoholicsAnonymous rejected absolutes, avoided aggressive evangelism, embraced anonymity, and strove to avoid offending anyone who might need its program. Wilson's deepest problem with the Oxford group concerned the four absolutes. Experience soon demonstrated that, at least for most alcoholics, when the word absolute was put in front of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love, there often resulted a merely temporary spiritual inflation followed by complete collapse. The early alcoholics likewise rejected the Oxford groups' aggressive evangelism and publicity seeking. Drinking alcoholics did not respond well to an evangelistic approach, and sober alcoholics who still held jobs justly feared the consequences of identifying themselves as alcoholics. The promise of anonymity removed one obstacle that might have led prospects to fear even investigating the program. But the early New Yorkers found a deeper value in anonymity. Sad experience taught that publicity could bring the reinflation of self-pride and thus in dangerous sobriety rooted in the deflation of hopelessness. Alcoholics who talked too much on public platforms were likely to get drunk again. Thus, a negative contribution of the Oxford group became embodied in the fellowship's very name. They were Alcoholics Anonymous. The final contribution involved the need for inclusiveness and tolerance in Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1939, AA in New York City had but one Catholic member, and he very recent, while Akron AA, still meeting side by side with the Oxford Group, had none. The main reason for omitting mention of the four absolutes, Wilson wrote, was possible trouble with the Catholic Church. It seemed wise to omit any material that would identify us with the Oxford Group. Just at that juncture, the Pope had decreed that no Catholics could come to Oxford Group meetings. Therefore, if we used any of their words or phrases, the same sentence might fall on us. Although his information was not strictly accurate, Bill's Oxford Group experience shaped his sense that what he and Dr. Bob had discovered had to be available to all alcoholics. While the New Yorkers were engaged in their painful but fruitful separation from the Oxford Group, Dr. Robb continued his efforts with alcoholics in Akron in close connection with it. The story of Bob E. furnishes a glimpse into the style and approach of the Akron branch of the Fellowship. A member of one of Akron's wealthiest families, Bob E sat in his favorite bar nursing self-pity over his plight. His meditation was interrupted by the entrance of a former drinking companion, Paul S., whom he had not seen for some time. Paul asked how his friend was and if he was still drinking. Not very much, Bob replied. I don't have any money. Paul ignored the hint, telling Bob that he himself was not drinking at all and that if Bob ever wanted to know anything more about how to quit, he would be glad to talk to him. At his office a week later, Paul told Bob about the program of the Alcoholics Squadron of the Oxford Group. Then he took Bob E. to meet Dr. Smith. After a brief conversation, Bob signed himself into Akron City Hospital. It proved to be the strangest hospitalization he had ever imagined. Over the next five days, his care consisted of visits by groups of two or three men who simply introduced themselves and then started telling him their experiences with occasional allusions to a day at a time or a 24-hour way of living. What else was there to it? Each time Bob tried to ask, his visitors simply again recounted their experiences, drunk and now sober. On the fourth day, his visitors began also to listen And when they finally heard Bob's story, it was told in the vocabulary they had subtly taught him. Finally, on his fifth day, Paul returned to indoctrinate his new charge in the spiritual side. Bob E.'s last act before leaving the hospital was straight out of Oxford group practice. He made a surrender. On his knees at his bedside, Dr. Smith standing over him, Bob prayed and shared out loud. You couldn't attend a meeting unless you had gone through that, Bob later recalled. The formal meetings continued to be held each Wednesday evening at the home of T. Henry and Claris Williams, the alcoholics at times making up almost half the group as the year 1937 drew to a close. Referring to themselves as the alcoholic squadron of the Oxford Group, Akron's sober alcoholics were conscious of owing much, indeed all, to the group. In a smaller city, New York's problems and opportunities were discovered more slowly. In November 1937, when Bill Wilson returned to Akron, he played down the significance of the New Yorkers' separation. Focusing rather on the tidings that in the past six months some measure of success had begun to crown his efforts in New York, Bill concentrated attention on the meaning and implications of increasing numbers, something of which the Akronites were especially proud. Wilson and Smith realized that between the New York City and Akron groups, over 40 formerly destructive drinkers were now staying bone dry a day at a time. Clearly they had a message to carry. Three possibilities were discussed, first by Bill and Bob, then among all the Akron alcoholics. Paid workers could serve as missionaries. There would be the construction and operation of a chain of hospitals specializing in the treatment of alcoholism. And they needed to set down their experience and methods on paper. Dr. Bob Smith liked the idea of a book, but was frankly dubious about paid missionaries and profit-making hospitals. Still, together they presented all three ideas to 18 members of the Akron group. Supported by Dr. Rob Smith, Dr. Bill