The below excerpts are from various talks and articles by and on Bill
Wilson, and were compiled by Jim B. They reveal a wealth of the
thinking and insight of the co-founder of A.A.





1Q - How do you justify calling alcoholism an illness, and not a moral
responsibility? (The Disease Concept)

1A - Early in A.A.'s history, very natural questions arose among
theologians. There was a Mr. Henry Link who had written "The Return to
Religion (Macmillan Co., 1937). One day I received a call from him. He
stated that he strongly objected to the A.A. position that alcoholism
was an illness. This concept, he felt, removed moral responsibility
from alcoholics. He had been voicing this complaint about
psychiatrists in the American Mercury. And now, he stated, he was
about to lambaste A.A. too. Of course, I made haste to point out that
we A. A.'s did not use the concept of sickness to absolve our members
from moral responsibility. On the contrary, we used the fact of fatal
illness to clamp the heaviest kind of moral responsibility on to the
sufferer. The further point was made that in his early days of
drinking the alcoholic often was no doubt guilty of irresponsibility
and gluttony. But once the time of compulsive drinking, veritable
lunacy had arrived and he couldn't very well be held accountable for
his conduct. He then had a lunacy which condemned him to drink, in
spite of all he could do; he had developed a bodily sensitivity to
alcohol that guaranteed his final madness and death. When this state
of affairs was pointed out to him, he was placed immediately under the
heaviest kind of pressure to accept A.A.'s moral and spiritual program
of regeneration - namely, our Twelve Steps. Fortunately, Mr. Link was
satisfied with this view of the use that we were making of the
alcoholic's illness. I am glad to report that nearly all theologians
who have since thought about this matter have also agreed with that
early position. While it is most obvious that free will in the matter
of alcohol has virtually disappeared in most cases, we A.A. 's do
point out that plenty of free will is left in other areas, It
certainly takes a large amount of willingness, and a great exertion of
the will to accept and practice the A.A. program. It is by this very
exertion of the will that the alcoholic corresponds with the grace by
which his drinking obsession can be expelled. (N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book',
Vol.12, 1960)


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2Q - What is meant by mental obsession and the obsessional character
of alcoholism?

2A - Well, as I understand it, we are all born with the freedom of
choice. The degree of this varies from person to person, and from area
to area in our lives. In the case of neurotic people, our instincts
take on certain patterns and directions, sometimes so compulsive they
cannot be broken by any ordinary effort of the will. The alcoholic's
compulsion to drink is like that.

As a smoker, for example, I have a deeply ingrained habit - I'm almost
an addict. But I do not think that this habit is an actual obsession.
Doubtless it could be broken by an act of my own will. If badly enough
hurt, I could in all probability give up tobacco. Should smoking
repeatedly land me in Bellevue Hospital, I doubt that I would make the
trip many times before quitting. But with my alcoholism, well, that
was something else again. No amount of desire to stop, no amount of
punishment, could enable me to quit. What was once a habit of drinking
became an obsession of drinking - genuine lunacy.

Perhaps a little more should be said about the obsessional character
of alcoholism. When our fellowship was about three years old some of
us called on Dr. Lawrence Kolb, then Assistant Surgeon General of the
United States. He said that our report of progress had given him his
first hope for alcoholics in general. Not long before, the U.S. Public
Health Department had thought of trying to do something about the
alcoholic situation. After a careful survey of the obsessional
character of our malady, this had been given up. Indeed, Dr. Kolb felt
that dope addicts had a far better chance. Accordingly, the government
had built a hospital for their treatment at Lexington, Kentucky. But
for alcoholics - well, there simply wasn't any use at all, so he
thought.

Nevertheless, many people still go on insisting that the alcoholic is
not a sick man - that he is simply weak or willful, and sinful. Even
today we often hear the remark "That drunk could get well if he wanted
to."

There is no doubt, too, that the deeply obsessional character of the
alcoholic's drinking is obscured by the fact that drinking is a
socially acceptable custom. By contrast, stealing, or let us say
shop-lifting, is not. Practically everybody has heard of that form of
lunacy known as kleptomania. Oftentimes kleptomaniacs are splendid
people in all other respects. Yet they are under an absolute
compulsion to steal - just for the kick. A kleptomaniac enters a store
and pockets a piece of merchandise. He is arrested and lands in the
police station. The judge gives him a jail term. He is stigmatized and
humiliated. Just like the alcoholic, he swears that never, never will
he do this again.

On his release from the jail, he wanders down the street past a
department store. Unaccountably he is drawn inside. He sees, for
example, a red tin fire truck, a child's toy. He instantly forgets all
about his misery in the jail. He begins to rationalize. He says,
"Well, this little fire engine is of no real value. The store won't
miss it." So he pockets the toy, the store detective collars him, he
is right back in the clink. Everybody recognizes this type of stealing
as sheer lunacy.

Now, let's compare this behavior with that of an alcoholic. He, too,
has landed in jail. He has already lost family and friends. He suffers
heavy stigma and guilt. He has been physically tortured by his
hangover. Like the kleptomaniac he swears that he will never get into
this fix again. Perhaps he actually knows that he is an alcoholic. He
may understand just what that means and may be fully aware of what the
fearful risk of that first drink is.

Upon his release from jail, the alcoholic behaves just like the
kleptomaniac. He passes a bar and at the first temptation may say,
"No, I must not go inside there; liquor is not for me." But when he
arrives at the next drinking place, he is gripped by a
rationalization. Perhaps he says, "Well, one beer won't hurt me. After
all, beer isn't liquor." Completely unmindful of his recent miseries,
he steps inside. He takes that fatal first drink. The following day,
the police have him again. His fellow citizens continue to say that he
is weak or willful. Actually he is just as crazy as the kleptomaniac
ever was. At this stage, his free will in regard to alcoholism has
evaporated. He cannot very well be held accountable for his behavior.
(The N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book', Vol. 12, 1960)


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3Q - Just how does A.A. work?

3A - I cannot fully answer that question. Many A.A. techniques have
been adopted after a ten-year period of trial and error, which has led
to some interesting results. But, as laymen, we doubt our own ability
to explain them. We can only tell you what we do, and what seems, from
our point of view, to happen to us.

At the very outset we should like it made ever so clear that A.A. is a
synthetic gadget, as it were, drawing upon the resources of medicine,
psychiatry, religion, and our own experience of drinking and recovery.
You will search in vain for a single new fundamental. We have merely
streamlined old and proven principles of psychiatry and religion into
such forms that the alcoholic will accept them. And then we have
created a society of his own kind where he can enthusiastically put
these very principles to work on himself and other sufferers.

Then too, we have tried hard to capitalize on our one great natural
advantage. That advantage is, of course, our personal experience as
drinkers who have recovered. How often the doctors and clergymen throw
up their hands when, after exhaustive treatment or exhortation, the
alcoholic still insists, "But you don't understand me. You never did
any serious drinking yourself, so how can you? Neither can you show me
many who have recovered."

Now, when one alcoholic who has got well talks to another who hasn't,
such objections seldom arise, for the new man sees in a few minutes
that he is talking to a kindred spirit, one who understands. Neither
can the recovered A.A. member be deceived, for he knows every trick,
every rationalization of the drinking game. So the usual barriers go
down with a crash. Mutual confidence, that indispensable of all
therapy, follows as surely as day does night. And if this absolutely
necessary rapport is not forthcoming at once it is almost certain to
develop when the new man has met other A. A.s. Someone will, as we
say, "click with him."

As soon as that happens we have a good chance of selling our prospect
those very essentials which you doctors have so long advocated, and
the problem drinker finds our society a congenial place to work them
out for himself and his fellow alcoholic. For the first time in years
he thinks himself understood and he feels useful; uniquely useful,
indeed, as he takes his own turn promoting the recovery of others. No
matter what the outer world thinks of him, he knows he can get well,
for he stands in the midst of scores of cases worse than his own who
have attained the goal. And there are other cases precisely like his
own - a pressure of testimony which usually overwhelms him. If he
doesn't succumb at once, he will almost surely do so later when
Barleycorn builds a still hotter fire under him, thus blocking off all
his other carefully planned exits from dilemma. The speaker recalls
seventy-five failures during the first three years of A.A. - people we
utterly gave up on. During the past seven years sixty-two of these
people have returned to us, most of them making good. They tell us
they returned because they knew they would die or go mad if they
didn't. Having tried everything else within their means and having
exhausted their pet rationalizations, they came back and took their
medicine. That is why we never need to evangelize alcoholics. If still
in their right minds they come back, once they have been well exposed
to A.A.

Now to recapitulate, Alcoholics Anonymous has made two major
contributions to the programs of psychiatry and religion. These are,
it seems to us, the long missing links in the chain of recovery:

1. Our ability, as ex-drinkers, to secure the confidence of the new
man - to "build a transmission line into him."

2. The provision of an understanding society of ex-drinkers in which
the newcomer can successfully apply the principles of medicine and
religion to himself and others.

So far as we A.A.s are concerned, these principles, now used by us
every day, seem to be in surprising agreement. (N.Y. State J.
Med.,Vol.44, Aug. 15, 1944).


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Another Answer

3A - On the surface A.A. is a thing of great simplicity, yet at its
core a profound mystery. Great forces surely must have been marshaled
to expel obsessions from all these thousands, an obsession which lies
at the root of our fourth largest medical problem and which, time out
of mind, has claimed its hapless millions. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.
50, July 1950).


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4Q - How can A.A. best assure its continued existence?

4A - Since the beginning of recorded time, many societies and nations
of civilizations have passed in review. In those great ones that have
left their mark for good, in contrast with those who have left their
mark for evil, there has always been a sense of history, a true and
high constant purpose, and there has always been a sense of destiny.

In the societies which failed to leave a bright mark in the annals of
the world, there was always a false or boastful sense of history,
always a mistaken or inadequate purpose and always the presumption of
an infinite, a glorious and an exclusive destiny.

In the societies that left their mark of goodness on time, the sense
of history was not a matter for pride or for glory; it was the
substance of the learning of the experience of the past. In the
purpose of such a society there was always truth and constancy, but
never a supposition that the society had apprehended all of the truth
- or the superior truth. And in the sense of destiny there was no
conceit, no supposition that a society or nation or culture would last
forever and go on to greater glories. But there was always a sense of
duty to be fulfilled, whatever destiny the society might be assigned
by providence for the betterment of the world.

This is the crossroads at which we in A.A. stand. This is a good time
to re-examine how well we have looked upon our A.A. history and how
much we have profited by it, what false insights or false glories we
may have been extracting from history - to our future detriment. It is
a moment to examine the purpose of this Society. Indeed, we are very
lucky to be able to state as the nucleus of that purpose a single
word: sobriety.

