The purpose of this chapter is not to give a detailed history of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA's story has been told at length by other writers in other books.ⁱ The purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? is to analyze AA as it exists today; and while readers will require a certain amount of historical information in order to understand AA, they will not require an intimate knowledge of AA's history. So, this chapter will provide an overview of AA's history, while emphasizing facts pertinent to its organizational development and to the development of its "program."
   

William Griffith (Bill) Wilson, the co-founder and the driving force behind Alcoholics Anonymous, was born on November 24, 1895 in East Dorset, Vermont. His father, Gilman, a heavy drinker, was the foreman at a marble quarry. In 1905, his parents divorced, and Bill and his sister were entrusted to the care of their maternal grandparents while their mother studied osteopathy in Boston. Bill's grandfather was a landlord with extensive holdings, and the richest man in East Dorset, so despite the trauma of his parents' divorce and his separation from both his father and mother, Bill was at least materially well off during his late childhood and ado-lescence.

In 1917, following an unsuccessful attempt to get into MIT, Wilson joined the army and became a second lieutenant. He took his first drink that same year. On January 24, 1918 he married Lois Burnham, his sweetheart from Vermont, who remained his wife until his death in 1971. Later in 1918 he was shipped with his unit to Europe, though he never saw combat; and in 1919 he was shipped home, discharged, and began living in New York City.

Like many other returning veterans he had a tough time finding regular employment, and at one point he quit a job on the docks because he refused to join a union.ⁱⁱ That's not surprising given Wilson's background, conservative politics, and admiration for businessmen—"power drivers" as he called them. (In the Big Book, he comments that "Business and financial leaders were my heroes."ⁱⁱⁱ) In Pass It On, AA's official Wilson biography, he's quoted as saying, "I objected very much to joining the union, and I was threatened by force, and I left the job rather than join the union."^iv Given the nature of the AFL unions, it wouldn't have been surprising if he was threatened. Eventually, Wilson landed a job as an investigator for a brokerage firm and began his rise on Wall Street, a rise which would make him a rich man and which would last until the stock market crash in 1929.

All through the 1920s, Wilson's drinking had gradually worsened, and when the crash came he went on a bender. He was ruined. He had been a margin trader and lost everything in the crash. Eventually, he and Lois moved in with her father, she took a job in a department store, and his drinking continued to worsen. He couldn't hold a job and his drinking resulted in blackouts, bar room brawls, temporary separation from his wife, panhandling, DTs, and pawning household items to pay for booze. He was on the ropes physically and emotionally. In 1933 and 1934 he was hospitalized several times at the Charles B. Towns Hospital in Manhattan under the care of Dr. William Silkworth, with his brother-in-law, Leonard Strong, paying his hospital bills.

Bill Wilson finally escaped from his alcoholic nightmare at the end of 1934. In the fall of that year, Ebby Thatcher, an old boarding school friend, stopped by to visit him. Like Bill, Ebby had been an extremely heavy drinker, so Bill was quite surprised when Ebby refused to drink with him. When Bill asked him why, Ebby replied that he had gotten religion, and that he was a member of the Oxford Group Movement.

Ebby had been introduced to the Movement by Roland Hazard, another alcoholic. Like Ebby, Roland was a "hopeless" alcoholic from a privileged background. Several years earlier he had been in desperate straits and had traveled to Switzerland and placed himself under the care of Dr. Carl Jung, the mystically inclined former pupil of Freud, in an attempt to find a cure for his abusive drinking. Roland had been sober for a year while under Jung's direct care, but when he left Jung he had gotten drunk almost immediately. In frustration, Jung told him that his only chance lay in religious conversion, an option Roland had seized upon by joining the Oxford Groups. When Roland told him about this way of overcoming alcoholism, Ebby had seized upon this "chance" as readily as had Roland.

Sitting in the Wilson kitchen, Ebby outlined the Groups' teachings to Wilson: 1) Admission of personal defeat; 2) Taking of personal inventory; 3) Confession of one's defects to another person; 4) Making restitution to those one has harmed; 5) Helping others selflessly; 6) Praying to God for the power to put these precepts into practice. Bill was unimpressed, however, and continued to drink for the next several weeks.

On December 11, 1934, Wilson's drinking came to a screeching halt. On that day he was readmitted to Towns Hospital, sedated, and subjected to Dr. Silkworth's "belladonna cure," a treatment regimen which included morphine and other psychoactive drugs in addition to belladonna (which in large doses is a powerful hallucinogen).^v While under the influence of the "cure," Bill Wilson experienced his "spiritual awakening." He described the experience in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:
   

I found myself crying out, "If there is a God, let Him show Himself!" I am ready to do anything!"

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light . . . All about me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, "So this is the God of the Preachers."^vi
   

The day after Bill Wilson's "spiritual awakening," Ebby Thatcher brought him a copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James. Wilson read it cover to cover. He later wrote in the "Big Book" that he found the idea in it that spiritual experiences—which could come in many forms—had the power to transform lives. Nearly 20 years after he wrote the "Big Book," in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Wilson also credited James with the idea that "deflation at depth" was necessary before a spiritual experience could occur.^vii Curiously, neither the words "deflation at depth" nor the single word "deflation" occur anywhere in James" book; James does, however, state that some type of extremely jarring event often occurs before a "spiritual experience." Another important idea found in Varieties, and one which is the cornerstone of AA, is the suggestion that the "only radical remedy . . . for dipsomania is religiomania."^viii

For several months following his stay at Towns Hospital and his "spiritual awakening," Bill Wilson attempted to singlehandedly put Oxford Group principles into practice in the field of alcoholism. He worked tirelessly, seeking out drunks to "work on." He devoted all of his energies to attempts to help other alcoholics sober up, by carrying the Oxford Group Movement message to them, and even by allowing many to live in his home.

While Bill devoted his energies to fruitless attempts to sober up drunks, Lois continued to work in a department store. She wasn't making much money, and they were in a precarious financial position. Eventually, Bill decided to seek employment, and in May 1935 he traveled to Akron, Ohio to take part in a proxy fight for control of a machine tool firm, the National Rubber Machinery Company. The fight went badly and Wilson quickly found himself alone in a hotel lobby with ten dollars in his pocket—and within a few feet of an inviting bar.