strongly argued the pros of the proposed endeavors. The initial reaction of the group was to reject all three ideals. Paying workers would diminish the effectiveness of their message. Hospitals would appear to be, if not turn into, a racket, and Christ's apostles themselves, the Akronites pointed out, had no need of printed matter. But after discussion, although over the strenuous objections of a large minority, the Akonites hesitantly consented to go along with all three ideas. In November of 1937, awareness of the larger implications of being not God, clearly did not yet permeate the still unnamed fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. To accept that the alcoholic was not God—that he was imperfect, flawed, less than absolute—had not been difficult. But to accept that they were not God was a mistake. The alcoholic was—not God with a hyphen—to accept that their very limitation issued in wholeness, that it implied affirmation more than denial, that being a sober alcoholic was a positive identity as well as a negative label, that required a deeper faith, a more profound insight. Thus the context was set for the contributions of the next two years. In both New York and Akron, events would soon demonstrate that the highs and lows of sobriety could be as perilous to serenity as the ups and downs of alcoholic intoxication, that the acceptance of being not God had to do with more than just alcohol. independent existence November 1937 to October 1939 finding wholeness in limitation by November 1937 Bill Wilson and dr. Bob Smith knew they had a program and were able to think about the ideas they had drawn from their diverse sources these ideas concerned not the thing alcoholism but persons, alcoholics. Their understanding of alcoholism as an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer described the alcoholic rather than analyze the malady. The core perception of the drinking alcoholic's problem as self-centeredness remained unchanged. Bill and Bob had clearly isolated denial as the obstacle to those who failed to grasp their ideas and so to attain sobriety. Denial tended to be expressed in two instances, the claim to be able to drink like other people and exceptional thinking. Alcoholics believed that they were somehow different from other alcoholics. The new program's first concern thus became the image it presented of the real alcoholic. Bill and Bob and their fellow alcoholics developed two insights, how the alcoholic hit bottom and the process by which a newcomer identified with admitted alcoholics. Real alcoholics begin to lose control of their liquor consumption. They deny their loss of control, but the denial is only external. The greater the external denial, the more deep and painful the internal confusion, fear, and dread. Hitting bottom became understood then not as a loss of employment or family, not as sleeping in the weeds, nor even immediately as the inability to not drink, but as the sense of being really licked. Wilson summarized explicitly what he and Dr. Smith had discovered. You must always remember that hitting bottom is the essence of getting hold of AA. If hitting bottom was such an internal phenomenon, how could anyone transmit to another this life-saving realization. The antidote for this symptom was identification, achieved by openness to honest narrations describing personal limitation. Sober alcoholics told their stories out of the conviction such honesty was required by and necessary to their own sobriety. The therapeutic power of this process of identification arose from the witness it gave, a witness to the healing potency of the shared honesty of mutual vulnerability openly acknowledged. The healing response to this witness lay in the act of surrender, the necessary foundation for getting the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. For Dr. Bob Smith, the actofsurrender had been embodied in his postoperative activities of June 10, 1935. The surgeon had finally let go only when he sought out, confessed to, and promised restitution to those whom he had harmed throughout his years of alcoholic drinking. Perhaps because Dr. Bob's final surrender had come only as a dangerously delayed phenomenon, the Akron co-founder tended to make the explicit act of surrender a dramatic and required beginning. by november 1937 bill wilson and dr bob smith had attained deeper insights concerning hitting bottom identification and surrender as wilson returned again from akron to new york city he wondered if dr bob's greater numerical success was due to the explicit oxford group style making surrender how would his new yorkers receive this news in their wariness of religion they would hardly return to so religious a practice as kneeling. Wilson did not realize it at the time, but this was the beginning of what would be for him a lifelong task within Alcoholics Anonymous. He had become the man in the middle, and he assumed the difficult role of mediating between different understandings of AlcoholicsAnonymous by those who were AlcoholicsAnenomous. The process began when Bill found that his projects, so grudgingly accepted by the Akronites, were enthusiastically accepted by many of the New Yorkers, and especially by that of Hank P. Wilson explained the concerns of the Akranites, but the New Yorkers paid little attention. They agreed a book was the most important endeavor. On this foundation, then, Bill built toward enlarging agreement. A major worry of the akron alcoholics was the financial condition of Dr. Bob. Threatened with bankruptcy, he seemed certain to lose his home. The Akronites had no thought of selling their program or even of making a profit from the book that would set it