Quite early we saw, however, that sobriety in abstinence from alcohol
could never be attained unless there was sobriety and more quietude in
the false motivation that underlay our drinking.

When the Twelve Steps were cast up - without any real experience and
therefore under some Guidance, surely - we were given keys to sobriety
in its wider implications. We have been blessed with a concrete
definition of purpose but, for all its concreteness, we could still
abuse it and misuse it in a very natural way.

Some times we begin to think that perhaps, according to Scriptural
promise, the first shall be last and the last - meaning us - shall
really be first. That would indeed be a very dangerous presumption and
never should we indulge it. If we do, we shall compete in history with
other societies who have been ill-advised enough to suppose that they
had a monopoly on truth or were in some way superior to other attempts
of men to think and to associate in love and in harmony.

We may look out upon our destiny with no violation of our principle
that we are to live one day at a time. We mean that, emotionally, each
in his personal life is never to repine upon the past glory too much,
in the present, or presume upon the future. We shall attend to the
day's business but we shall try to apprehend ever more truth from the
lessons of our history, not the lessons of our successes but the
lessons of our defections, failures and the awful emotions that can
set us loose upon us. For these, indeed, are the raw materials that
God has used to forge this still rather little instrument called
Alcoholics Anonymous. So we may look at destiny and we may ask
ourselves about it and speculate upon it a little - if we do not
presume to play God. (G.S.C., 1961)


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5Q - When you first sobered up how did you approach alcoholics and did
you change that approach?

5A - I took off to cure alcoholics wholesale. It was twinjet
propulsion; difficulties meant nothing. The vast conceit of my project
never occurred to me. I pressed my assault for six months; my home was
filled with alcoholics. Harangues with scores produced not the
slightest result. None of them got it. Disappointingly, my friend of
the kitchen table, who was sicker than I realized, took little
interest in other alcoholics. This fact may have caused his endless
backslides later on. For I had found that working with alcoholics had
a huge bearing on my own sobriety. But why wouldn't any of my new
prospects sober up?

Slowly the bugs came to light. Like a religious crank, I was obsessed
with the idea that everybody must have a "spiritual experience" just
like mine. I'd forgotten that there were many varieties. So my brother
alcoholics just stared incredulously or kidded me about my "hot
flash." This had spoiled the potent identification so easy to get with
them. I had turned evangelist. Clearly the deal had to be streamlined.
What came to me in six minutes might require six months in others. It
was to be learned that words are things, that one must be prudent. It
was also certain that something ailed the deflationary technique. It
definitely lacked wallop. Reasoning that the alcoholic's "hex" or
compulsion must issue from some deep level, it followed that ego
deflation must also go deep or else there couldn't be any fundamental
release. Apparently religious practice would not touch the alcoholic
until his underlying situation was made ready. Fortunately, all the
tools were right at hand. You doctors supplied them.

The emphasis was shifted from "sin" to "sickness" - the "fatal
malady," alcoholism. We quoted doctors that alcoholism was more lethal
than cancer; that it consisted of an obsession of the mind coupled to
increasing body sensitivity. These were our twin ogres of madness and
death. We leaned heavily on Dr. Jung's statement of how hopeless the
condition could be and then poured that devastating dose into every
drunk within range. To modern man science is omnipotent; it is a god.
Hence if science could pass a death sentence on a drunk, and we placed
that verdict on our alcoholic transmission, it might shatter him
completely. Perhaps he would then turn to the God of the theologian,
there being no place else to go. Whatever the truth in this device, it
certainly had practical merit. Immediately our whole atmosphere
changed. Things began to look up. (Amer. J. Psychiat., Vol.106, 1949)


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6Q - What happened to your sponsor, Ebby?

6A - It was Ebby who brought me the message that saved my life and
uncounted thousands of others.

Because of gratitude and old friendship, my wife Lois and I invited
Ebby to live at our home shortly after I sobered up. The son of a
well-to-do family in Albany, he had never learned any profession so he
was broke and had to begin all over. These were difficult
circumstances, naturally. Ebby stayed with us something like a year
and a half. Being intent on getting re-established in life, he took
little interest in helping other alcoholics. Little by little, he
commenced the rationalization we have seen so often. He began to say
that if he had the right romance and the right job then things would
be okay. At length, he fell by the wayside. He would not mind if I
tell this - it is a part of his story today.

For many years, my old friend Ebby was on the wagon and off. Sometimes
he could stay sober for a year or more. He tried living with Lois and
me for another considerable period but apparently this was of no help.
Maybe we actually hindered him. As A.A. began to grow his position
became difficult. For a long time things went from bad to worse.

About six years ago the groups down in Texas decided to try their
hand. Ebby was shipped non-stop to Dallas and placed in an A.A. drying
out place. In these new surroundings in Texas, far from his old
failures, he has made a splendid recovery. Excepting for one slip
which occurred about a year after his arrival down there he has been
bone dry ever since. This is one of the deepest satisfactions that has
ever come to me since A.A. started and many another A.A. can say the
same. (N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book,' Vol.12, 1960)


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7Q - What did A.A. learn from the Oxford Group and why did they leave
them?

7A - AA's first step was derived largely from my own physician, Dr.
Silkworth, and my sponsor Ebby and his friend, from Dr. Jung of
Zurich. I refer to the medical hopelessness of alcoholism - our
'powerlessness' over alcohol.

The rest of the Twelve Steps stem directly from those Oxford Group
teachings that applied specifically to us. Of course these teachings
were nothing new; we might have obtained them from your own Church.
They were, in effect, an examination of conscience, confession,
restitution, helpfulness to others, and prayer.

I should acknowledge our great debt to the Oxford Group people. It was
fortunate that they laid particular emphasis on spiritual principles
that we needed. But in fairness it should also be said that many of
their attitudes and practices did not work well at all for us
alcoholics. These were rejected one by one and they caused our later
withdrawal from this society to a fellowship of our own - today's
Alcoholics Anonymous.

Perhaps I should specifically outline why we felt it necessary to part
company with them. To begin with, the climate of their undertaking was
not well suited to us alcoholics. They were aggressively evangelical.
They sought to re-vitalize the Christian message in such a way as to
"change the world." Most of us alcoholics had been subjected to
pressure of evangelism and we never liked it. The object of saving the
world - when it was still very much in doubt if we could save
ourselves - seemed better left to other people. By reason of some of
its terminology and by exertion of huge pressure, the Oxford Group set
a moral stride that was too fast, particularly for our newer
alcoholics. They constantly talked of Absolute Purity, Absolute
Unselfishness, Absolute Honesty, and Absolute Love. While sound
theology must always have its absolute values, the Oxford Groups
created the feeling that one should arrive at these destinations in
short order, maybe by next Thursday! Perhaps they didn't mean to
create such an impression but that was the effect. Sometimes their
public "witnessing" was of such a character to cause us to be shy.
They also believed that by "converting" prominent people to their
beliefs, they would hasten the salvation of many who were less
prominent. This attitude could scarcely appeal to the average drunk
since he was anything but distinguished.

The Oxford Group also had attitudes and practices which added up to a
highly coercive authority. This was exercised by "teams" of older
members. They would gather in meditation and receive specific guidance
for the life conduct of newcomers. This guidance could cover all
possible situations from the most trivial to the most serious. If the
directions so obtained were not followed, the enforcement machinery
began to operate. It consisted of a sort of coldness and aloofness
which made recalcitrants feel they weren't wanted. At one time, for
example, a "team" got guidance for me to the effect that I was no
longer to work with alcoholics. This I could not accept.

Another example: When I first contacted the Oxford Groups, Catholics
were permitted to attend their meetings because they were strictly
non-denominational. But after a time the Catholic Church forbade its
members to attend and the reason for this seemed a good one. Through
the Oxford Group "teams", Catholic Church members were actually
receiving specific guidance for their lives; they were often infused
with the idea that their Church had become rather horse-and-buggy, and
needed to be "changed." Guidance was frequently given that
contributions should be made to the Oxford Groups. In a way this
amounted to putting Catholics under a separate ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. At this time there were few Catholics in our alcoholic
groups. Obviously we could not approach any more Catholics under
Oxford Group auspices. Therefore this was another, and the basic
reason for the withdrawal of our alcoholic crowd from the Oxford
Groups notwithstanding our great debt to them. (N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book',
Vol. 12, 1960) .


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Another Answer

7A - The first A.A. group had come into being but we still had no
name. Those were the years of flying blind, those ensuing two or three
years. A slip in those days was a dreadful calamity. We would look at
each other and wonder who might be next. Failure! Failure! Failure was
our constant companion.

I returned home from Akron now endowed with a more becoming humility
and less preaching and a few people began to come to us, a few in
Cleveland and Akron. I had got back into business briefly and again
Wall Street collapsed and took me with it as usual. So I set out West
to see if there was something I could do in that country. Dr. Bob and
I of course had been corresponding but it wasn't until one late fall
afternoon in 1937 that I reached his house and sat in his living room.
I can recall the scene as though it were yesterday and we got out a
pencil and paper and we began to put down the names of those people in
Akron, New York and that little sprinkling in Cleveland who had been
dry a while and despite the large number of failures it finally burst
upon us that forty people had got a real release and had significant
dry time behind them. I shall never forget that great and humbling
hour of realization. Bob and I saw for the first time that a new light
had begun to shine down upon us alcoholics, had begun to shine upon
the children of the night.

That realization brought an immense responsibility. Naturally, we
thought at once, how shall what we forty know be carried to the
millions who don't know? Within gunshot of this house there must be
others like us who are thoroughly bothered by this obsession. How
shall they know? How is this going to be transmitted?

Up to this time as you must be aware, A.A. was utterly simple. It
filled the full measure of simplicity as is since demanded by a lot of
people. I guess we old timers all have a nostalgia about those halcyon
days of simplicity when thank God there were no founders and no money
and there were no meeting places, just parlors. Annie and Lois baking
cakes and making coffee for those drunks in the living room. We didn't
even have a name! We just called ourselves a bunch of drunks trying to
get sober. We were more anonymous than we are now. Yes, it was all
very simple. But, here was a new realization, what was the
responsibility of the forty men to those who did not know?

Well, I have been in the world of business, a rather hectic world of
business, the world of Wall Street. I suspect that I was a good deal
of a promoter and a bit of a salesman, rather better than I am here
today. So I began to think in business man's terms. We had discovered
that the hospitals did not want us drinkers because, we were poor
payers and never got well. So, why shouldn't we have our own hospitals
and I envisioned a great chain of drunk tanks and hospitals spreading
across the land. Probably, I could sell stocks in those and we could
damn well eat as well as save drunks.