He didn't succumb to the temptation to seek companionship in such familiar surroundings; instead, he went to the nearest phone and called Walter Tunks, an Episcopalian minister and the leading supporter of the Oxford Groups among the Akron clergy. He told Tunks that he was a drunk and a member of the Oxford Groups who needed to find another drunk in order to stay sober. Tunks gave him ten numbers to call. After nine fruitless calls, he dialed the last number on the list, that of Henrietta Seiberling.

She was delighted to hear from Bill Wilson because she was very concerned about the destructive drinking of an Oxford Group friend, Dr. Robert Smith. Smith, a judge's son, was a Dartmouth graduate and an M.D. who had become a proctologist and skilled surgeon; but he was also a hardcore abusive drinker with severe financial problems. The day that Bill Wilson called Henrietta Seiberling, Smith was unavailable because he had passed out at home, dead drunk. So, Seiberling arranged for Wilson and Smith to meet late the following afternoon at her home.

Dr. Smith, who was very shaky that day, agreed to meet with Wilson only to please his wife Anne and his friend Henrietta. He expected to talk with the stranger from New York for no more than 15 minutes. They ended up talking for more than six hours, and Dr. Smith was deeply affected. The man who would later become known within AA as "Dr. Bob" immediately quit drinking.

Seeing the surprising change in her friend, Henrietta Seiberling was determined to keep Bill Wilson in Akron. At the time, however, Bill was dead broke; so, Henrietta arranged with a neighbor to allow Bill to stay at a local country club for two weeks. At about the same time, Bill received additional money from New York to continue the proxy fight over the machine tool company. After his two-week stay at the country club, he moved into the Smiths' home at the invitation of Anne Smith.

Wilson's stay at the Smiths' went smoothly. While he lived with them, Bill Wilson and the Smiths made the practice of Oxford Group principles a focus of their lives. In particular, they held a daily "quiet time" in the morning which they devoted to meditation, Bible reading, and receiving "guidance" from God. As importantly, Bill and Dr. Bob almost immediately began to "work on" other drunks.

Shortly after they began this regimen, Dr. Bob decided to attend the annual AMA convention in Atlantic City. Within a week of his leaving, he arrived back in Ohio blind drunk. Bill and Anne sobered him up, and on June 10, 1935, Dr. Bob took his last drink (to steady his nerves before an operation). This is often cited as the founding date of Alcoholics Anony-mous.

Wilson and Smith wasted no time in continuing the search for other drunks. Despite several failures, they did succeed in sobering up two more alcoholics during the summer of 1935. By late that summer, however, the proxy fight for control of the machine tool company had failed, and Wilson was obliged to return to New York. He left behind him Dr. Smith and two other ex-drunks, all three of whom were attending Oxford Group meetings and faithfully practicing Oxford Group principles. Some time during or shortly after this period, Dr. Bob's small group of alcoholics started to call themselves "the alcoholic squadron [or "squad"—there are references to both] of the Akron Oxford Group."

Once back in New York, Bill Wilson continued to devote most of his energies to working with other alcoholics, turning his home into a halfway house for drunks, again with no success. A particularly jarring failure was that of Bill C., a lawyer who lived with the Wilsons for almost a year. After repeatedly (and without detection) stealing from them, he committed suicide. When Bill and Lois returned home after a visit to a member of their fledgling society in Maryland, they found Bill C.'s decomposing body and a house reeking of gas.^ix

In late 1935, at a time when the Wilson home still functioned as a halfway house, small groups of alcoholics and their wives began to meet there for an open house on Tuesday evenings; thus the second de facto AA group was born. It didn't take long for the Wilsons to notice that some of the drunks who turned up on Tuesday nights were staying sober, while none of those who were living in their home managed to do so. The members of the Tuesday night group also attended Oxford Group meetings, a practice which would continue until late 1937. At that time, the still-unnamed New York group of ex-alcoholics severed its connections with the Oxford Group Movement.

There were several reasons for the split. An important one was that Wilson and his band of ex-drunks were only interested in working with other alcoholics. As time went on, this caused friction with an ever-growing number of non-alcoholic Oxford Group members; increasing numbers of them received "guidance" that Wilson should quit working with alcoholics and instead concentrate his energies directly on Oxford Groups work. For their part, the alcoholics found the Oxford Groups too "authoritarian," and took no part in the Groups Movement other than attending meetings. From his writings, it seems clear that while Bill Wilson agreed wholeheartedly with Oxford Group Movement principles, he felt that for alcoholics, "These ideas had to be fed with teaspoons rather than by buckets."^x (This statement largely explains why Oxford Group Movement principles are clearly presented, but are expressed so unforcefully, and at times euphemistically, in the "Big Book.")

These differences alone would probably have been enough to ensure the eventual disaffiliation of the reformed New York alcoholics from the Oxford Groups. It's also possible that Oxford Group founder Frank Buchman's interview in the August 26, 1936 New York World Telegram, in which he was quoted as saying, "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler," provided additional incentive for Wilson to put distance between his group of exdrunks and the Oxford Group Movement. That's impossible to know, however, as Bill Wilson apparently left no written record of the matter, and AA's official literature treats it in a very circumspect manner. (It is possible that Wilson commented on the matter, but that his comments lie hidden somewhere in that large portion of his correspondence that AA refuses to open to researchers.)

There were two further reasons why Wilson's group left the Oxford Group Movement. One was that the Catholic Church was very critical of the Buchmanites, and Wilson didn't want to run the risk of Catholics being forbidden to join his group. The other was that the easiest way to avoid controversy and divisiveness was to concentrate solely on alcoholism. So, formal ties were severed between Wilson's ex-alcoholics and the Oxford Groups; nevertheless, the New Yorkers continued to be guided by many of the Oxford Group Movement's principles.