forth. But they were convinced that such a faithful evangelism would, in God's providence, attract the support which the program and its co-founders needed. The New Yorkers shared a similar attitude toward professionalism, as an incident earlier in the year had revealed. in mid-1937 bill wilson's financial situation had become acute charlie towns who ran town's hospital one day met wilson making corridor rounds in search of prospects and presented a proposal that struck bill as more than merely attractive why don't you move your work in here i'll give you an office a decent drawing account and a very healthy slice of the profits what i propose is perfectly ethical, you can become a lay therapist and more successful than anybody in the business," offered Townes. That very evening happened to be meeting night at 182 Clinton Street, and no sooner had the group assembled than Wilson burst into the story of his opportunity. As he explained its details and implications, however, Bill's ardor shifted to misgiving before the stolid impassivity of his listeners. There was a long silence. Finally, a spokesman for the group cleared his throat. Bill, don't you realize that you can never become a professional? And so Bill Wilson, having heard for the first time the voice of what he would later term the group conscience, obeyed it and politely declined Towne's generous offer. Six months later, Bill knew the special importance of a book would be to demonstrate that the program was not the property of professionals. It was not for sale. Given this concern, prior funding for publication was imperative. The problem of obtaining money without strings attached became primary. The New York alcoholics drew up a list of wealthy prospects to approach. To their astonishment, they obtained neither one cent nor a single promise of support. Wilson vented his and the others' frustration to his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard V. Strong, a close friend of Willard Richardson, the deeply religious man who administered the private charities of John D. Rockefeller Jr. After hearing out Bill Wilson, the doctor called his well-placed friend and the next day introduced Wilson to him in person. A late December meeting was arranged to be held in Mr. Rockefeler's private boardroom. Besides Richardson, Bill Wilson and Leonard Strong, in attendance were to be Rockefeller advisors Albert Scott, Frank Amos, and A. Leroy Chipman, as well as Dr. Silkworth, Dr. Bob Smith, and some of both the Akron and New York alcoholics. The meeting began awkwardly. Finally, someone suggested that each alcoholic tell his story. When the last alcoholic ended his tale, Albert Scott stood up and exclaimed, Why, this is first-century Christianity! What can we do to help? Wilson mentioned the need for money, for paid workers, chains of hospitals, and especially literature. But then Albert Scott spoke up with another question. Won't money spoil this thing? They agreed that whatever the final decision, the enterprise, yet unnamed, surely needed some money. Frank Amos offered to investigate, proposing that his findings could then serve as the basis for a direct presentation to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The report proved unqualifiedly favorable, but drawing on his Baptist belief that money would spoil any attempted living out of first-century Christianity, the world's richest man flatly refused to fund the enterprise. One concession, however, Rockefeller did make. Five thousand dollars was placed in the treasury of Riverside Church to furnish necessary temporary assistance to Bill and Dr. Bob Smith. Sensing that Richardson, Amos, Chipman, and Strong were not in complete agreement with Rockefeller, Wilson sought further meetings with these four. From this beginning came, in the spring of 1938, the Alcoholic Foundation, which eventually evolved into the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. Among its first trustees were Richardson, Amos, Chipman, and Strong, and thus began the long tradition that made a majority of the organization's trustees non-alcoholics. The money-raising efforts fizzled out. It looked like the end of the line, but the idea of a book remained. Amid much discussion, Wilson had produced, largely on his own and mainly for promotional purposes, what became the first two chapters of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. They were Bill's Story and There Is a Solution. An editor from Harper's offered in advance for the promised work, but in early fall 1938, the New York spokesman for the developing Group Conscience decided that the fellowship should own its own book. The decision was made to form a stock company, and Works Publishing Incorporated was born. Now, Bill set out to write out the heart of the program through which he and almost 100 other alcoholics had achieved sobriety. Sprawling on his bed one evening, Wilson scrawled the words, How It Works, across the top of the page, then paused to meditate about the procedure that his associates at the previous meeting had agreed pretty well summed up what they had learned from the Oxford group. Quickly, Wilson began to write, trying to set down a theme of hope, something on which all could agree. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path, Bill's pencil flew over the paper, and his thoughts continued to flow as he wrote a paragraph beginning like this. Half measures will avail you nothing. You stand at the turning point. Throw yourself under God's protection and care with complete abandon. Now we think you can take it. Here are the steps you must take in order to recover. What followed were the twelve steps almost word for word as they are read today. By the end of January 1939, Wilson was ready to rush the book to press. Then, mindful of the dual origins of the program, someone sounded a note of caution. What if the book contained medical errors or worse proved offensive to some religious faith? So 400 multi-leth loan copies went out for evaluation. The most significant result occurred within the group itself. Wilson had written on the cover page of the printing, Alcoholics Anonymous, but many found this unacceptable as a title. By October 1938, some informally used the term, but the search for a happy euphemism had led the non-drinking alcoholics to refer to themselves in writing as the 100 Men Corporation. A majority also felt it most important to transmit hope, and so the title The Way Out became very popular. Finally, a member was asked to investigate titles in the Library of Congress. He responded by telegram, Library of Commerce has 25 books, The Way Out, 12, The Way, none Alcoholics Anonymous. And thus the book and eventually the society received its name. The distributed copies returned, but the reader's comments produced few changes in the final text. Reminders of his tendency to extremes and grandiosity made it easier for Wilson to allow changes. He accepted one major compromise, which he describes like this. In Step 2, we decided to describe God as a power greater than ourselves. In Steps 3 and 11, we inserted the words, God as we understand him. From Step 7, we deleted the expression, on our knees. And as a lead-in sentence to all the steps, we wrote these words. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. Having argued over virtually everything concerning their book's writing and publication, the newly sober alcoholics were hardly about to pass by in silence the one final opportunity for debate over their work. What price was to be charged for it? Stockholder Hank P. argued for a price of $3.50. Others suggested from $2.50 down to $1. Hank finally won. They directed their printer to do the job on the thickest paper in his shop. Of course, the idea was to convince the alcoholic that he was indeed getting his money's worth. The original volume proved to be so bulky that it came to be known as The Big Book. If, after this happy outcome, Bill Wilson, alcoholic author, needed further deflation, he received it. A promised supportive article in the Reader's Digest did not appear. The bank foreclosed the mortgage on the Clinton Street home, evicting Bill and Lois. All attempts to obtain national magazine publicity for the big book failed. And despite a radio appearance by member Morgan R. on a national broadcast, supported by a barrage of 20,000 postcards unleashed upon every physician east of the Mississippi River, only two book orders materialized. Further, Hank began to drink again. Even Ebby had gone back to drinking. through the hot summer of 1939 despite the fact that its program had finally crystallized and been published the situation of alcoholics anonymous looked bleak indeed different yet related developments in akron were also profoundly shaping the rapid evolution of the fledgling fellowship four significant occurrences are noteworthy and all were separations first came the separation of alcoholics within the Oxford Group. Almost immediately after Bill Wilson's departure from Akron in November 1937, Dr. Bob began to invite the alcoholics attending each Wednesday's Oxford Group meeting to gather separately from the non-alcoholic groupers after the regular session. The group remained the setting, but about some matters the alcoholcs talked only among themselves. The second separation occurred because, since early 1938, Cleveland alcoholics had been commuting to the Akron meeting. Finding even the marginal Oxford group connection objectionable to some of his Roman Catholic prospects, Clarence S., the dynamo powering the Cleveland effort, announced on May 10, 1939 that this would be their last visit to the Williams home. On the next evening, interested alcoholics were invited to a new meeting to be held each week in Cleveland. This would be a meeting, Clarenced declared, of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first clear use of the term as a specific and exclusive name. The third separation and a new and fruitful joining came about because in the spring of 1939, administrators at the Akron City and Green Cross hospitals began scrutinizing Dr. Smith's admissions more carefully. Since he was also on the visiting staff of St. Thomas Hospital, a Catholic institution in Akron, Dr. Bob decided to speak to a nun he knew there, Sister Ignatia. Sister, these people need medical treatment. Do you think we could smuggle in at least a couple who I'm sure I could help? The shift was made, but hospital policies do not change that easily. In later years, both Sister Ignacia and Dr. Rob relished describing their bootlegging of alcoholics into St. Thomas. Finally, in October 1939, the Akron alcoholics left the Oxford Group altogether and met briefly at the Smith home before moving to the King School. Alcoholics Anonymous had come into a clear existence of its own. The book presenting its program had been published. Its final separation from Oxford Group sponsorship had been successfully completed. Most importantly, a new group flourished in a new city under the sole name Alcoholics Anonymous and without any direct impetus from either of AA's co-founders. Yet there were also problems. Differences of opinion about the Oxford Group, about the book, about publicity remained and would grow. AlcoholicsAnonymous had been born. Now, like its members, it needed not only to grow but to mature. This is the end of Cassette 1. Not God continues on Cassette 2.