Then too, Dr. Bob and I recalled that it had been a very tedious and
slow business to sober up forty people, it had taken about three years
and in those days we old timers had the vainglory to suppose that
nobody else could really do this job but us. So we naturally thought
in terms of having alcoholic missionaries, no disparagement to
missionaries to be sure. In other words, people would be grubstaked
for a year or two, moved to Chicago, St. Louis, Frisco and so on and
start little centers and meanwhile we would be financing this string
of drunk tanks and began to suck them into these places. Yes, we would
need missionaries and hospitals! Then came one reflection that did
make some sense.

It seemed very clear that what we had already found out should be put
on paper. We needed a book, so Dr. Bob called a meeting for the very
next night and in that little meeting of a dozen and a half, a
historic decision was taken which deeply affected our destiny. It was
in the living room of a nonalcoholic friend who let us come there
because his living room was bigger than the Smith's parlor and he
loved us. I too, remember that day as if it were yesterday.

So, Smithy and I explained this new obligation which depended on us
forty. How are we to carry this message to the ones who do not know? I
began to wind up my promotion talk about the hospitals and the
missionaries and the book and I saw their faces fall and straight away
that meeting divided into three significant parts. There was the
promoter section of which I was definitely one. There was the section
that was indifferent and there was what you might call the orthodox
section.

The orthodox section was very vocal and it said with good reason,
"Look! Put us into business and we are lost. This works because it is
simple, because everybody works at it, because nobody makes anything
out of it and because no one has any axe to grind except his sobriety
and the other guy's. If you publish a book we will have infinite
quarrels about the damn thing. It will get us into business and the
clinker of the orthodox section was that our Lord, Himself, had no
book.

Well, it was impressive and events proved that the orthodox people
were practically right, but, thank God, not fully right. Then there
were the indifferent ones who thought, well, if Smitty and Bill think
we ought to do these things, well, its all right with us. So the
indifferent ones, plus the promoters out voted the orthodoxy and said
"If you want to do these things Bill, you go back to New York where
there is a lot of dough and you get the money and then we'll see."

Well, by this time I'm higher than a kite you know. Promoters can stay
high on something besides alcohol. I was already talking about the
greatest medical development, greatest spiritual development, greatest
social development of all time. Think of it, forty drunks. (Chicago,
Ill., February 1951)


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8Q - What about the alcoholic who says that he cannot possibly believe
in God?

8A - A great many of them come to A.A. and they say that they are
trapped. By this they mean that we have convinced them that they are
fatally ill, yet they cannot accept a belief in God and His grace as a
means of recovery. Happily this does not prove to be an impossible
dilemma at all. We simply suggest that the newcomers take an easy
stance and an open mind; that he proceeds to practice those parts of
the Twelve Steps that anyone's common sense would readily recommend.
He can certainly admit that he is an alcoholic; that he ought to make
a moral inventory; that he ought to discuss his defects with another
person; that he should make restitution for harms done; and that he
can be helpful to other alcoholics.

We emphasize the 'open mind,' that at least he should admit that there
might be a 'Higher Power.' He can certainly admit that he is not God,
nor is mankind in general. If he wishes he could place his own
dependence upon his own A.A. group. That group is certainly a "Higher
Power," so far as recovery from alcoholism is concerned. If these
reasonable conditions are met, he then finds himself released from the
compulsion to drink; he discovers that his motivations have been
changed far out of proportion to anything that could have been
achieved by a simple association with us or by any practice of a
little more honesty, humility, tolerance, and helpfulness. Little by
little he becomes aware that a "Higher Power" is indeed at work. In a
matter of months, or at least in a year or two, he is talking freely
about God as he understands Him. He has received the gift of God's
grace - and he knows it. (N.C.C.A., Blue Book, Vol.12, 1960)


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9Q - How do medicine and religion differ in their approach to the
alcoholic?

9A - They differ in one respect. When the doctor has shown the
alcoholic the underlying difficulties and has prescribed a program of
readjustment, he says to him, "Now that you understand what is
required for recovery, you should no longer depend on me. You must
depend on yourself. You go do it."

Clearly, then, the objective of the doctor is to make the patient
self-sufficient and largely, if not wholly, dependent upon himself.

Religion does not attempt this. It says that faith in self is not
enough, even for a non-alcoholic. The clergyman says that we shall
have to find and depend upon a Higher Power - God. He advises prayer
and frankly recommends an attitude of unwavering reliance upon Him who
presides over all. By this means we discover strength much beyond our
own resources.

So, the main difference seems to add up to this: Medicine says, know
yourself, be strong and you will be able to face life. Religion says,
know thyself, ask God for power, and you will become truly free.

In Alcoholics Anonymous the new person may try either method. He
sometimes eliminates "the spiritual angle" from the Twelve Steps to
recovery and wholly relies upon honesty, tolerance and working with
others. But it is interesting to note that faith always comes to those
who try this simple approach with an open mind - and in the meantime
they stay sober.

If, however, the spiritual content of the Twelve Steps is actively
denied, they can seldom remain dry. That is our A.A. experience. We
stress the spiritual simply because thousands of us have found we
can't do without it. (N.Y. State 3. Med., Vol. 44, Aug. 15, 1944)


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10Q - What were the conditions that led to the Twelve Traditions?

10A - After the Jack Alexander article was published in 1941 it
brought down a deluge on our little New York office of thousands upon
thousands of inquiries from frantic alcoholics, their wives, their
employers and at that moment we passed out of our infancy and embarked
upon our next phase- the phase of adolescence.

Well, adolescence by definition is a troubled time of young life and
we were no exception as groups began to take shape all over the land
and these groups immediately had trouble. We made the very sad
discovery that just because you sobered up a drunk you haven't made a
saint out of him by a long shot. We found that we could be bitterly
resentful and we discovered that we had a much better booze cure than
we thought possible. A lot of us found that we could gripe like
thunder and still stay sober. We found that we were in all sorts of
petty struggles for leadership and prestige. A lot of us were very
suspicious of the Book enterprise in the hands of that fellow Wilson
who has a truck backed up to Mr. Rockefeller who has all the dough.
And we began to have all sorts of troubles.

Money had entered the picture - it had to. We had to hire halls that
didn't come for nothing, the book cost something, we had dinners once
in a while. Yes, money came into it.

Then we found little by little that the groups had to have chores
done. Who was going to be the Chairman, would we hand pick him or
elect him or what? You know what those troubles were and they became
so fearsome that we went through another period of flying blind. The
first period of flying blind you remember had to do with whether the
individual could be restored into one piece, whether the forces of
destruction in him could be contained and subdued. Now, we were
beginning to wonder in the early part of our adolescence, whether the
destructive forces in our groups would rend us apart and destroy the
society. Ah, those were fearsome days.

Our little New York office began to be deluged with mail from these
groups, growing up at distances and not in contact with our old
centers and they were having these troubles: There were people coming
out of the insane asylums. Lord, what would these lunatics do to us?
There were prisoners, would we be sandbagged? There were queer people.
There were people, believe it or not, whose morals were bad and the
respectable alcoholics of that time shook their heads and said,
"surely these immoral people are going to render us asunder." Little
Red Riding Hood and the bad wolves began to abound. Ah yes, could our
society last?

It kept growing, more groups, more members. Sometimes the groups
divided because the leaders were mad at each other and sometimes they
divided because they were just too big. But by a process of fission
and sub-division this movement grew and grew and grew. Ten years later
it had spread into thirty countries.

Out of that vast welter of experience in our adolescence it began to
be evident that we were going to take very different attitudes towards
many things than our fellow Americans. We were deeply convinced for
example, that the survival of the whole was far more important than
the survival of any individual or group of individuals. This was a
thing far bigger than any one of us. We began to suspect that once a
mass of alcoholics were adhering even halfway to the Twelve Steps,
that God could speak in their Group conscience and up out of that
Group conscience could come a wisdom greater than any inspired
leadership.

In the early days we all had membership rules. Where have they gone
now? We're not afraid anymore. We open our arms wide, we say we don't
care who you are, what your difficulties are. You just need say, "I'm
an alcoholic and I'm interested." You declare yourself in. Our
membership idea is put exactly in reverse.

Years ago we thought this society should go into research and
education, to do everything for drunks all the time. We know better
now. We have one sole object in this society, we shoemakers are going
to stick to our last and we will carry that message to other
alcoholics and leave these other matters to the more competent. We
will do one thing supremely well rather than many things badly.

And so our Tradition grew. Our Tradition is not American tradition.
Take our public relations policy. Why, in America everything runs on
big names, advertising people. We are a country devoted to heroism. It
is a beloved tradition and yet this movement in the wisdom of it's
Group's soul, knew that this was not for us. So our public relations
policy is anonymity at the public level. No advertising of people,
principles before personalities. Anonymity has a deep spiritual
significance - the greatest protection this movement has.

As our society has grown up it has developed its way of life. It's a
way of relating ourselves together, it's a way of relating ourselves
to these troublesome questions of property, money and prestige and
authority and the world at large. The A.A. Tradition developed not
because I dictated it but because you people, your experience formed
it and I merely set it on paper and tried beginning four years ago
(1946) to reflect it back to you. Such were our years of adolescence,
and before we leave them I must say that a powerful impetus was given
the Traditions by the Gentleman who introduced me. (Earl T.)

One day he came down to Bedford Hills after the long form of the
Traditions were written out at some length, because in the office we
were forever having to answer questions about Group troubles, so the
original Traditions were longer and covered more possibilities of
trouble. Earl looked at me rather quizzically and he said "Bill, don't
you get it through your thick head that these drunks do not like to
read. They will listen for a while but they will not read anything.
Now, you want to capsule these Traditions as simply as are the Twelve
Steps to Recovery."

So he and I started the capsulizing process, which lasted a day or two
and that put the Traditions into their present form. Well, by this
time we had a lot of experience on these principles, which we began to
think might bind us together in unity for so long as God might need
us. And at Cleveland (1950), seven thousand of us did declare "Yes,
these are the traditional principles upon which we are willing to
stand, upon which we can safely commit ourselves to the future, and so
we emerged from adolescence. Again, last year we took destiny by the
hand. (Transcribed from tape. Chicago, IL, February 1951).


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11Q - Have the Traditions been widely accepted?

11A - When they were first written in early 1946 as tentative guides
to help us hang together and function, nobody paid any attention
except a few "againers" who wrote me and asked what the hell they were
about.

Nobody paid the slightest attention but little by little as these
Traditions got around we had our clubhouse squabbles, our little
rifts, this difficulty and that and it was found that the Traditions
indeed did reflect experience and were guiding principles. So they
took hold a little more and a little more so that today the average
A.A. coming in the door learns at once what they're about, about what
kind of an outfit he has really landed in and by what principles his
group and A.A. as a whole are governed. (Transcribed from tape, Fort
Worth, TX, 1954)


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12Q - What will the General Service Conference do?

