This was a nervous time. “[W]e were people saved from shipwreck,” the wife of one drunk recalled. They drew strength from the presence of other survivors. “Do you think your husband is ever going to drink again?” Bill D.’s wife asked Lois. “I know he isn’t,” Lois said. Bill Wilson had been sober longer than he had ever been in his life—nine months. “We were scared stiff,” one of the drunks later explained. “We’d lost everything and were afraid of drinking. Nothing had worked before, and we weren’t always so sure that this would.”51
The truth was that Wilson and Smith were unable to help most of the men they approached, and there was a danger that repeated failures could bring down the whole enterprise. The threat seemed particularly acute in the summer of 1935 when “Lil,” the first woman they recruited, fell off the wagon and had sex with another recovering drunk on Smith’s examining table. When the man, a former mayor of Akron, tried to take Lil home, she refused, swallowed some pills she had found, and tried to jump out the window. She was finally subdued and taken to the Smiths’ house to sleep it off. The drunks and their wives were scandalized. “As drunks I don’t know why we should have been,” Wilson said. “But we felt that the performance of some of those early people coming in would disrupt us entirely.”52
It was also a joyous time. The drunks and their wives had found new lives. The men were busy staying sober. Almost none of them had jobs. They had drunk their way into unemployment and had emerged from their alcoholic fog in the middle of an economic depression. Many were flat broke. The Smiths were a little better off than the others, but there were nights when all Anne could afford to serve was milk and bread. The new men clung tightly to the coattails of those who were sober just a few weeks or months longer. “It seems to me as though we just lived together when I first came into the group—me and Paul S. and Harold G.,” one man said. “We would go from house to house during the day and wind up one place every night—Bob Smith’s.” At the Smiths’, there was always plenty of strong coffee. Consumption reached nine pounds per week.53
The wives were also remaking their lives. Many had lost their old friends, but under Anne’s prodding, they started to make new ones within the group. In addition to the Wednesday night meetings, everyone got together at somebody’s house on Saturday night. “We had covered-dish suppers and picnics, and later we had a few dances,” Henrietta D. remembered. “But for a long time, we just had coffee and tea and crackers. . . . Everybody was so happy to be together.”54
Wilson returned to New York in August 1935. The proxy fight that had taken him to Akron had finally failed, and he began looking for work again. But his still unnamed group continued to grow. A New York meeting began in the parlor of the Wilson’s home at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights in the fall. The Akron group started drawing drunks from the neighboring cities of Kent and Canton. People from Cleveland began to drive down for the Wednesday meetings. In November 1937, Wilson visited the Smiths again as he was passing through on his latest job search. When they sat down to take stock of the progress of their enterprise, they began counting group members and were shocked when the number turned out to be forty. Twenty or more had been sober for more than two years. “As we carefully rechecked this score, it suddenly burst upon us that a new light was shining into the dark world of the alcoholic,” Bill wrote.
[A] benign chain reaction, one alcoholic carrying the good news to the next, had started outward from Dr. Bob and me. Conceivably it could one day circle the whole world. What a tremendous thing that realization was! At last we were sure. There would be no more flying totally blind. We actually wept for joy, and Bob and Anne and I bowed our heads in silent thanks.
Wilson and Smith had started a wave of sobriety. There was no way of knowing how large it would grow.55
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Birth of Alcoholics Anonymous
BILL WILSON AND BOB SMITH were sure they were onto something. Yet they were making progress “at the snail’s pace,” Wilson acknowledged. Most of the men they approached rejected their assistance. While many were not ready to stop drinking, others did not want to admit that they were alcoholics. The prejudice against drunks was ancient. It had been challenged briefly by the Washingtonians, the campaigns led by Reynolds and Murphy and later by the Keeley League. But most drunks remained closeted. The stigma of alcoholism may even have worsened in the twentieth century, when most people thought the alcoholic was someone incapable of measuring up to the demands of modern life and pictured a skid-row bum. The little band of drunks who gathered around Wilson and Smith were adamant about protecting their anonymity. Most of them were looking for work, and no one would hire a drunk. But how could a group of anonymous men hope to grow?1
Having thanked God for their success, Wilson and Smith began to lay plans for the future. Always the promoter, Wilson made several suggestions. First, it seemed clear that someone would have to be paid to promote the organization. Wilson and Smith were broke: Bill was unemployed and Bob was in danger of losing his home to foreclosure. What were needed were paid missionaries who would travel around the country establishing new groups. In addition, there was a desperate need for medical treatment for alcoholics. Most hospitals had closed their doors to these troublesome patients, who were sometimes violent when they were admitted, resentful and demanding as they sobered up, and too broke or forgetful when it came time to pay their bills. Wilson suggested creating a chain of hospitals that would specialize in drunks. Obviously, this meant there would have to be a large and energetic fund-raising campaign. Finally, he proposed the publication of “a book of experience” that would “carry our message to distant places we could never visit ourselves.”2
Smith liked the idea of the book, but he was dubious about the rest. He suggested moving slowly. “Why don’t we call the Akron boys together,” he asked. “Let’s try these ideas out on them.” Wilson probably didn’t welcome the suggestion. Earlier in 1937, he had been offered a paid position at Towns Hospital. Owner Charlie Towns saw a future in this still unnamed group of drunks and believed it might help restore some of the profits his business had lost during the Depression. Wilson wanted desperately to take the job, but the small group of sober alcoholics that had begun meeting at his Clinton Street home was opposed. Everyone agreed that one of the keys to their success was that a sober alcoholic could establish a rapport with someone who was still drinking because he had also suffered. In sharing his story, he offered the hope of recovery. The alcoholics in Wilson’s group were convinced that this special bond would be destroyed if drunks suspected they were being recruited as part of a money-making scheme. Wilson turned down the job offer, but now he was preparing to pitch to eighteen members of the Akron group a plan that called for paid missionaries and a chain of hospitals.3
Wilson used his considerable powers of persuasion in his presentation. Smith spoke in favor of the plan despite his doubts. “Dr. Bob” was loved and respected by the men whose lives he had helped save. They flatly rejected Wilson’s proposal:
The moment we were through, those alcoholics really did work us over! They rejected the idea of missionaries. Paid workers, they said, would kill our good will with alcoholics; this would be sheer ruin. If we went into the hospital business, everybody would say it was a racket. Many thought we must shun publicity; we would be swamped; we could not handle the traffic. Some turned thumbs down on pamphlets and books. After all, they said, the apostles themselves did not need any printed matter.