In the fall of 1937, Bill Wilson made a second business trip to Akron. While there, he met with Dr. Smith. By this time, Wilson had decided that their organization needed to expand through paid missionaries, hospitals for alcoholics, and publication of its principles in book form, and that they needed to raise funds for those purposes. While he supported the idea of a book, Dr. Bob had doubts about paid missionaries and hospitals. Nevertheless, he supported all of Wilson's proposals at a meeting of the Akron "alcoholic squadron" and all of Bill's ideas were approved by a narrow margin after heated debate. Upon returning home, his proposals were enthusiastically approved by the New York group.

In the spring of 1938, Bill Wilson began to write what was to become the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous. After several months of work, Wilson completed the book. It's worth noting that because he was a firm adherent to Oxford Group Movement principles, and so believed that he lived a "guided" life, Wilson very probably believed that he wrote the entire "Big Book" under divine "guidance." It's certain that he believed that he had written the 12 steps under such "guidance"; in Lois Remembers, Lois Wilson recalls that, "He relaxed and asked for guidance. When he finished writing and reread what he had put down, he was quite pleased. Twelve principles had developed—the Twelve Steps."^xi

He apparently wrote the entire portion which outlined the AA program, with the exception of "The Doctor"s Opinion," which was written by Dr. William Silkworth of Towns Hospital. The remainder of the book consisted of members' stories. The New Yorkers wrote their own, while the Akronites composed theirs with the help of a member who had been a professional journalist. In addition to contributing their stories, members in New York and Akron read the sections Bill wrote and contributed criticisms and suggestions, many of which were incorporated into the book.

During the book's writing, serious disputes had arisen over both its title and contents. Before Alcoholics Anonymous was settled on as the title, several others had been proposed. One title in particular, The Way Out, was quite popular and would probably have been adopted but for the fact that there were 25 books listed by that name in the Library of Congress, while there were none listed under the name Alcoholics Anonymous.

More serious disagreement arose over the 12 steps. They were a distillation of Oxford Group Movement principles, principles which some members of Wilson's New York group found unpalatable. In the original version of the steps, Wilson had included the words "on our knees" in step 7, but many members felt that this was too overtly religious and would drive away alcoholics. A few even objected to the use of the word "God," but they were outvoted. Some concessions, however, were made to nonbelievers—the elimination of the offensive words in step 7, the additions of the words "as we understood Him" after the word "God" in steps 3 and 11, and the substitution of the phrase "a Power greater than ourselves" for the word "God" in step 2. Additionally, the steps were prefaced with the statement: "Here are the Steps we took which are suggested as a Program of Recovery." The changes made to the steps were relatively insignificant, but the prefacing statement was important. Because it stated that AA's "Program" was only "suggested," it (in theory) allowed nonbelievers to participate in AA without embracing the religiosity of the steps.^xii (For a fuller discussion of the steps, see Chapter 5.)

It's interesting to note that in the "Big Book" Bill Wilson gives no credit whatsoever to the Oxford Groups as the source of the AA program, even though every single one of the 12 steps is directly traceable to Buchman's teachings. This deliberate omission was, almost certainly, the result of Wilson's desire not to incur the wrath of the Catholic clergy. The only influences he mentions in the "Big Book" are Carl Jung's advice to seek a cure for alcoholism through "vital spiritual experiences" and the idea expressed in William James' Varieties of Religious Experience that such experi-ences can take many forms.

A revealing sidelight to these attributions is that it's quite possible that Jung had borrowed the idea of "religiomania" as a cure for "dipsomania" directly from Varieties, which had been translated into German in 1907. What's even more revealing is the fact that the suggestion in James' book that religion could be a cure for drunkenness had come directly from William S. Hadley, an American alcoholic who underwent his own "conversion experience" in New York City in 1871 and then immersed himself in evangelical missionary work—thus placing himself as a spiritual ancestor of the later evangelist and missionary, Frank Buchman.^xiii So, it certainly seems possible that the idea of "religiomania" as a cure for "dipsomania" came full circle: from New York ex-drunk and evangelist William Hadley to William James, from James to Carl Jung, and from Jung via Roland Hazard and Ebby Thatcher to ex-drunk Bill Wilson back in New York, who failed to credit the immediate evangelical source of AA's "program" (the Oxford Groups), while pointedly mentioning both Jung and James. Whatever the case, it seems probable that Wilson cited Jung and James in the "Big Book" in an attempt to lend it intellectual respectability, and that he failed to cite the Oxford Groups in order to avoid trouble with the Catholic Church.

While the "Big Book" was being written, Bill and his fellow AAs moved to set up a formal non-profit organization to unify the fellowship and to enable the wealthy to give tax-deductible donations to it. The name they settled upon was the Alcoholic Foundation, and in May 1938 it held its first meeting. Its trustees (now the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous) were divided between alcoholics and nonalcoholics, with the nonalcoholics having a majority of one vote on the board.

The first steps toward obtaining financial backing from the rich were made in late 1937. Through his brother-in-law, Leonard Strong, Bill was able to see Willard Richardson, an ordained minister and an aide to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Richardson arranged a meeting between Bill, Dr. Bob, and other Oxford Group/AA members, and several friends and advisers of Mr. Rockefeller. The meeting went smoothly, and one Rockefeller adviser, Frank Amos, was appointed to further investigate the group. After traveling to Akron and observing Dr. Bob and company in action, Amos recommended that Rockefeller give $50,000 to AA, with more to follow. Rockefeller, however, refused, citing the fear that "money will spoil this thing."^xiv He did, however, donate $5000 (equivalent to about $57,000 today) to relieve Bill's and Dr. Bob's immediate financial problems. A portion of the money was used to pay off Dr. Smith's home mortgage, and the remainder was put in a trust fund from which AA's two co-founders began to draw $30 per week apiece (equivalent to about $340 per week apiece today).

While Bill Wilson was writing the "Big Book," it was still unclear who would publish the book once it was finished. Wilson had received a contract offer with provision for a $1500 advance from a commercial publisher, Harper & Brothers, but after much contemplation—he was in serious financial straits despite Rockefeller's gift, and $1500 was a lot of money in 1938—he decided that AA should publish its own literature.