12A - It will hear the annual reports of the Alcoholic Foundation, the
General Office, Grapevine, and Works Publishing and also the report of
our certified public accountant. The Conference will fully discuss
these reports, offering needed suggestions or resolutions respecting
them.

The Trustees will present to the Conference all serious problems of
policy or finance confronting A.A. Headquarters, or A.A. as a whole.
Following discussions of these, the Conference will offer the Trustees
appropriate advice and resolutions.

Special attention will be given to all violations of our Tradition
liable to seriously affect A.A. as a whole. The Conference will, if it
be deemed wise, publish suitable resolutions deploring such
deviations.

Because Conference activities will extend over a three-day weekend,
Delegates will be able to exchange views on every conceivable problem.
They will become closely acquainted with each other and with our
Headquarters people. They will visit the premises of the Foundation,
Grapevine and General Office. This should engender mutual confidence.
Guesswork and rumor are to be replaced by first-hand knowledge.

Before the conclusion of each year's Conference, a Committee will be
named to render all A.A. members a written report upon the condition
of their Headquarters and the state of A.A. generally.

On a Conference Delegate's return home, his State or Provincial
Committee will, if practical, call a meeting of Group representatives
and any others who wish to hear his personal report. The Delegate will
get these meetings reaction to his report, and its suggestions
respecting problems to be considered at future Conference sessions.
The Delegate ought to visit as many of his constituent Groups as
possible. They should have direct knowledge of their A.A. Headquarters
..(Third Legacy Pamphlet, October 1950).

12A - Through the General Service Conference, A.A. as a whole is now
brought into the picture. The Conference is a "huge rotating
committee" in whose hands has been placed the responsibility for AA's
worldwide services - assistance to the Groups, public relations,
preparation and distribution of literature, foreign propagation and
other activities. (Bill W. 1st GSC, 1951)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13Q- Could you explain AA's tradition concerning other agencies in the
field of alcoholism.

13A - I remember very well when this committee started (January, 1944)
It brought me in contact with our great friends at Yale, the
courageous Dr. Haggard, the incredible Dr. Jellinek or Bunky as we
affectionately know him and Seldon and all those dedicated people.

The question arose, could an AA member get into education or research
or what not? Then ensued a fresh and great controversy in AA which was
not surprising because you must remember that in this period we were
like people on Rickenbacker's raft. Who would dare ever rock us ever
so little and precipitate us back in the alcohol sea.

So, frankly, we were afraid and as usual we had the radicals and we
had the conservatives and we had moderates on this question of whether
A.A. members could go into other enterprises in this field. The
conservatives said, "no, let's keep it simple, let's mind our own
business." The radicals said, "let 's endorse anything that looks like
it will do any good, let the A.A. name be used to raise money and to
do whatever it can for the whole field," and the growing body of
moderates took the position, "let any A.A. member who feels the call
go into these related fields for if we are to do less it would be a
very antisocial outlook." So that is where the Tradition finally sat
and many were called and many were chosen since that day to go into
these related fields which has now got to be so large in their promise
that we of Alcoholics Anonymous are getting down to our right size and
we are only now realizing that we are only a small part of a great big
picture.

We are realizing again, afresh, that without our friends, not only
could we not have existed in the first place but we could not have
grown. We are getting a fresh concept of what our relations with the
world and all of these related enterprises should be. In other words,
we are growing up. In fact, last year at St. Louis we were bold enough
to say that we had come of age and that within Alcoholics Anonymous
the main outlines of the basis for recovery, of the basis for unity
and of the basis for service or function were already evident.

At St. Louis I made talks upon each of those subjects which largely
concerned themselves about what A.A. had done about these things but
here we are in a much wider field and I think that the sky is the
limit. I think that I can say without any reservation that what this
Committee has done with the aid of it's great friends who are now
legion as anyone here can see. I think that this Committee has been
responsible for making more friends for Alcoholics Anonymous and of
doing a wider service in educating the world on the gravity of this
malady and what can be done about it than any other single agency.

I'm awfully partial and maybe I'm a little biased because here sits
the dean of all our ladies (Marty M.), my close, dear friend. So
speaking out of turn as a founder, I want to convey to her in the
presence of all of you the best I can say of my great love and
affection is thanks.

At the close of things in St. Louis, I remember that I likened A.A. to
a cathedral style edifice whose corners now rested on the earth. I
remember saying that we can see on its great floor the Twelve Steps of
Alcoholics Anonymous and there assembled 150,000 sufferers and their
families. We have seen side walls go up, buttressed with the A.A.
Tradition and at St. Louis, when the elected Conference took over from
the Board of Trustees, the spire of service was put into effect and
its beacon light, the beacon light of A.A. shone there beckoning to
all the world.

I realized that as I sat here today that that was not a big enough
concept, for on the floor of the cathedral of the spirit there should
always be written the formula from whatever source for release from
alcoholism, whether it be a drug, whether it be the psychiatric art,
whether it be the ministrations of this Committee. In other words, we
who deal with this problem are all in the same boat, all standing upon
the same floor. So let's bring to this floor the total resources that
can be brought to bear upon this problem and let us not think of unity
just in terms of A.A. Tradition but let us think of unity among all
those who work in the field as the kind of unity that befits
brotherhood and sisterhood and a kinship in the common suffering. Let
us stand together in the spirit of service. If we do these things,
only then can we declare ourselves really come of age. And only then,
and I think that this is a time not far off. I think we can say that
the future, our future, the future of the Committee, of A.A. and of
the things that people of good will are trying to do in this field
will be completely assured. (Transcribed from taped address to The
National Committee for Education on Alcoholism. March 30, 1956).


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14Q - What purposes do the Twelve Concepts for World Services serve?

14A -"The Concepts to be discussed in the following pages are
primarily an interpretation of AA's world service structure. They
spell out the traditional practices and the Conference charter
principles that relate the component parts of our world structure into
a working whole. Our Third Legacy manual is largely a document of
procedure. Up to now the Manual tells us how to operate our service
structure. But there is considerable lack of detailed information,
which would tell us why the structure has developed as it has and why
its working parts are related together in the fashion that our
Conference and General Service Board charters provide.

"These Twelve Concepts therefore represent an attempt to put on paper
the why of our service structure in such a fashion that the highly
valuable experience of the past and the conclusions that we have drawn
from it cannot be lost.

"These Concepts are no attempt to freeze our operation against needed
change. They only describe the present situation, the forces and
principles that have molded it. It is to be remembered that in most
respects the Conference charter can be readily amended. This
interpretation of the past and present can, however, have a high value
for the future. Every oncoming generation of service workers will be
eager to change and improve our structure and operations. This is
good. No doubt change will be needed. Perhaps unforeseen flaws will
emerge. These will have to be remedied.

But along with this very constructive outlook, there will be bound to
be still another, a destructive one. We shall always be tempted to
throw out the baby with the bathwater. We shall suffer the illusion
that change, any plausible change, will necessarily represent
progress. When so animated, we may carelessly cast aside the hard won
lesions of early experience and so fall back into many of the great
errors of the past.

Hence, a prime purpose of these Twelve Concepts is to hold the
experience and lessons of the early days constantly before us. This
should reduce the chance of hasty and unnecessary change. And if
alterations are made that happen to work out badly, then it is hoped
that these Twelve Concepts will make a point of safe return." (GSC,
1960)


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15 - (Remembering AA's Early Friends) Bill never tired of telling the
story of A.A.s' beginning and giving thanks for our many early
friends. This is how he told it to the General Service Conference in
1952.

15A - "You share with me, I know, the thought that the closing hours
of this conference bring with them a deep and joyous realization. The
realization that at last we are surely on the high road that stretches
straight out toward our future, toward, we trust, an everlasting
sunrise. We face the sunrise in high hope, with a confidence that is
almost awesome and with our hearts full of unspeakable gratitude.

Gratitude to the Father of lights, Who has delivered us out of our
bondage, gratitude to friends through whose hearts he has enabled this
miracle to be worked, and gratitude for each other.

This too is an hour that will ever stir memory. With me, perhaps more
than most, the wellsprings of memory are at flood tide. I think of a
psychiatrist at Zurich, Switzerland, who had a patient, an American
businessman, treated him a year.

The patient thought greatly of his psychiatrist, none other than the
famous Dr. Jung. The patient thought he was well, but leaving the
doctor, he soon found himself drunk. So he returned to Dr. Jung, who
yet unknowing to this day, is one of the founders of this society. And
he said to this patient, "Unless you have a spiritual experience,
there is nothing that can be done. You are too much conditioned by
alcoholism to be saved in any other way."

Our friend thought it was a hard sentence, but like many of us since,
he began to seek such an experience. He found it in the confines of
the Oxford Group, an evangelical movement of that time. He sobered at
once. There he found the grace to achieve it. It was then called to
his attention that a friend of his was about to be committed for
alcoholism to an asylum in Vermont. Together with some other
"Groupers," he interceded. The result was our beloved Ebby, who first
brought the essentials of recovery to me. Meanwhile, there was a
little Jesuit, Ed Dowling, laboring among his flock, lame and
relatively obscure, he too, was to light a candle for A.A.

There was a nun, Sister Ignatia, in Akron who was to become the
companion of Dr. Bob, who as you know, was the prince of our Twelfth
Steppers. She, too, was to light a candle for us.

Even Francis of Assisi holding for the principle of corporate poverty,
had lit a candle for A.A. So had William James, the father of modern
psychology, whose book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," had
such a profound influence upon us. He had lit a candle for Alcoholics
Anonymous.

Then, too, there were to be couriers to all the world. Harry Emerson
Fosdick, Fulton Oursler of Liberty, Jack Alexander and the owner of
Saturday Evening Post. They were to become couriers. They, too, were
to light candles for Alcoholics Anonymous.

But back there in the summer of 1934, the alcoholics of the world felt
as hopeless as ever. And yet, as you see, a table was being prepared
in the presence of our ancient enemy, John Barleycorn. Candles were
already upon it, and meat and drink was there, but the guests had not
arrived.

Then came some guests and they partook of the spark that was to become
Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. Then ensued our period of flying
blind, at the end of which, about 1937 or 1938, we realized that,
indeed, a table had been prepared in the presence of our enemy. And
that the candles upon that table might one day shine around the world
and touch every distant beachhead.

There were more years of travail in that pioneering time which ended
in 1941 with the advent of the Post article. Meanwhile, our book of
experience had appeared. No longer need we travel in person. The
message could be taken through those printed pages to distant ones who
suffered.