Wilson and Smith tried to answer the objections. When a vote was taken, Wilson’s plan was approved “by the barest majority.” The controversy revealed some of the divisions that would emerge as the small groups of sober alcoholics in Akron and Brooklyn began to grow. The most important part of Wilson’s plan would be the publication in 1939 of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Before that could happen, the organization that would take its name from the book would have to resolve its attitude towa
rd religion.4
Their membership in a religious group had brought Wilson and Smith together in 1935. The Oxford Group was not organized in the conventional sense. It had no bylaws, members, officers, or dues. Its leader, Dr. Frank Buchman, was a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, but the Oxford Group appealed to Protestants of all denominations and sought to maintain good relations with other religions as well. Buchman’s goal was ambitious. “The Oxford Group is a Christian revolution for remaking the world,” he said.5
In the 1920s, Buchman started a religious movement in England by organizing “house parties” at Oxford University and other prestigious locations—wealthy homes, fashionable hotels, resorts, and summer camps. In 1933, five thousand people attended an International House Party at Oxford that filled six of its colleges for seventeen days. The following year, Buchman and a team of twenty-nine led a crusade in Norway that packed the meeting halls of Oslo with more than fourteen thousand eager listeners.6
Buchman believed the revolution would come by changing one person at a time. He had served as a missionary in China, giving speeches to large audiences. He was unimpressed with the results. It was “like hunting rabbits with a brass band,” he said. Even the most powerful sermons did not produce conversions, because they did not change hearts. Only God could do that.7
Buchman’s own conversion occurred only after his ordination. Suffering from a deep depression after a dispute with some of his parishioners forced him to resign from his first job as a minister, he traveled to England in search of spiritual guidance. In church one day, Buchman asked God to release him from the anger he felt at members of his congregation. “He told me to put things right with them,” Buchman said. “It produced in me a vibrant feeling, as though a strong current of life had suddenly been poured into me.”8
The experience convinced the minister of the importance of establishing a personal relationship with God. He began to urge others to make time to listen for God to tell them what to do. It became the basis for his successful ministry as a chaplain at Pennsylvania State University, and Buchman was sure that it wouldn’t stop there. “The secret lies in that great forgotten truth, that when man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when men change, nations change,” he said. Buchman was so convinced that listening to the voice of God would produce world peace that he made two unsuccessful attempts to meet with Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s.9
While Buchman sometimes appeared childishly naive, there is no doubt that the Oxford Group was helping people, including alcoholics. Buchman had distilled his experience into four practices that he urged his followers to adopt:
1. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian.
2. Surrender of our life past, present and future, into God’s keeping and direction.
3. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly.
4. Listening for God’s guidance and carrying it out.
Members of the Oxford Group met regularly to help one another fulfill these spiritual goals. A planning committee would meet to choose a speaker to expound on some aspect of the Oxford Group’s program, and there was a period in which the members sat in silence listening for God’s guidance. Once a newcomer had experienced a spiritual awakening, he or she was encouraged to seek out others who would benefit.10
In keeping with the Oxford Group’s ambition to change the world, “groupers” were particularly anxious to recruit people of wealth and influence to help them carry their message to the highest echelons of society, business, and government. Drunks were not at the top of their list, but the members of the Oxford Group were confident that their program would work for all kinds of people with problems. Unlike most Americans, they were willing to give alcoholics a chance.