The Alcoholic Foundation, however, did not raise any money for the project. So, Wilson and Hank P., a member of the New York AA group and Wilson's business partner in Honor Dealers, a gasoline-buying cooperative, set up an ad hoc publishing venture, Works Publishing Co. They expected to sell shares to the by-now 50 or so AA members, but, to their surprise and disappointment, they were unable to sell a single share. Finally, after they talked to a member of the Reader's Digest staff and believed that they had obtained a promise of a story upon publication of the book, they managed to sell 200 shares at $25 each, Charles Towns lent them an additional $2500, and an AA member's sibling, "Fitz's sister, Agnes," lent them an additional $1000.^xvxvi As for the loans, Pass It On doesn't mention the $1000 loan, but presents the Towns loan as if it were to Works Publishing,^xvii while Lois Wilson clearly states that the purpose of both loans was for living expenses.^xviii As for ownership of the company, the shareholders owned onethird of the company, while Bill and Hank, who had awarded themselves 200 shares apiece, each owned an additional third.^xix But even after raising $8500, they didn't have the money to print the book the following year, and they would have had great difficulty in publishing it but for a sympathetic printer, Edward Blackwell at Cornwall Press, who agreed to print the book with $500 down and no further guarantee other than Bill's and Hank's promise of eventual payment.^xx

This is most surprising given that $8500 in 1938 (the amount that Bill and Hank raised) translates to over $97,000 in 1997 dollars, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.^xxi As well, according to Lois Wilson, the per-unit cost of printing the "Big Book" was only 35 cents apiece,^xxii which—given the initial print run of 5000—yields a total printing cost of only $1750 (in 1938 dollars).^xxiii Amazingly, out of the $8500 they raised, Bill Wilson and Hank P. didn't even have enough money to pay the under-$2000 printing bill; they only had $500 left. Somehow, during the course of the year before the "Big Book"s" printing, the equivalent of over $91,000 in today's currency evaporated. (Subtracting the $3500 apparently borrowed for living expenses [equivalent to just over $40,000 today] still leaves a very large unexplained deficit.) In Pass It On, Bill Wilson's biographer comments: "That [$8500] was enough to support the work during the writing process, although it would not cover the printing costs."^xxiv And he leaves it at that.

In contrast, the pre-printing costs for this book, Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?, came to under $1000 in 1997 currency; that translates to a cost of about $88 in 1938 dollars—under 2% of what Bill and Hank raised through sale of stock, and about 1% of the total that they raised. (Most of the several hundred dollars spent for the pre-printing costs of this book went for research expenses: xeroxing, buying books and journals, mailing expenses, long distance calls to addictions professionals, etc.; Bill Wilson and Hank P. would have had virtually no such expenses, as Bill Wilson did virtually no research for his book.) Of course, Works Publishing would have had to pay for the 400 multilithed copies of the "Big Book" they had run off prior to publication, and those copies might have cost them as much as two dollars apiece (just under $23 apiece today), though that seems highly unlikely, especially as the multilithed version was much shorter than the printed book.^xxv As well, they undoubtedly mailed some of the multilithed copies, so they would have had some mailing costs. Other than that, they should have had no pre-printing expenses beyond those of self-publishers today (which are usually very low). Thus, their pre-publication costs of printing the 400 multilithed copies, any mailing of those copies, and any normal selfpublishing expenses, such as buying typing paper, typewriter ribbons, postage stamps, and envelopes, should have come to under $1000, and probably to under $500. This leaves $3500 to $4000 (in 1938 dollars— roughly $40,000 to $45,000 today) unaccounted for.

Perhaps the disappearance of the $3500 to $4000 from Works Publishing had something to do with the fact that Bill and Hank's other small business, Honor Dealers, their gasoline-buying co-op, was failing,^xxvi and that, almost certainly, the only persons overseeing the finances of the two companies were Bill and Hank.^xxvii Both Honor Dealers and Works Publishing shared office space; Works Publishing had only two "employees"—Bill and Hank; and Honor Dealers' only other employee was Ruth Hock, a secretary being paid $25 a week.^xxviii (It seems that Honor Dealers' and Works Publishing's" operations were intermixed to at least some extent, as Ruth Hock typed up the "Big Book" manuscript at the Honor Dealers office.^xxix)

It seems entirely possible that Bill and Hank could well have regarded two-thirds of the money raised for Works Publishing, if not all of it, as their personal property (as they owned two-thirds of the stock), and simply took the money and used it for personal expenses and/or to support Honor Dealers. They could have done this by paying themselves salaries from Works Publishing for the small amount of work they did, and by having Works Publishing pay rent to Honor Dealers. (The normal term for this sort of thing is "milking"; it's a form of fraud.)

One indication of their financial irresponsibility can be found in how fast and loose they played with Works Publishing's stock. Lois Wilson flatly states that Honor Dealers' secretary, Ruth Hock, "was paid, when paid at all, with book stock."^xxx And Bill and Hank simply issued certificates to pay her (thus devaluing those owned by the Works Publishing investors).^xxxi

Even if all of this was done in a technically legal manner (which seems highly unlikely), it would have been fair neither to the investors who had put $5000 into Works Publishing to finance publication of the "Big Book," nor to Charles Towns or Agnes who had loaned them money for living expenses. As well, since Bill and Hank apparently never bothered to incorporate Works Publishing, they could well have been guilty of unauthorized sale of securities (the stock), a criminal offense.^xxxii And by selling stock in a company with no assets, they quite possibly violated the Blue Sky laws, designed to protect investors from fraud.

