Alcoholism is not something that has recently surfaced in the 21st century, and people have been
desperately seeking help for their excessive drinking for decades upon decades. Hence the birth
of the Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 in Akron, Ohio. It has now spread all across the world as
those who suffer in silence quickly realised the value of confiding in people that care. But, when
New York stockbroker, Bill W. and surgeon Dr Bob S. first established the support group, they
too were alcoholics and used each other to achieve sobriety.
You see, they lived during a time when Oxford Groups were a big thing. Now, only Bill found the
spiritual nature of the Oxford Group to be effective, while Bob hadn’t managed to refrain from
drinking alcohol. It was only when the two met that something special was forged. Bill passed
on the ideology from the Oxford Groups, but Bob only responded well because it was coming
from someone who had conquered alcoholism.
This is the what A.A. was founded from – the belief that alcoholics could turn their lives around
with help from fellow sufferers and those that have defeated it. With this in mind, the two men
got to work with alcoholics at Akron’s City Hospital. From 1935 to 1939 three groups of
alcoholics had been formed in Ohio, New York and Cleveland but only 100 alcoholics reached
sobriety in those four years.
In 1939, Bill published the Alcoholics Anonymous basic textbook, and the contents included
what is now widely known as the Twelve Steps of recovery. Towards the end of 1939, the
group’s member tally was at approximately 2,000 alcoholics. This was largely down to the A.A.
book receiving huge exposure through an article in the Liberty Magazine and a dinner which
John D. Rockefeller Jr hosted.
The rise of A.A. snowballed from there, and at the end of 1941 the membership stood at 6,000
with many groups forming around the US and Canada. The drastic rise was aided by a Saturday
Evening Post article. Jumping forward to 1951, a year after Bob sadly passed away, the A.A. New
York office was expanding tremendously. With over 100,000 recovering alcoholics worldwide at
this point, work was now being done to advise new groups, serve hospitals and prisons and
cooperate with other organizations in the field.
In 1955, A.A. delivered its second International Convention in St. Louis to celebrate the
Fellowship’s 20th anniversary. During this conference, A.A. took a giant leap forward, as
responsibility for the future was placed into the hands of the Conference and its trustees. In
addition, the help received from those in the fields of medicine, religion and world
communications was widely acknowledge.
Unfortunately, in 1971, the other half of the founding team – Bill – died from pneumonia just a
few months after delivering the Fellowship’s 35th anniversary. His final words were, “God bless
you and Alcoholics Anonymous forever”. Since then A.A. has gone from strength to strength, and
all over the world sufferers benefit from the close-knit support groups every single day!
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