Our recovery program was really complete. Then came the test whether
our growing groups could live and work together, whether the enormous
explosive quality of our fellowship would find in our principles of
recovery a sufficient containing element. Soon we came to realize
little by little that we of Alcoholics Anonymous must hang together or
indeed we should hang separately.

And in that sometimes frightening experience, the Tradition of
Alcoholics Anonymous was forged. And at Cleveland, in 1950, it was
confirmed by our fellowship as the traditional platform upon which our
society intended to stand.

No body of law was this Tradition. A set of principles infused with
the spirit of our 12 steps of recovery and enshrined in the heart of
each of us - that would be our protection, we thought, from any blows
with which the outside world would assail us, our protection from any
temptations to which we might be subjected within.

Such was the Tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In this period of infancy and in adolescence this Society discovered
that it had to function. This Conference culminates that long process
of discovery through which we have learned how we can best act to
carry this message to those who suffer. Yes, the advent of this
conference in full strength will mark a great day in the annals of
Alcoholics Anonymous.

For me, it marks a time when I must shift from activity to reflection
and meditation and to the task of acting as your scribbler, to record
the experience of these marvelous years just past. I realize that I
shall be but a reflector, a scribbler only. I hope the task will be
completed, useful and pleasing to you -- and pleasing to God.

My heart is too full to say anymore, excepting au revoir."


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16Q - Do alcoholics as a class differ from other people.

16A - Some years ago the doctors began to look at Alcoholics Anonymous
and they got about thirty of us together and they said to themselves
"Well, now that these fellows are in A.A., and they won't lie so
badly, and maybe for the first time we'll get a good look at what the
interior of a drunk is like." So a number of us were examined at great
length by psychiatrists, and all sorts of tests taken, and the object
of this particular inquiry was to see whether alcoholics as a class
differed from other people, and if they did, just why and how much.

A number of us were invited to attend the conclave, and a number of
learned papers were read, and finally one of these physicians (a very
noted one - the meeting took place at the New York Academy of
Medicine) began to sum up what he thought the conclusion which they
had arrived at was this: that the alcoholic is emotionally on the
childish side. That the alcoholic is a person who is more sensitive
emotionally than the average person. And then, they ascribed another
quality to us - they used the word "grandiosity," they were grandiose
(meaning by that that as a type we were what you might call "All or
Nothing people.") Someone once described it by saying all alcoholics
hanker for the moon when perhaps the stars would have done just as
well. As a class, we're like that, said the doctors. (Memphis, Tenn.,
Sept.18-20, 1947)


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17Q - Is A.A. based totally on your own experiences?

17A - Let's look. Dr. Bob recovered. Then we two set to work on
alcoholics in Akron. Well, again came this tendency to preach, again
this feeling that it has to be done in some particular way, again
discouragement, so our progress was slow. But little by little we were
forced to analyze our experiences and say, "This approach didn't work
very well with that fellow. Why not? Let's try to put ourselves in his
shoes and stop this preaching and see how he might be approached if we
were he." That began to lead us to the idea that A.A. should be no set
of fixed ideas, but should be a growing thing, growing out of
experience. After a while we began to reflect: "This wonderful
blessing that has come to us, from what does it get its origin?" It
was a spiritual awakening growing out of adversity. So then we began
to look harder for our mistakes, to correct them, to capitalize on our
errors. Little by little we began to grow so that there were 5 of us
at the end of that first year; at the end of the second year 15; at
the end of the third 40; and at the end of the fourth year, 100.

During those first four years most of us had another bad form of
intolerance. As we commenced to have a little success, I am afraid our
pride got the better of us and it was our tendency to forget about our
friends. We were very likely to say, "Well, those doctors didn't do
anything for us, and as for these sky pilots, well, they just don't
know the score." And we became snobbish and patronizing.

Then we read a book by Dr. Carrell (Man, The Unknown). From that book
came an argument which is now a part of our system. Dr. Carrel wrote,
in effect; The world is full of analysts. We have tons of ore in the
mines and we have all kinds of building materials above ground. Here
is a man specializing in this, there is a man specializing in that,
and another one in something else. The modern world is full of
wonderful analysts and diggers, but there are very few who
deliberately synthesize, who bring together different materials, who
assemble new things. We are much too shy on synthetic thinking - the
kind of thinking that's willing to reach out now here and now there to
see if something new cannot be evolved.

On reading that book some of us realized that was just what we had
been groping toward. We had been trying to build out of our own
experiences. At this point we thought, "Let's reach into other
people's experiences. Let's go back to our friends the doctors, let's
go back to our friends the preachers, the social workers, all those
who have been concerned with us, and again review what they have got
above ground and bring that into the synthesis. And let us, where we
can, bring them in where they will fit." So our process of trial and
error began and at the end of four years, the material was cast in the
form of a book known as Alcoholics Anonymous. (Yale Summer School of
Alcohol Studies, June 1945)


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18Q - Wouldn't too rapid growth be bad, both for the new alcoholics
and for Alcoholics Anonymous itself?

18A - Some of us used to think so, but several experiences of quick
expansion have largely dissipated that fear. We had a striking example
at Cleveland, Ohio. In the fall of 1939 Cleveland had, perhaps, 30
members. Most of them had become Alcoholics Anonymous by traveling to
the nearby city of Akron where our first group had taken root in the
summer of 1935. At this juncture the Cleveland Plain Dealer published
a striking and forceful series of articles about us. Placed on the
editorial page, these pieces told the people of Cleveland that
Alcoholics Anonymous worked; that it cost nothing; that it stood ready
to help any alcoholic in town who really wanted to get well. Cleveland
quickly became Alcoholics Anonymous conscious. Hundreds of inquiries
by phone and mail descended upon the Plain Dealer and the expectant
but nervous members of Alcoholics Anonymous. The rush was so great
that new members sober themselves but a week or two, had to be used to
instruct the still newer arrivals. Several private hospitals threw
open their doors to cope with the emergency and were so pleased with
the result that they have cooperated with us ever since. To the great
surprise of everyone, this rapid growth, hectic though it was, did
prove very successful. Within 90 days the original group of 30 had
expanded to 300; in six months we had about 500; and within two years
we had mushroomed to 1200 members distributed among a score of groups
in the Cleveland area. Although we have no precise figures, it is
probably fair to say that 3 out of 4 who came during that period, and
who have since remained with the groups, have recovered from their
alcoholism. (Quart. 3. Stud. Alc., Vol.6(2), September 1945)


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19Q - Could you describe your spiritual experience for us and your
understanding of what happened?

19A - In December 1934, I appeared at Towns Hospital, New York. My old
friend, Dr. William Silkworth shook his head. Soon free of my sedation
and alcohol I felt horribly depressed. My friend Ebby turned up and
although glad to see him, I shrank a little as I feared evangelism,
but nothing of the sort happened. After some small talk, I again asked
him for his neat little formula for recovery. Quietly and sanely and
without the slightest pressure he told me and then he left.

Lying there in conflict, I dropped into the blackest depression I had
ever known. Momentarily my prideful depression was crushed. I cried
out, "Now I am ready to do anything - anything to receive what my
friend Ebby has." Though I certainly didn't expect anything, I did
make this frantic appeal, "If there be a God, will He show Himself!"
The result was instant, electric beyond description. The place seemed
to light up, blinding white. I knew only ecstasy and seemed on a
mountain. A great wind blew, enveloping and penetrating me. To me, it
was not of air but of Spirit. Blazing, there came the tremendous
thought, "You are a free man." Then the ecstasy subsided. Still on the
bed, I now found myself in a new world of consciousness which was
suffused by a Presence. One with the Universe, a great peace came over
me. I thought, "So this is the God of the preachers, this is the great
Reality." But soon my so-called reason returned, my modern education
took over and I thought I must be crazy and I became terribly
frightened.

Dr. Silkworth, a medical saint if ever there was one, came in to hear
my trembling account of this phenomenon. After questioning me
carefully, he assured me that I was not mad and that perhaps I had
undergone a psychic experience which might solve my problem. Skeptical
man of science though he then was, this was most kind and astute. If
he had of said, "hallucination," I might now be dead. To him I shall
ever be eternally grateful.

Good fortune pursued me. Ebby brought me a book entitled "Varieties of
Religious Experience" and I devoured it. Written by William James, the
psychologist, it suggests that the conversion experience can have
objective reality. Conversion does alter motivation and it does
semi-automatically enable a person to be and to do the formerly
impossible. Significant it was, that marked conversion experience came
mostly to individuals who knew complete defeat in a controlling area
of life. The book certainly showed variety but whether these
experiences were bright or dim, cataclysmic or gradual, theological or
intellectual in bearing, such conversions did have a common
denominator - they did change utterly defeated people. So declared
William James, the father of modern psychology. The shoe fitted and I
have tried to wear it ever since.

For drunks, the obvious answer was deflation at depth, and more of it.
That seemed plain as a pikestaff. I had been trained as an engineer,
so the news of this authoritative psychologist meant everything to me.
This eminent scientist of the mind had confirmed everything that Dr.
Jung had said, and had extensively documented all he claimed. Thus
William James firmed up the foundation on which I and many others had
stood all these years. I haven't had a drink of alcohol since 1934.
(N.Y. Med. Soc. Alcsm., April 28,1958) .


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20Q - Could you tell us about the early days and the meetings in your
home on Clinton Street?

20A - In those days we were associated with the Oxford Group and one
of its founders was Sam Shoemaker and the Group was meeting in Calvary
Church. Our dept to the Oxford Group is simply immense. We might have
found these principles elsewhere, but they did give them to us, and I
want to again record our underlying gratitude. We also learned from
them, so far as alcoholics are concerned, what not to do - something
equally important. Father Edward Dowling, a great Jesuit friend of
ours, once said to me, "Bill, it isn't what you people put into A.A.
that makes it good - it's what you left out." We got both sets of
notions from our Oxford Group friends, and it was through them that
Ebby had sobered up and became my sponsor, the carrier of this message
to me.

We began to go to Oxford Group meetings over in Calvary House, and it
was there, fresh out of Towns Hospital, that I made my first pitch,
telling about my strange experience, which did not impress the
alcoholics who were listening. But something else did impress him.
When I began to talk about the nature of this sickness, this malady,
he pricked up his ears. He was a professor of chemistry, an agnostic,
and he came up and talked afterward. Soon, he was invited over to
Clinton Street - our very first customer. We worked very hard with
Freddy for three years, but alas, he remained drunk for eleven years
afterward. Other people came to us out of those Oxford Group
audiences. We began to go down to Calvary Mission, an adjunct of the
church in those days, and there we found a bountiful supply of real
tough nuts to crack. We began to invite them to Clinton Street, and at
this point the Groupers felt that we were over doing the drunk
business. It seemed that they had the idea of saving the world and
besides they'd had a bad time with us. Sam and his associates, he now
laughingly tells me, were very much put out that they gathered a big
batch of drunks in Calvary House, hoping for a miracle. They put them
upstairs in those nice apartments and had them completely surrounded
with sweetness and light but the drunks imported a flock of bottles
and one of them pitched a shoe out of the apartment window and it went
through a stained-glass window of the church. So the drunks were not
exactly popular when the Wilson's showed up.