One indication that Bill and Hank might have known that they were engaging in illegal activity can be found in the afterword of sorts, titled "The Alcoholic Foundation," in the back of the 400 multilithed copies of the "Big Book" produced in January 1939. In it, they mention neither the loans nor the $5000 raised from sale of stock when they touch on the finances of the "Big Book's" publication. Instead of acknowledging the loans and stock sale, they state: "This volume is published by the Works Publishing Company, organized and financed mostly by small donations of our members."^xxxiii Unless they knew (or at least suspected) that their financial dealings were illegal, it's difficult to see why Bill Wilson and Hank P. would have written and published this lie about the finances of Works Publishing.^{xxxivxxxvxxxvi}

For that matter, assuming that they did so, why would Bill Wilson and Hank P. have engaged in such unseemly, small-time financial scamming? Why would they have sold unregistered securities, violated the Blue Sky laws, and milked Works Publishing for the equivalent of at least $40,000 (in today's currency)? The answer almost certainly is that they were dogmatic religious believers who believed that they were "guided" to do so by God. One of Bill and Hank's most basic beliefs was that they were receiving direct guidance from the Almighty; and if the Almighty "guided" them to engage in financial malfeasance in pursuit of His ends, who were they to object? This would hardly have been the first time that religious believers have adopted an ends-justify-the-means rationale while carrying out "God's will."

The exact details of how the Works Publishing money evaporated have never come to light, and probably never will. It is, though, quite possible that the details of this financial mess lie hidden somewhere in that large portion of Bill Wilson's correspondence that AA refuses to open to researchers' examination. Whatever the case—whether the money was used in a legal or an illegal manner—the disappearance of the Works Publishing money in 1938 and 1939 remains one of the sleazier episodes in AA's history.

In any event, the "Big Book" was finally printed—on promises of eventual payment—in April 1939, a time when AA still had fewer than 100 members.

While Bill Wilson was busy in New York hauling drunks to Oxford Group meetings, raising money, founding the Alcoholic Foundation and Works Publishing Co., and writing what was to become the "Big Book," Dr. Bob Smith was busy in Akron attending to the day-to-day business of searching out and attempting to sober up drunks. The usual procedure was for Dr. Smith and the other reformed drunks to visit a hospitalized alcoholic, give him the "facts" on alcoholism, tell their stories, and ask him he wanted to quit drinking and was willing to do what was necessary to stop. If he was, Dr. Bob would make him get out of bed, get on his knees, and "surrender" to God. Those who for some reason were not hospitalized were forced at their first Oxford Group meeting to go to an upstairs room with Dr. Bob and the other reformed alcoholics and to "surrender" before they were allowed to participate.

In those days, hospitalization for upwards of a week was the normal practice in Akron. Dr. Bob customarily prescribed it even for alcoholics who had no physical need of it, in order that they be isolated and thus have time to contemplate their situation and to be properly "worked on." The only reading material that they were allowed was the Bible. By making hospitalization routine, Dr. Bob"s group quickly ran up huge hospital bills, even though (unbelievable though it may seem to present-day readers) the daily cost of hospitalizing a patient then was less than the cost of renting an expensive hotel room for a night.

A notable practice of the reformed alcoholics in Akron at this time (and, shortly after, in Cleveland as well), was that Dr. Smith and his band aggressively pursued prospects. Besides dropping in uninvited on hospitalized alcoholics, they would call on alcoholics at their homes in order to explain their program and to try to recruit them. Clarence S., the founder of AA in Cleveland, is even reported to have hauled prospects off barstools. This is in marked contrast to AA"s present approach: AA has now abandoned its early practice of aggressively and overtly pursuing prospects in order to persuade them to join, and instead presents a "take it or leave it" posture to the public while it simultaneously cooperates with treatment and diversion programs (run by AA members and sympathizers) and traffic courts that force patients and drunk drivers to attend AA meetings.

In early 1937, alcoholics from Cleveland began to make the trip to Akron in order to attend Oxford Group meetings with Dr. Bob and the other Akron alcoholics. Their numbers gradually grew, and by early 1939 they had decided to start meeting in Cleveland. Many of them were Catholics, which was probably the key consideration in their decision to not only begin meeting in Cleveland, but to meet separately from the Oxford Groups. This provoked a minor furor, as many of the alcoholic members of the Akron Oxford Group felt betrayed; but they followed the Clevelanders out of the Oxford Groups by the end of the year. For their name, the Cleveland alcoholics chose the name of the just-published "Big Book": Alcoholics Anonymous. They thus became the first group to officially use the AA name.

The "Big Book" was well received in the popular and religious press, but not in the scientific or medical press. It received a favorable review in the New York Times, and several religious publications printed a glowing review written by the influential clergyman, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick. The book received scant notice in medical and scientific publications, however, other than a scathing review in the October 14, 1939 Journal of the American Medical Association which stated:
   

[The book] is a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation. It is in no sense a scientific book . . . The book contains instructions as to how to intrigue the alcoholic addict into the acceptance of divine guidance in place of alcohol in terms strongly reminiscent of Dale Carnegie and the adherents of the Buchman ("Oxford") movement. The one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest.
   

Despite Dr. Fosdick"s enthusiastic and widely published review, very few copies of the "Big Book" sold initially. The Reader"s Digest article, which Bill Wilson and the other AA members had been counting on so heavily, never appeared, and spirits were at a low ebb until one of the New York members, Morgan R., managed to arrange a three-minute interview on a national radio show. After ten days of being locked up and guarded night and day by other AA members (so he wouldn"t drink),^xxxvii Morgan R. appeared on Gabriel Heatter"s "We the People" program on April 25, 1939. The interview went well, and Bill and the other early AAs sat back and waited for orders for the book to pour in. To stimulate demand, they had raised $500 and had used the money to mail promotional postcards announcing the broadcast and the book to every physician east of the Mississippi River. Three days after the broadcast they arrived at the post office, empty suitcases in hand, to reap what they expected would be a harvest of hundreds if not thousands of orders for the "Big Book." They were rudely surprised. They received a total of 12 replies, with only two of them being book orders.