The Oxford Group first came to public attention in Akron when it helped Russell Firestone get sober. His grateful father, Harvey Firestone, the president of the Goodyear Rubber Company, invited Buchman to Akron to lead a crusade in 1933. Launched at a formal banquet in the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel, Buchman’s campaign was hailed as the “dinner-jacket revival” by the local press and drew thousands to its meetings. Several Oxford Group meetings were established at the time, including the group that Bob and Anne Smith began attending.11
Although Smith was still leery of religion, he was attracted by the people he met there “because of their seeming poise, health and happiness.” “I was self-conscious and ill at ease most of the time, my health was at the breaking point, and I was thoroughly miserable,” he said. One of the most striking features of the meetings was the public sharing about personal weaknesses. “These people spoke with great freedom from embarrassment, which I could never do,” Smith explained. Although he attended meetings regularly, he continued to conceal his alcoholism. “I at no time sensed that it might be an answer to my liquor problem,” he said.12
Things began to change the day when Henrietta Seiberling learned from a friend about Smith’s problem. “I immediately felt guided that we should have a meeting for Bob Smith,” Seiberling said. She asked T. Henry and Clarace Williams whether they would host the meeting in their home. When they agreed, she approached Anne Smith. Seiberling believed that neither Anne nor Bob had ever fully shared their weaknesses during a meeting. While Bob was hiding his drinking problem, Anne was unwilling to discuss feelings or behavior that might be criticized by group members, Seiberling said. Without telling Anne the purpose of the new group, she warned that it would be demanding. “Come prepared to mean business,” she said. “There is going to be no pussyfooting around.” In the Williams’ living room, Seiberling and the other members kicked things off:
We all shared very deeply our shortcomings and what we had victory over. Then there was a silence, and I waited and thought, “Will Bob say anything?” Sure enough, in that deep, serious tone of his, he said, “Well, you good people have all shared things that I am sure were very costly to you, and I am going to tell you something which may cost me my profession. I am a secret drinker and I can’t stop.”
Someone asked if he wanted them to pray for him. He did.13
God was very much on their minds as Smith and Wilson began their pursuit of drunks in the summer of 1935. The first dinner at Henrietta’s was shortly after Smith’s confession at the meeting. Wilson’s “white light” moment at Towns Hospital had occurred six months earlier. As soon as a man told them he wanted to stop drinking, they asked whether he believed in God. Clarence Snyder, an alcoholic from Cleveland, learned this when he found himself in Akron City Hospital in 1938. By then, there were more than a dozen alcoholics who had stopped drinking with the assistance of “Dr. Bob,” and most of them had visited Snyder. After a week of listening to their stories, Snyder told Smith he was ready to quit. “Young feller, do you believe in God? Not a God, but God!” Smith asked. Snyder was not ready to say that he did but was afraid Smith would walk out of the room if he admitted it. “Well, I guess I do,” he replied. Smith stood up, pointing a finger at Snyder. “There’s no guessing about it. Either you do or you don’t!” he said. Snyder surrendered. “Yeah, I do believe in God,” he said.
That’s fine. Now we can get someplace. . . . Get down out of that bed. . . . You’re going to pray. . . . You can repeat it after me, and that will do for this time. . . . Jesus! This is Clarence Snyder. He’s a drunk. Clarence! This is Jesus. Ask Him to come into your life. Ask Him to remove your drinking problem, and pray that He manage your life because you are unable to manage it yourself.
The two men rose from the concrete floor where they had been praying. “Young feller, you’re gonna be all right,” Smith promised.14
The Oxford Group believed that surrendering to God was essential for spiritual growth. Acknowledging that desires are often selfish and corrupt makes it possible to hear what God desires. It is not surprising that the alcoholic members of the Oxford Group were particularly insistent on the importance of surrender, for they knew only too well that they were in the grip of a force
they could not control. They believed that the only path forward was to admit they were unable to control their drinking and that they required divine help to stay sober. The surrender was considered so important that it became a prerequisite. “You couldn’t just go to a meeting—you had to go through the program of surrender,” recalled Bob E., a drunk who got sober in the Oxford Group in 1937. If a drunk wasn’t ready to surrender, he was shown the door. One newcomer who failed to make the grade returned later to try again. “Jeez—when you guys say ‘Take it or leave it,’ you meant it,” he said.15
The recovering drunks who met in growing numbers in the Williams’s home were proud of their membership in the Oxford Group. Smith was deeply loyal to Henrietta Seiberling and the other members of the group who had helped him get sober, and the alcoholic men he had helped felt the same way toward him. They did not attempt to turn the meeting into something else. Most of the men and women who attended were not alcoholics, and the meetings continued to be conducted like other Oxford Group meetings. There was a heavy emphasis on applying the four absolutes to their everyday lives. Much of the meeting time was devoted to silent reflection as the members sought the guidance of God. It remained a religious meeting.
The Oxford Group could never be the home of a movement that was intent on saving drunks. Buchman was striving for a grander goal. “I’m all for drunks being changed, but we also have drunken nations on our hands,” he said. Many of the alcoholics in the Oxford Group recognized that their goals were different from those of the nonalcoholic members of the group. Their priority was getting sober, and while they appreciated the hospitality of the Oxford Group, they had difficulty grasping its principles. Some of its practices drove them crazy. Newly sober, they found it difficult to sit still during the long periods of “quiet time” when others were listening to God and writing down their guidance. “The guidance thing the groupers had never went down well with the drunks,” Ernie, an alcoholic, said. He explained:
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