At any rate, we began to be with alcoholics all the time, but nothing
happened for six months. Like the Groupers, we nursed them. In fact,
over in Clinton Street, we developed in the next two or three years
something like a boiler factory, a sort of clinic, a hospital, and a
free boarding house, from which practically no one issued sober, but
we had a pile of experience.

We began to learn the game, and after our withdrawal from the Oxford
Group - a year and a half from the time I sobered in 1934 - we began
to hold meetings of the few who had sobered up. I suppose that was
really the first A.A. meeting. The book had not yet been written. We
did not even call it Alcoholics Anonymous; people asked who we were
and we said, "Well, we're a nameless bunch of alcoholics." I suppose
that use of the word "nameless" sort of led us to the idea of
anonymity, which was later clapped on the book at the time it was
titled.

There were great doings in Clinton Street. I remember those meetings
down in the parlor so well. Our eager discussion, our hopes, our fears
- and our fears were very great. When anyone in those days had been
sober a few months and slipped, it was a terrific calamity. I'll never
forget the day, a year and-a-half after he came to stay with us, that
Ebby fell over, and we all said, "Perhaps this is going to happen to
all of us." Then, we began to ask ourselves why it was, and some of us
pushed on.

At Clinton Street, I did most of the talking, but Lois did most of the
work, and the cooking, and the loving of those early folks.

Oh my! The episodes we had there! I was away once on a business trip
(I'd briefly got back into business), one of the drunks was sleeping
on the lounge in the parlor. Lois woke up in the middle of the night,
hearing a great commotion. One of the drunks had gotten a bottle and
was drunk; he had also gotten into the kitchen and had drunk a bottle
of maple syrup and he had fallen into the coal hod. When Lois opened
the door, he asked for a towel to cover up his nakedness. She once led
this same gentleman through the streets late at night looking for a
doctor, and not finding a doctor, then looking for a drink, because,
as he said, he could not fly on one wing!

On one occasion, a pair of them were drunk. We had five, and on
another occasion, they were all drunk at the same time! Then there was
the time when two of them began to beat each other with two-by-fours
down in the basement. Then one night, poor Ebby, after repeated trials
and failures, was finally locked out one night, but lo and behold, he
appeared anyway. He had come through the coal chute and up the stairs,
very much begrimed.

So you see, Clinton Street was a kind of blacksmith shop, in which we
were hammering away at these principles. For Lois and me, all roads
lead back to Clinton Street. (Manhattan Group, 1955)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

21Q - How did you meet A.A. No.3, Bill D?

21A - I was living at Dr. Bob's place and one day he said to me "Don't
you think that for self-protection that we had better be working with
more drunks." I thought it was a good idea and the upshot was that he
called City Hospital where he was in some discredit because of his
drinking and he got hold of the Head Nurse down there and said to her
"A fellow from New York and I have a new cure for alcoholism." Quite
kindly the nurse observed, "Well, Doctor, I think that you should try
it on yourself." Then she told us that they had a dandy prospect who
was strapped down for blackening the eyes of one of the nurses. So doc
said, "Put him to bed and we'll be down when you get him cleared up a
bit and put him in a private room."

So a little while after Dr. Bob and I saw a sight that tens of
thousands of us have since beheld and God willing, hundreds of
thousands shall see. It was the sight of the man on the bed who did
not yet know that he could get well.

Well, as it turned out, the man on the bed was no optimist, like many
a drunk since he said, "I'm different, my case is too tough and don't
talk to me about religion, I'm already a man of faith. I used to be a
Deacon in the Church and I've got faith in God still, but quite
obviously He has none in me. Anyhow, come back tomorrow and see me as
you fellows interest me as you've been through the mill." Of course we
had related our simple formula. Of course we had told him of our
release although he was not impressed that mine was only of months and
Bob's only of days. He said, "I was sober once that long myself."

We came once more and as we entered his room the man's wife sat at the
foot of the bed and she was saying to her husband, "What has got into
you, you seem so different." He said, "Here they are, these are the
ones who understand, they've been through the mill." He made great
haste in explaining how during the night hope had come to him and he
had taken there to follow our simple formula. Something else had
happened, there was a sense of lightness, a sense of feeling in one
piece, a feeling of relief, he said.

The next thing we knew No.3 said to his wife "Fetch my clothes dear,
we're going to get up and get out of here." So A.A. No.3 rose from his
bed and walked out of that place never to drink again. Well, at that
time there was no realization on the part of us what had begun to
happen. Of course, that was the beginning of A.A. as we understand it
today. The essential process was the same and the grace of God just as
everlasting. (Chicago, Il., February 1951)


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22Q - Was the writing of the Big Book a difficult job?

22A - As the chapters were done, we went to A.A. meetings in New York
with the chapters in the rough. It wasn't like chicken-in-the-rough,
the boys didn't eat those chapters up at all. I suddenly discovered
that I was in a terrific whirlpool of arguments. I was just the
umpire. I finally had to stipulate, "Well boys, over here we have the
holy rollers who say we need all the good old-fashioned stuff in the
book, and over here you tell me we've got to have a psychological
book, and that never cured anybody, and they didn't do very much with
us in the missions, so I guess you will have to leave me just to be
the umpire. I'll scribble out some roughs here and show them to you
and let's get the comments in." So we fought, bled and died our way
through one chapter after another. We sent copies out to Akron and
they were peddled around and there were terrific hassles about what
should go in this book and what should not.

Meanwhile, we set drunks up to write their stories or we had newspaper
people to write the stories for them to go in the back of the book. We
had an idea that we'd have a text and then we'd have stories all about
the drunks who were staying sober. (Transcribed from tape, Fort Worth,
Tx., 1954)


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23Q - Can the Twelve Steps be compared to the Spiritual Exercises of
St. Ignatius?

23A - In 1941, I visited St. Louis and Father Ed Dowling met me at the
field. This was a blistering day and he had come to bring me to the
(Jesuit) Sodality Headquarters. I was struck by the delightful
informality. Of course I had never been to such a place before. I had
been raised in a small Vermont village, Yankee style. Happily there
was no bigotry in my grandfather who raised me but neither was there
much religious contact or understanding. So here I was in some kind of
a monastery. Even then, believe it or not, I still toyed with the
notion that Catholicism was somehow a superstition of the Irish!

Then Father Ed and his Jesuit partners commenced to ask me questions.
They wanted to know about the recently published A.A. book and
especially about AA's Twelve Steps. To my surprise they had supposed
that I must have had a Catholic education. They seemed doubly
surprised when I informed them that at the age of eleven I had quit
the Congregational Sunday School because my teacher had asked me to
sign a temperance pledge. This had been the extent of my religious
education.

More questions were asked about AA's Twelve Steps. I explained how a
few years earlier some of us had been associated with the Oxford
Groups; that we had picked up from these good people the ideas of
self-survey, confession, restitution, helpfulness to others and
prayer, ideas that we might have got in many other quarters as well.
After our withdrawal from the Oxford Groups, these principles and
attitudes had been formed into a word-of-mouth program, to which we
had added a step of our own to the effect "that we were powerless over
alcohol." Our Twelve Steps were the result of my effort to define more
sharply and elaborate upon these word-of-mouth principles so that the
alcoholic readers would have a more specific program: that there could
be no escape from what we deemed to be the essential principles and
attitudes. This had been my sole idea in their composition. This
enlarged version of our program had been set down rather quickly -
perhaps in twenty or thirty minutes - on a night when I had been very
badly out of sorts. Why the Steps were written down in the order in
which they appear today and just why they were worded as they are, I
have no idea.

Following this explanation of mine, my new Jesuit friends pointed to a
chart that hung on the wall. They explained that this was a comparison
between the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the Twelve Steps
of Alcoholics Anonymous, that, in principle, this correspondence was
amazingly exact. I believe they also made the somewhat startling
statement that spiritual principles set forth in our Twelve Steps
appear in the same order that they do in the Ignatius Exercises.

In my abysmal ignorance, I actually inquired, "Please tell me - who is
this fellow Ignatius?"

While of course the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous contain
nothing new, there seems no doubt that this singular and exact
identification with the Ignatius Exercises has done much to make the
close and fruitful relation that we now enjoy with the Church. (The
'Blue Book', Vol.12, 1960)


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24Q - How did you meet Father Ed Dowling?

24A - My first unforgettable contact with Father Ed came about in this
way. It was early 1940, though late in the winter. Save for old Tom,
the fireman we had lately rescued from Rockland Asylum, the club was
empty (24th St. clubhouse in N.Y. City where Bill and Lois were
living, as they had been evicted from their Clinton St. home.) My wife
Lois was out somewhere. It had been a hectic day, full of
disappointments. I lay upstairs in our room, consumed with self-pity.
This had been brought on by one of my characteristic imaginary ulcer
attacks. It was a bitter night, frightfully windy. Hail and sleet beat
on the tin roof over my head.

Then the front doorbell rang and I heard old Tom toddle off to answer
it. A minute later he looked into the doorway of my room, obviously
much annoyed. Then he said, "Bill, there is some old damn bum down
there from St. Louis, and he wants to see you." "Great heavens," I
thought, "this can't be still another one." Wearily and even
resentfully, I said to Tom, "Oh well, bring him up, bring him up."
Then a strange figure appeared in my bedroom door. He wore a shapeless
black hat that somehow reminded me of a cabbage leaf. His coat collar
was drawn around his neck, and he leaned heavily on a cane. He was
plastered with sleet. Thinking him to be just another drunk, I didn't
even get off the bed. Then he unbuttoned his coat and I saw that he
was a clergyman.

A moment later I realized with great joy that he was the clergyman who
had put that wonderful plug for A.A. into The Queen's Work. My
weariness and annoyance instantly evaporated. We talked of many
things, not always about serious matters either. Then I began to be
aware of one of the most remarkable pair of eyes I have ever seen.
And, as we talked on, the room increasingly filled with what seemed to
me to be the presence of God which flowed through my new friend. It
was one of the most extraordinary experiences that I have ever had.
Such was his rare ability to transmit grace. Nor was my experience at
all unique. Hundreds of AA's have reported having exactly this
experience when in his presence. This was the beginning of one of the
deepest and most inspiring friendships that I shall ever know. This
was the first meaningful contact that I have ever had with the
clergymen of the Catholic faith. (The 'Blue Book', Vol. 12, 1960)

A - Father Edward Dowling, a great Jesuit friend of ours, once said to
me, "Bill, it isn't what you people put into Alcoholics Anonymous that
makes it so good - it's what you left out." (Transcribed from tape,
Manhattan Group, 1955)


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25Q - What are the ideas embodied in the Twelve Traditions?