Further publicity quickly rescued AA from the depression induced by the postcard fiasco. In June, the New York Times ran its favorable review of Alcoholics Anonymous, and shortly thereafter Liberty magazine, a popular national weekly, published an article lauding AA. The article, titled "Alcoholics and God" and written by Morris Markey, appeared in Liberty's September 30, 1939 issue. The New York AAs weren't especially happy with the piece because of its title, its emphasis on the religious nature of AA, and Markey's explanation of 12th-step work: "These men were experiencing a psychic change. Their so-called "compulsion neurosis" was being altered— transferred from liquor to something else. Their psychological necessity to drink was being changed to a psychological necessity to rescue their fellow victims from the plight that made them so miserable."^xxxviii Still, the Markey article did lead to 800 inquiries—most of them from the South and overtly religious, according to one chronicler^xxxix—and resulted in a burst of book sales, growth, and, eventually, the formation of AA's first "mail order" group in Little Rock, Arkansas. AA's final stroke of luck in 1939 was the publication of a series of highly laudatory articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The articles led to a spurt of growth in Cleveland and surrounding areas, and Cleveland-area AAs quickly outnumbered those in Akron and New York combined.

That was a temporary situation, as within two years AA would receive its most important publicity boost, and its effects would dwarf those of everything previously published or broadcast about AA; it would be responsible in large part for AA's transformation into a nationwide movement. On March 1, 1941, the Saturday Evening Post, then one of the most important magazines in the country, published Jack Alexander's article, "Alcoholics Anonymous: Freed Slaves of Drink, Now They Free Others." It generated an avalanche of responses and, according to AA's own estimate, 6000 new members.^xl The article was so laudatory and so important to AA history that AA subsequently reprinted it and still distributes it as a pamphlet.

In June of the same year, while perusing the obituary column in the Herald Tribune, a New York AA discovered a short incantation which would be repeated millions of times in the following years at AA meetings, The Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The prayer is often credited to Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. If he did write it, there's more than a trace of irony in the fact that the author of this prayer, which is so much a part of AA, had acidly attacked AA's spiritual father, Frank Buchman, because of Buchman's pro-Hitler remarks in 1936.^xli

While AA was rapidly growing as a result of all the free publicity it was receiving, its co-founders' financial problems were finally being resolved. Despite the $30-a-week stipend from the Rockefeller money, and the money from Works Publishing, the early years of AA were apparently a financially difficult period for Bill Wilson. In 1939 the mortgage company which held the title to Lois' father's house evicted them and sold the building. They were homeless for the next two years. How this jibes with Wilson's receiving the equivalent of $340 per week from Rockefeller, and his and Hank P.'s receiving the equivalent of at least $40,000 from Works Publishing in 1938, remains a mystery.

In any event, in early 1940 the Alcoholic Foundation trustees, at Bill's urging, had decided that AA itself should own the rights to the "Big Book." The foundation soon managed to acquire all of the stock in Works Publishing, and the foundations trustees voted to pay both Bill and Dr. Bob royalties on book sales. As sales increased, those royalties became substantial enough that Bill was able to drop his sporadic attempts to obtain outside employment, and to devote all of his energies to AA.

(Before his death in 1971, Bill Wilson received several hundred thousand dollars in royalties from sales of the "Big Book" and his three other AA books. Nan Robertson reports that as of the late 1960s, "Big Book" sales were generating royalties "from $30,000 to $40,000 annually," [equivalent to approximately $140,000 to $190,000 annually today] and that after Bill's death royalties paid by AA on Bill's four books "made Lois rich."^xlii)

In November 1940, after well over a year of being the guests of various AAs, Bill and Lois moved into a room in the first AA clubhouse, a small building on 24th Street in New York City. Six months later they moved into their own home. It was in Bedford Hills, in expensive Westchester County, but they were able to buy it because its owner was willing to sell it to them for $6500 with no money down and payments of $40 a month.

Dr. Bob's financial condition had been desperate before the 1938 Rockefeller donation, and even after his mortgage was paid off and he began to receive his stipend, he was still in bad financial shape. He was devoting most of his time to AA work, and his practice, though gradually recovering, was still poor. As the 1940s progressed, though, his practice improved, and the income from it and the ever-increasing royalties from "Big Book" sales allowed him to spend the last years of his life in relative comfort.

The early years of World War II would have been quite difficult for him and for Bill Wilson, though, if Rockefeller hadn't once again lent a helping hand. In early 1940 Willard Richardson, now a member of the Alcoholic Foundation's board of trustees, revealed that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. wanted to hold a dinner for AA to which he would invite a large number of his wealthy friends. It was held on February 8, 1940 at New York City's Union Club. Of the 400 guests Rockefeller invited, 75 showed up. They were treated to speeches by Bill, Dr. Bob, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Dr. Foster Kennedy. Rockefeller was sick that evening and was unable to attend, so his son, Nelson, delivered the after-dinner summation. He reiterated his father's sympathetic interest in AA, and then added, "Gentlemen, you can all see that this is a work of good will. Its power lies in the fact that one member carries the good message to the next, without any thought of financial income or reward. Therefore it is our belief that Alcoholics Anonymous should be self-supporting so far as money is concerned. It needs only our good will.^xliii And with that, the guests applauded, shook hands with the assembled AAs, and filed out into the night.

Bill, Dr. Bob, and the other AAs were extremely disappointed, but John D. Jr. did end up giving them some assistance. Shortly after the dinner, he donated $1000 to AA, bought 400 copies of the "Big Book" at full cover price, and sent them, along with a letter hinting that AA needed additional financial help, to all 400 persons to whom he had sent invitations. They responded by donating $2000, and would contribute a similar amount annually for the next four years. John D. also had his publicist, in conjunction with AA, draft a press release which generated a considerable amount of favorable publicity for AA.

Thanks largely to the free publicity it was receiving, AA grew rapidly during the opening days of World War II. When the "Big Book" was published in 1939, AA had two groups (one in Akron, one in New York), a membership of no more than 100, and no national office. Two-and-a-half years later, in the final days of 1941, AA had 200 groups, a membership of 8,000, and a national office in New York City.^xliv By 1944, AA had 360 groups with a total membership of 10,000, and in June of that year it had begun publication of what was to become its official organ, The Grapevine, which had originally been a newsletter for AAs in the armed forces.