25A - That, touching all matters affecting A.A. unity, our common
welfare should come first; that A.A. has no human authority - only God
as He may speak in our Group conscience; that our leaders are but
trusted servants, they do not govern; that any alcoholic may become an
A.A. member if he says so - we exclude no one; that every A.A. Group
may manage its own affairs as it likes, provided surrounding groups
are not harmed thereby; that we A.A.'s have but a single aim - the
carrying of our message to the alcoholic who still suffers; that in
consequence we can not finance, endorse or otherwise lend the name
'Alcoholics Anonymous' to any other enterprise, however worthy; that
A.A., as such, ought to remain poor, lest problems of property,
management and money divert us from our sole aim; that we ought to be
self-supporting, gladly paying our small expenses ourselves; that A.A.
should forever remain non-professional, ordinary 12th step work never
to be paid for; that, as a Fellowship, we should never be organized
but may nevertheless create responsible Service Boards or Committees
to insure us better propagation and sponsorship and that these
agencies may engage full-time workers for special tasks; that our
public relations ought to proceed upon the principle of attraction
rather than promotion, it being better to let our friends recommend
us; that personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and pictures
out to be strictly maintained as our best protection against the
temptations of power or personal ambition; and finally, that anonymity
before the general public is the spiritual key to all our traditions,
ever reminding us to place principles before personalities, that we
are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our
great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in
thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all. (Tape - Twelve
Traditions, Cleveland, July, 1950) .


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Another Answer

25A - We sometimes congratulate ourselves on the Traditions as though
they were a list of virtues singular to us. Actually, they are a
codification of the lessons of our past experience during the early
days of A.A.

These Traditions are not fixed absolutely. There may be room for
improvement. However, they should not be lightly cast aside, since
they bear on our unity, survival and growth under Gods grace."

We are entering a new era of growth with vast forces tearing at the
world. The problems and difficulties of the future may be greater than
those we have already survived. Still, there is a love among us that
passeth all understanding and that will sustain us through all the
trials that lie ahead, no matter how formidable." (Transcribed from
tape, GSC, 1968)


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26Q - How will the proposed General Service Conference be financed?

26A - How best to finance our Conference is a moot question. The
General Service Conference will function for the benefit of A.A. as a
whole. Its entire cost ought to be a charge against those "Group
contributions" now sent to New York for the support of the General
Office. But this method is quite impossible now. Group contributions
are not meeting General Office expenses. Nor can the "reserve" or the
Foundation's A.A. "book income" carry the Conference.

We therefore propose that all A.A. Groups be asked for a gift of $5
each, yearly, at Christmas. The Foundation Trustees would deposit
these sums in a special account marked "Conference Funds."

If even one-half of the A.A. Groups made this annual $5 gift to the
Foundation "for the benefit of the million who don't yet know," we
estimate that the resulting income would absorb the total yearly
Conference overhead, plus all Delegates' transportation to New York in
excess of $100 each. (Third Legacy Pamphlet, October 1950)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

27Q - Why shouldn't the General Service Conference be a government for
Alcoholics Anonymous?

27A - Each A.A. Group is autonomous; our only "authority" is a Higher
Power. Practically speaking, no A.A. Group will stand for a personal
government anyhow; we're built that way. Though the Conference will
guide A.A. Headquarters, it must never assume to govern A.A. as a
whole. While it can publicly deplore misuse of the A.A. name or
departures from Tradition, it ought never attempt punishment or legal
restraint of non-conformists - in A.A. or out. That is the road to
public controversy and internal disruption. The Conference will give
us an example and a guide, but not government. A personal government
is something, God willing, that Alcoholics Anonymous will never have.
We shall authorize servants to act for us, but not rulers. (Third
Legacy Pamphlet, October 1950)


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28Q - How many drug addicts are there in A.A. and in the organization
similar to A.A. which operates among drug addicts?

28A - We have quite a number of drug addicts who were once alcoholics.
So far, I don't know of any case of pure drug addiction that we have
been able to approach. In other words, we can no more approach a
simon-pure addict than the outsider can usually approach us. We are in
exactly the same position with them that the doctor and the clergyman
have been in respect to the alcoholic. We just don't talk that
fellow's language. He always looks at us and says, "Well, those
alcoholics are the scum of the earth and besides, what do they know
about addiction?"

Now, however, since we have a good number of addicts who were once
alcoholics, those addicts in their turn are making an effort, here and
there, to transfer the thing over to the straight addict. In that way
we hope the bridge is going to be crossed. There may be a case here
and there that has been helped. But in all, I suppose, there may be
about 50 cases of real morphine addiction in former alcoholics who
have been helped by A.A. Of course we have a great many barbital
users, but we don't consider those people particularly difficult if
they really want to do something about it; and particularly if it's
associated with liquor. They seem to get out of it after a while. But
where you have morphine, or some of those other derivatives, then it
gets very tough. Then you have to have a "dope" talk to a "dope," and
I hope that we can some day find a bridge to the addict. (Yale Summer
School of Alcohol Studies, June 1945)


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29Q - What purpose does the right of appeal serve?

29A - There came to this country some hundred years ago a French Baron
whose family and himself had been wracked by the French revolution, De
Toqueville, and he was a worshipful admirer of democracy. And in those
days democracy seemed to be mostly expressed in people's minds by
votes of simple majorities. And he was a worshipful admirer of the
spirit of democracy as expressed by the power of a majority to govern.
But, said De Toqueville, a majority can be ignorant, it can be brutal,
it can be tyrannous - and we have seen it. Therefore, unless you most
carefully protect a minority, large or small, make sure that minority
opinions are voiced, make sure that minorities have unusual rights,
your democracy is never going to work and its spirit will die. This
was De Toqueville's prediction and, considering today's times, is it
strange that he is not widely read now?

So that is why in this Conference we try to get a unanimous consent
while we can; this is why we say the Conference can mandate the Board
of Trustees on a two - thirds vote. But we have said more here. We
have said that any Delegate, any Trustee, any staff member, any
service director - any board, committee or whatever - that wherever
there is a minority, it shall always be the right of this minority to
file a minority report so that their views are held up clearly. And if
in the opinion of any such minority, even a minority of one, if the
majority is about to hastily or angrily do something which could be to
the detriment of Alcoholics Anonymous, the serious detriment, it is
not only their right to file a minority appeal, it is their duty.

So, like De Toqueville, neither you nor I want either the tyranny of
the majority, nor the tyranny of the small minority. And steps have
been taken here to balance up these relations. (GSC, 1960)


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30Q - Are alcoholics neurotic?

30A - It is possible that about half our members, had they not been
drinkers, would have appeared in ordinary life to be normal people.
The other half would have appeared as more or less pronounced
neurotics ( N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.44, Aug.1944)


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31Q - What is alcoholism?

31A - Alcoholism is a malady; that something is dead wrong with us
physically; that our reaction to alcohol has changed; that something
has been very wrong with us emotionally; that our alcoholic habit has
become an obsession, a obsession which can no longer reckon even with
death itself. Once firmly set, one is not able to turn it aside. In
other words, a sort of allergy of the body which guarantees that we
shall die if we drink, an obsession of the mind which guarantees that
we shall go on drinking. Such has been the alcoholic dilemma time out
of mind, and it is altogether probable that even of those alcoholics
who did not wish to go on drinking, not more than five out of one
hundred have ever been able to stop before A.A. (Yale Summer School of
Alcohol Studies, June 1945).


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32Q - Is Alcoholics Anonymous a new religion? A competitor of the
Church?

32A - If these misgivings had real substance, they would be serious
indeed. But, Alcoholics Anonymous cannot in the least be regarded as a
new religion. Our Twelve Steps have no theological content, except
that which speaks of "God as we understand Him." This means that each
individual AA member may define God according to whatever faith or
creed he may have. Therefore there isn't the slightest interference
with the religious views of any of our membership. The rest of the
Twelve Steps define moral attitudes and helpful practices, all of them
precisely Christian in character. Therefore, as far as the steps go,
the steps are good Christianity, indeed they are good Catholicism,
something which Catholic writers have affirmed more than once.

Neither does AA exert the slightest religious authority over its
members. No one is compelled to believe anything. No one is compelled
to meet membership conditions. No one is obliged to pay anything.
Therefore we have no system of authority, spiritual or temporal, that
is comparable to or in the least competitive with the Church. At the
center of our society we have a Board of Trustees. This body is
accountable yearly to a Conference of elected Delegates. These
Delegates represent the conscience and desire of AA as regards
functional or service matters. Our Tradition contains an emphatic
injunction that these Trustees may never constitute themselves as a
government - they are to merely provide certain services that enable
AA as a whole to function. The same principles apply at our group and
area level.

Dr. Bob, my co-partner, had his own religious views. For whatever they
may be worth, I have my own. But both of us have gone heavily on the
record to the effect that these personal views and preferences can
never under any conditions be injected into the AA program as a
working part of it. AA is a sort of spiritual kindergarten, but that
is all. Never should it be called a religion. (The 'Blue Book',
Vol.12, 1960)

A - Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization; there is no
dogma. The one theological proposition is a "Power greater than one's
self." Even this concept is forced on no one. The newcomer merely
immerses himself in our society and tries the program as best he can.
Left alone, he will surely report the onset of a transforming
experience, call it what he may. Observers once thought A.A. could
only appeal to the religiously susceptible. Yet our membership
includes a former member of the American Atheist Society and about
20,000 others almost as tough. The dying can become remarkably
open-minded. Of course we speak little of conversion nowadays because
so many people really dread being God-bitten. But conversion, as
broadly described by James, does seem to be our basic process; all
other devices are but the foundation. When one alcoholic works with
another, he but consolidates and sustains that essential experience.
(Amer. J. Psych., Vol. 106, 1949)


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33Q - What is the success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous?

33A - Of those sincerely willing to stop drinking about 50 per cent
have done so at once, 25 per cent after a few relapses and most of the
remainder have improved. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol. 44, Aug., 1944) .