In October of that year there was a second development. The National Committee for Education on Alcoholism (NCEA, later the National Council on Alcoholism, and currently the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence—NCADD) opened its first office. Marty Mann, the first woman to achieve lasting sobriety in AA, was its founder, and both Bill Wilson's and Dr. Bob's full names appeared on its letterhead as sponsors. This caused a storm of controversy within AA in 1946, when the NCEA mailed a fundraising appeal on its letterhead stationery, with some copies of the appeal going directly to AA groups. The names of Bill and Dr. Bob quickly vanished from the letterhead.^xlv (The 10th tradition forbids AA from involving itself in "public controversy." And, conveniently, because of AA's anonymity strictures, 12-step "professionals" almost never reveal their AA membership publicly; instead, they appear in the guise of "professionals" when promoting 12-step dogma and when attacking those who publicly disagree with it.) Since then, great care has been to taken to avoid any formal ties between AA and the NCADD, though the NCADD has consistently functioned as AA's lobbying arm and spokesman—in the guise of a professional organization—on matters of "public controversy."

During this early period of growth, Bill Wilson was on the road a great deal of the time visiting members and groups scattered across the country. He also spent a lot of time at headquarters dealing with correspondence from AA groups and members, where he quickly noticed that many problems and questions recurred over and over again. In an attempt to formulate a set of guidelines to help groups deal with these recurring problems and questions, Bill wrote the 12 traditions. Just as the 12 steps were his, and subsequently AA's, principles for the conduct of individuals' personal lives, the 12 traditions were Wilson's principles for the conduct of AA's organizational life. They were first published in the April 1946 Grapevine; and, strange as it now seems, they were not universally well received within AA. Bill Wilson spent a good part of the next few years on the road stumping for them before they were unanimously adopted by AA's first international convention in 1950.

During the 1940s, both Bill and Dr. Bob were avidly pursuing a common interest outside of, but related to, AA: spiritualism. They believed that it demonstrated the existence of the "Higher Power" so central to their AA program. Thus, shortly after the Wilsons moved into their Bedford Hills home, they began to hold regular "spook sessions," complete with mysterious messages on a Ouija board, and on at least one occasion they held a "spirit rapping" session (a seance in which spirits supposedly rap out messages with an "a" being one rap, a "b" two, a "c" three, and so on, spirits evidently being too dense to learn the far more efficient Morse code.)^xlvi

The 1940s were not, however, a uniformly happy time for AA's cofounders. In 1944, despite his new home, new-found financial security, and AA's continuing growth and increasing respectability, Bill Wilson fell into deep depression; it was a problem which would plague him for more than a decade. For Dr. Bob Smith, the 1940s brought tragedy. In 1948, he learned that he had incurable prostate cancer; in 1949 his wife Anne died; and in 1950 he too died following a prolonged, painful illness. He was buried next to his wife in an Akron cemetery. At his request, as a final expression of his dedication to the principle of anonymity, he had a simple gravestone which made no mention of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Despite his ongoing problems with depression, Bill Wilson was extremely active during this period. In addition to stumping for the 12 traditions, he was also promoting a plan for AA to become self-governing. It says much about his dedication to Alcoholics Anonymous, rather than to personal aggrandizement, that he devised the plan which would eventually make it impossible for him, or any other individual, to control AA. Briefly, the plan called for AA's affairs to be directed by a constituent assembly, called the General Service Conference, that would meet once a year and would be elected at area conferences. In turn, the delegates to the area conferences would be the elected representatives of the individual AA groups, the Group Service Representatives (GSRs), and the District Committee Members elected by the GSRs. To ensure continuity, delegates to the General Service Conference were to be elected to staggered terms, with approximately half being elected in even years and half elected in odd years, with terms of office running two years. The plan called for every state and Canadian province to have one delegate, with states and provinces with large numbers of AA members to have additional representation.

The plan was approved for a probationary five-year period at the 1950 international convention, and the first General Service Conference was held in New York in 1951. Only 37 delegates attended that first conference, but even so, it was considered a success. Following the conference's conclusion, Bill Wilson commented, "As I watched all this grow, I became entirely sure that Alcoholics Anonymous was at last safe—even from me."^xlvii An additional 38 delegates were elected to the conference the following year. In 1955, the second international AA convention declared that the General Service Conference plan had successfully completed its probationary period and was an accepted part of AA. At present, delegates are still elected for staggered two-year terms, and as of 1997 there were 92 delegates.

The year 1955 saw another significant development—publication of the second edition of the "Big Book." Except for a few minor changes, such as the elimination of the term "ex-alcoholic" and the substitution of the euphemism "illness" for "disease," very little was changed in the section written by Bill Wilson. The major changes were in the section consisting of members' stories; several were added and several deleted to make the book more up to date.

Bill Wilson wrote two additional books in the 1950s. In 1953 AA published 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, commonly called "the 12 & 12," Wilson's at-length explication of the principles in both the steps and traditions, and his explanation of how to properly work the steps as "a way of life" that will "enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole."^xlviii As Ken Ragge has pointed out, Bill Wilson wrote this guide to wholeness and happiness while he was severely depressed, and had been so for nearly a decade.^xlix

Wilson's other new book appeared four years later. In 1957 AA published Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, which was Wilson's history and evaluation of AA up to the point where formal control was turned over to its members at the 1955 international convention.

There was one other development in the early and mid-50s which, though not a part of AA's organizational history, should be mentioned: the formation of the first non-AA groups that adopted the AA "program," especially the 12 steps, with only minimal modifications. The first of these was Al-Anon, an organization for family members of alcoholics, which appeared in 1951. The second was Alateen, a group for the teenage children of alcoholics, which appeared in 1957. In the years to come there would be literally hundreds of other AA spin offs.

AA grew rapidly during the ten years following World War II. During the first few years especially, AA's membership mushroomed. In 1951 AA had 112,000 members and 4,000 groups; and in 1955 AA had 132,000 members and nearly 6,000 groups.^l In the years to come, AA would continue to grow very rapidly. By the end of 1957, AA had over 7,000 groups and 200,000 members scattered across 70 countries, but with the vast majority in the United States.^li AA abroad, however, had sufficient numerical strength that the first overseas General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous was created in the U.K. and Ireland in that same year, 1957.

As a sign that AA had "come of age," Bill Wilson largely disengaged himself from the day-to-day administration of the General Service Office, AA's national service center in New York. One indication of how much work he had been doing is that, following his disengagement, AA set up a Public Information Committee to take charge of the public relations work which Bill had formerly handled.

Shortly before the second international AA convention, Bill Wilson discovered a new interest—LSD. At the time it was considered a promising therapeutic agent for the treatment of alcoholism, which is what aroused Bill's interest in it. He first took the drug in 1956 and was quite enthusiastic, believing that the drug had the ability to sweep away mental barriers which keep people from directly experiencing the presence of God.^lii Secrecy was never one of Bill Wilson's strong points, and he soon had a coterie of friends and acquaintances, including clergymen and psychiatrists, joining him in his LSD experiments. Word of this traveled fast, and controversy soon followed, the nation being then, as now, in the grip of anti-drug hysteria. Even though initial studies involving LSD treatment of alcoholics had shown promising results, and even though LSD produced no physically damaging side effects and definitely was not addictive, the press began circulating sensational, wildly inaccurate reports of LSD's effects. So, because his name would inevitably be linked with AA even though he had formally withdrawn from its day-to-day administration, Bill Wilson ended his LSD experiments in 1959.^liii

In early 1961, Bill Wilson wrote to Carl Jung, expressing his appreciation of Jung's influence (via Roland Hazard) in the formation of AA. By chance, he wrote just a few months before Jung's death. Jung replied with a gracious letter which became one of Wilson's treasured possessions.^liv

Just two months after Jung died, Frank Buchman, who had contributed far more to AA than Jung, also died. Bill Wilson had never bothered to write to Buchman to express his thanks, and regretted that he had not done so. He commented in a letter to a friend: "Now that Frank Buchman is gone and I realize more than ever what we owe to him, I wish I had sought him out in recent years to tell him of our appreciation."^lv

At about the same time as his correspondence with Jung, Bill Wilson was developing another new interest: niacin (vitamin B-3) as a treatment for alcoholism. He believed that it was the long-sought-after cure for the "allergy" mentioned by Dr. Silkworth in the "Big Book." By the mid-1960s, Wilson was zealously promoting niacin to both the medical community and to the members of AA. This, naturally enough, caused still another controversy, and in 1967 the AA General Service Board requested that he not use the General Service Office address on his stationery.

In that same year, AA published Bill Wilson's final book. Its original title was The A.A. Way of Life; it has since been retitled As Bill Sees It. The book is a collection of Wilson's writings, and resembles nothing so much as a prayer book, complete with a long ribbon at the top of its spine. The A.A. Way of Life marked Bill Wilson's last significant contribution to Alcoholics Anonymous. The year before it was published, the General Service Conference had finally approved, after years of dragging its heels, Wilson's plan to reverse the ratio of alcoholic to non-alcoholic trustees on AA's board of directors, the General Service Board. Following the Conference's decision, the board's composition was reversed, and for the first time alcoholic members held a majority of the votes. When this was done, Bill felt that AA had finally become truly mature.

It was fortunate that Bill Wilson lived to see this change which he so fervently desired, as his health was rapidly failing during the late 1960s. Bill Wilson was an addicted smoker, and by the late '60s he had developed emphysema, which caused him increasing pain and debilitation as the decade advanced. Still, even while his health deteriorated, he continued to smoke. He finally quite in 1969, but by then the damage had been done, and his last two years of life were plagued by tobacco-caused disease, debilitation, and misery. He did attend the AA international convention in Miami in 1970, but he barely managed to speak for four minutes. Finally, after a lingering bout of pneumonia, he died on January 24, 1971.

While Bill Wilson had been attempting to have the trustee ratio altered, promoting niacin, and overseeing production of his final book, AA was in a period of change and expansion. The 1960s saw significant AA growth overseas, and by 1967 20 percent of AA members lived outside of the United States.^lvi A second trend in the '60s was that relatively large numbers of newcomers had drug problems in addition to alcohol problems. This eventually led to the formation of other 12-step groups, such as Narcotics Anonymous, for those whose problems are not primarily alcohol related. Another trend which became noticeable in the 1960s (though it had certainly been present in the 1950s) was the incorporation of AA as an integral part of hospital and institutional alcoholism programs. In the 1970s and 1980s the trend toward AA integration into hospital and institutional programs mushroomed. There was also a major increase in the numbers of new members with multiple "dependencies" (with the concomitant trend of new 12-step groups with names taken from those "dependencies").

In the 1970s, another trend emerged which deserves comment: the formation of "special meetings" for members who share special interests, identities or desires. Examples include lesbian and gay meetings, nonsmokers meetings, and (in a very few places) atheists and agnostics meetings. No AA member is turned away from these special meetings, but when those not sharing a group's common interest or identity show up, they are oftentimes advised that though they are welcome they might feel more comfortable at other meetings. This trend from the 1970s, as well as those begun in the 1960s, continues into the 1990s.

During the 1980s, the percentage of overseas AA members increased significantly, and by 1996 nearly 33 percent of AA's members lived outside of the U.S. or Canada.^lvii As well, between 1977 and 1989 the percentage of AA members also "addicted" to drugs rose from approximately 19 percent to approximately 46 percent.^lviii And, of late, AA's membership (at least in the U.S. and Canada) has aged considerably. AA's 1989 triennial survey showed that fully 22 percent of AA members were under 31 years of age,^lix while the percentage of those under 31 had fallen to 13 percent by 1996^lx; at the same time, those older than 50 increased from 23 percent in 1989^lxi to 28 percent in 1996.^lxii

In the last decade of the 20th century, AA is a mass organization, and one with great influence in both the United States and abroad. In January 1996, there were 50,671 AA groups in the U.S., with 1,153,795 members; and worldwide there were 95,166 groups with 1,866,281 members.^lxiii The irony is that during its 60-plus years of expansion and external changes, the core of AA's program has remained virtually unchanged, and at present probably not one member in 100 of AA or other 12-step groups has more than the foggiest concept of where the ideas at the core of 12-step programs originated.