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another Answer

33A - As of 1949 our quantity results are these. The 14 year old
society of Alcoholics Anonymous has 80,000 members in about 3,000
groups. We have entered into about 30 foreign countries and U.S.
possessions; translations are going forward. By occupation we are an
accurate cross section of America. By religious affiliation we are
about 40% Catholic, nominal and active Protestants; also many former
agnostics, and a sprinkling of Jews comprise the remainder. Ten to 15%
are women. Some Negroes are recovering without undue difficulty. Top
medical and religious endorsements are almost universal. A.A.
membership is pyramiding, chain style, at the rate of 30% a year.
During 1949 we expect 20,000 permanent recoveries, at least. Half of
them will be medium or mild cases with an average age of 36 - a fairly
recent development.

Of alcoholics who stay with us and really try, 50% get sober at once
and stay that way, 25% do so after some relapses and the remainder
show some improvement. But many problem drinkers do quit A.A. after a
brief contact, many, three or four out of five. Some are too
psychopathic or damaged. But the majority have powerful
rationalizations yet to be broken down. Exactly this does happen,
providing they get what A.A. calls a "good exposure," on first
contact. Alcohol then burns such a hot fire under them that they are
driven back to us, often years later. They tell us that they had to
return; it was A.A. or else. Such cases leave us the agreeable
impression that half of our original exposures will eventually return,
most of them to recover. (Amer. J. Psychiatry Vol. 106, 1949) .


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Another Answer

33A - About two thousand recoveries now take place each month. Of
those alcoholics who wish to get well and are emotionally capable of
trying our method, 50 per cent recover immediately, 25 per cent after
a few backslides. The remainder are improved if they continue active
in A.A. Of the total who approach us, it is probable that only 25 per
cent become A.A. members on the first contact. A list of seventy-five
of our early failures today discloses that 70 returned to A.A. after
one to ten years. We did not bring them back; they came of their own
accord. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.50, July 1950) .


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Another Answer

33A - As we gained in size, we also gained in effectiveness. The
recovery rate went up. Of all those who really tried A.A., 50 per cent
made it at once, 25 per cent finally made it; and the rest, if they
stayed with us, were definitely improved. That percentage has since
held, even with those who first wrote their stories in the original
edition of "Alcoholics Anonymous." In fact, 75 per cent of these
finally achieved sobriety. Only 25 per cent died or went mad. Most of
those still alive have been sober for an average of twenty years.

In our early days and since, we have found that great numbers of
alcoholics approach us and then turn away - maybe three out of five,
today. But we have happily found out that the majority of them later
return, provided they are not too psychopathic or too brain damaged.
Once they have learned from the lips of other alcoholics that they are
beset by an often fatal malady, their further drinking only turns up
the screw. Eventually they are forced back into A.A., they must or
die. Sometimes this happens years after the first exposure. The
ultimate recovery rate in A.A. is therefore a lot higher than we at
first thought it could be.

Yet we must humbly reflect that Alcoholics Anonymous has so far made
only a scratch upon the total problem of alcoholism. Here in the
United States, we have helped to sober up scarcely five per cent of
the total alcoholic population of 4,500,000. (N.Y. Med. Society on
Alcoholism, 1958) .


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Another Answer

33A- A.A. members can soberly ask themselves what became of the
600,000 alcoholics who approached the Fellowship during the past
thirty years but who did not stay. How much and how often did we fail
all these? When we remember that in the 20 years of A.A. existence we
have reached less than 10 per cent of all those who might be willing
to approach us, we begin to get an idea of the immensity of our task,
and of the responsibilities with which we will always be confronted.
(G.S.C. 1958). .


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Another Answer

33A - I took note of the fact that in the generation which has seen
A.A. come alive, this period of twenty-five years, a vast procession
of the world's drunks have passed in front of us and have gone over
the precipice. Based on figures I was careful to get, it looks like,
worldwide, there was something like 25 million of them and out of that
stream of despair, illness, misery and death -- we fished out just one
in a hundred in the last 25 years. I think we're fishing somewhat
bigger and better.

Our numbers are considerable. We have size. There is great security in
numbers. You can't imagine how it was in the very first two or three
years of this thing when nobody was sure that anybody could stay
sober...Then we were like the people on Eddie Rickenbacker's raft.
Boy, anybody rock that raft, even a little, and he was sure to be
clobbered, that's all, and then thrown overboard. But today it's a
different story. Along with greater security in numbers, there has
come a certain amount of liability. The more people there are to do a
job, it often turns out, the less there are. In other words, what is
everybody's business is nobody's business. So size is bound to bring
complacency unless we get increasingly aware of what's going on.
(Transcribed from tape. GSC, 1960)


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34Q - What contribution did Dr. Carl Jung make to A.A.?

34A - Few people know that the first taproot of A.A. hit paydirt some
thirty years ago in a physicians office. Dr. Carl Jung, that great
pioneer in psychiatry was talking to an alcoholic patient. This is in
effect what happened:

The patient, a prominent American businessman, had gone the typical
alcoholic route. He had exhausted the possibilities of medicine and
psychiatry in the United States and had then come to Dr. Jung as to a
court of last resort. Carl Jung had treated him for a year and the
patient, whom we shall call Mr. R., felt confident that the hidden
springs underneath his compulsion to drink had been discovered and
removed. Nevertheless, he found himself intoxicated within a short
time after leaving Dr. Jung's care.

Now he was back, in a state of black despair. He asked Dr. Jung what
the score was, and he got it. In substance, Dr. Jung said, "For some
time after you came here, I continued to believe that you might be one
of those rare cases who could make a recovery. But I must now frankly
admit that I have never seen a single case recover through the
psychiatric art where the neurosis is so severe as yours. Medicine has
done all that it can for you, and that's where you stand."

Mr. R's depression deepened. He asked, "Is there no exception, is this
really the end of the line for me?"

"Well," replied the doctor, "There are some exceptions, a very few.
Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called
vital spiritual experiences. They appear to be in the nature of huge
emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions and
attitudes which were once the guiding forces of these men are suddenly
cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives
begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some
emotional rearrangement within you. With many types of neurotics, the
methods which I employ are successful, but I have never been
successful with an alcoholic of your description."

"But," protested the patient, "I'm a religious man, and I still have
faith."

To this Dr. Jung replied, "Ordinary religious faith isn't enough. What
I'm talking about is a transforming experience, a conversion
experience, if you like. I can only recommend that you place yourself
in the religious atmosphere of your own choice, that you recognize
your own hopelessness, and that you cast yourself upon whatever God
you think there is. The lightning of the transforming experience may
then strike you. This you must try - it is your only way out." So
spoke the great and humble physician.

For the A.A.-to-be, this was a ten strike. Science had pronounced Mr.
R. virtually hopeless. Dr. Jung's words had struck him at great depth,
producing an immense deflation of his ego. Deflation at depth is today
a cornerstone principle of A.A. There in Dr. Jung's office it was
first employed on our behalf.

The patient, Mr. R., chose the Oxford Groups of that day as his
religious association and atmosphere. Terribly chastened and almost
helpless, he began to be active with them. To his intense joy and
astonishment, the obsession to drink presently left him.

Returning to America, Mr. R. came upon an old school friend of mine, a
chronic alcoholic. This friend - whom we shall call Ebby - was about
to be committed to a State Hospital. At this juncture another vital
ingredient was added to the synthesis. Mr. R., the alcoholic, began
talking to Ebby, also an alcoholic and a kindred sufferer. This made
for identification at depth, a second cardinal principle. Over this
bridge of identification, Mr. R. passed Dr. Jung's verdict of how
hopeless, medically and psychiatrically, most alcoholics were. He then
introduced Ebby to the Oxford Groups where my friend promptly sobered
up. (N.Y. City Med. Soc. Alcsm., April 28, 1958)


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35Q - What effect did Ebby's message have on you?

35A - Well, by this time I knew how hopeless my alcoholism was, and
yet I still rebelled - the idea of a dependency on some intangible God
who might not even be there. Oh, if I could swallow it, but could I! I
went on drinking for a number of days and gradually I got jittery
enough to think about the hospital and then it came to me "Of a
sudden" one day - "Fool! - why should you question how you're going to
get well, why should beggars be choosers? If you had a cancer and you
were sure of it and your physician said "This is so malignant that we
can't touch it with our art and even if your physician came along with
the improbable story that there were many who got over cancer by
standing on their head in the public square crying 'Amen' and if he
could really make a case that it was so, yes Bill Wilson, if you had
cancer, you too would be out in the public square ignominiously
standing on your head and crying 'Amen'- anything to stop the growth
of those cells and that would be the first priority, and your pride
would have to go."

And then I asked myself "Is my case different now? Have I not an
allergy of the body; have I not a cancer of the emotions - yes, and
maybe I have a cancer of the soul which has resulted in an obsession
which condemns me to drink and an increasing tolerance of liquor which
condemns me to go mad or die. Yes, I'm going to try this. And then
there was one more flicker of obstinacy when I said to myself, "But I
don't want any of these evangelical experiences, I mean it will have
to be a kind of intellectual religion that I'll get, so just to be
sure that I don't go into my emotional tizzy, I believe I'll go up to
see dear old Dr. Silkworth and have him dry me out. (Memphis, Tenn.,
Sept. 18-20, 1947) .


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Another Answer

35A - What then did happen at that kitchen table? Perhaps this
speculation were better left to medicine and religion. I confess I do
not know. Possibly conversion will never be fully understood.

My friend's story had generated mixed emotions; I was drawn and
revolted by turns. My solitary drinking went on, but I could not
forget his visit. Several themes coursed in my mind: First, that his
evident state of release was strangely and immensely convincing.
Second, that he had been pronounced hopeless by competent medicos.
Third, that those old-age precepts, when transmitted by him, had
struck me with great power. Fourth, I could not, and would not, go
along with any God concept. No conversion nonsense for me. Thus did I
ponder. Trying to divert my thoughts, I found it no use. By cords of
understanding, suffering, and simple verity, another alcoholic had
bound me to him. I shall not break away. (Amer J. Psychiat., Vol.106,
1949) .


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Another Answer

35A - He first told me his drinking experience, accent on its more
recent horrors. Of course his identification with me was immediate,
and as it proved, deep and vital indeed. One alcoholic was talking
with another as no one except an alcoholic can. Then he offered me his
naively simple recovery formula. Not one syllable was new, but somehow
it affected me profoundly.

There he sat, recovered. An example of what he preached. You will note
that his only dogma was God, which for my benefit he stretched into an
accommodating phrase, a Power greater than myself. That was his story.
I could take it or leave it. I need feel no obligation to him. Indeed,
he observed, I was doing him a favor by listening. Besides it was
obvious that he had something more than ordinary "water wagon"
sobriety. He looked and acted "released"; repression had not been his
answer. Such was the impact of an alcoholic who really knew the score.
(N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.50, July 1950)


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36Q - Why do clergymen so often fail with alcoholics, when A.A. so
often succeeds? Is it possible that the grace of A.A. is superior to
that of the