Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A.

By William H. Schaberg

The definitive history of writing and producing the"Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous, told through extensive access to the group's archives.

Alcoholics Anonymous is arguably the most significant self-help book published in the twentieth century. Released in 1939, the “Big Book,” as it’s commonly known, has sold an estimated 37 million copies, been translated into seventy languages, and spawned numerous recovery communities around the world while remaining a vibrant plan for recovery from addiction in all its forms for millions of people. While there are many books about A.A. history, most rely on anecdotal stories told well after the fact by Bill Wilson and other early members—accounts that have proved to be woefully inaccurate at times. Writing the Big Book brings exhaustive research, academic discipline, and informed insight to the subject not seen since Ernest Kurtz’s Not-God, published forty years ago.

Focusing primarily on the eighteen months from October 1937, when a book was first proposed, and April 1939 when Alcoholics Anonymous was published, Schaberg’s history is based on eleven years of research into the wealth of 1930s documents currently preserved in several A.A. archives. Woven together into an exciting narrative, these real-time documents tell an almost week-by-week story of how the book was created, providing more than a few unexpected turns and surprising departures from the hallowed stories that have been so widely circulated about early A.A. history.

Fast-paced, engaging, and contrary, Writing the Big Book presents a vivid picture of how early A.A. operated and grew and reveals many previously unreported details about the colorful cast of characters who were responsible for making that group so successful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Central Recovery Press
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949481297

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Challenging the Creation Myths

~November 1934 to October 1937~

The book Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism (commonly called The Big Book by A.A. members) is one of the most important and influential spiritual works published in the twentieth century. It describes a clear path that alcoholics—problem drinkers who are unable to quit drinking by willpower alone—can follow to achieve sobriety and then live a life free of alcohol. Since 1939, millions of men and women have taken the advice offered in this book, worked the program of recovery outlined in the Twelve Steps, and experienced the spiritual awakening¹ necessary to maintain their day-to-day sobriety. It is an amazing book for what it says, but even more so for the profoundly positive, life-changing impact it has had on millions of alcoholics and on the families and communities to which they returned with the newfound purpose of being useful to others.²

As a product of the late 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous is almost unique among important spiritual works because of the tremendous amount of contemporary evidence telling us how it was actually put together. For the historian, the most valuable sources are the wealth of 1930s documents preserved in several archives across the Northeast.* Taken together, these documents tell an almost day-by-day story of how A.A. survived and grew during its early flying blind period³—right up until April 10, 1939, the day on which the authors published the book that so carefully explained their program of recovery.

While these real-time documents provide the most unassailable evidence for what happened in Alcoholics Anonymous between late 1934 and early 1939, that history is further embellished by the later writings and statements of four early participants in the story: Bill Wilson (A.A.’s founder), Ebby Thacher (the man who first exposed Bill to the ideas that led to the creation of A.A.), Jim Burwell (an early atheistic member of A.A.), and Ruth Hock (A.A.’s first secretary). The word embellished is used here deliberately to emphasize the fact that each of these four major eyewitnesses has proven to be unreliable, to one degree or another, once their testimony is critically compared with the available archived materials.

This should not be surprising. At best, memory is a defective and self-deceptive faculty. Attention is not always paid and when it is, dates are regularly misremembered, while details are forgotten, left out, or compounded beyond recognition. Events are frequently too unimportant to be remembered accurately (if at all) and, sometimes, the unvarnished truth is just too painful or embarrassing to be told. And, perhaps most of all in relation to this present history, there is the human tendency to modify memories so that they more positively reflect later realities. We seem to naturally need to create a smooth story that neatly fits ‘what happened’ into ‘where we are now.’

This frequent lack of accuracy is found not only among these four most prominent early narrators, but also in the later recollections of other early A.A. members. This is not meant to impugn everything that was said at some distance from the actual events, but knowing how defective and creative memory can be demands that we check and, if possible, correct those errors by comparing them with the more reliable, more believable evidence provided by contemporary documentation.

In short, any portrayal of the Big Book’s history that relies solely on A.A.’s well-worn stories is doomed to tell an inaccurate tale. In contrast, the history presented here is, whenever possible (but alas, lacking sufficient sources, not always), based on a critical reading and judicious collation of contemporary evidence rather than later recollections. As such, the story that emerges frequently contradicts the memory-based recollections that have assumed such a dominant place in A.A.’s popularly accepted history. However uncomfortable this may be for some devoted A.A. readers, what follows here is definitely much closer to ‘what really happened’ (the historian’s ever elusive goal) than to many of those later, more familiar stories.

Bill Wilson: A Consummate Storyteller

The primary revelation from this kind of critical research and investigation is that Bill Wilson, the man who contributed more ‘factual’ information than anyone else to the traditional story of A.A., was by far the worst offender when it came to accuracy regarding that early history. This may sound harsh to Wilson’s many worshipful admirers in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is an undeniable fact—as will be shown repeatedly in the pages that follow. Wilson’s divergence from the truth was so common and so pervasive that it can only be compared to a dark cloud looming over any attempt to write an accurate history of A.A’s early years, obscuring and even falsifying what happened at several key points in the story.

Bill was a consummate storyteller and his stories were, almost always, liberal simplifications of the facts. Some of them, on closer examination, exhibit a casual and even blatant disregard for anything approaching historical accuracy. On one level, this is understandable. Facts are messy things and they beg to be tidied up so that people can make sense of the story being told without having to travel down too many distracting byways. A good story needs to be simple, straightforward, and dramatic.

Bill Wilson was a master at this.

But, there are times—important times—when he went far beyond anything that might be characterized as ‘poetic license’ or simply ‘tidying up the story.’ Bill’s recounting of the facts is sometimes so wide of the mark that it can only be explained as willful, conscious mythmaking—the creation of a story specifically crafted to deliver a particularly clear image or an unmistakable lesson to the listener. All too often, Wilson’s ‘this-is-what-happened’ accounts must be understood and treated as nothing less than parables, as fables he fashioned to instill some hope in the still-suffering alcoholic or to provide an instructive, uncluttered story about the celebrated origins of Alcoholics Anonymous. Historical truth with a capital T was not the point. For Bill, the point was that the story had to convey an important message about the program of recovery, and it needed to be dramatically delivered for maximum impact. In such cases, Wilson believed that this kind of falsification was more than justified (or, at least, inconsequential) just so long as it served his higher purpose.

This is hardly a new or radical observation about him. As the author of Pass It On* noted so candidly, Wilson was certainly never reluctant to stretch a fact for the sake of emphasis and he often spoke in metaphor, rather than relating events as they actually happened. Moreover, Wilson was never likely to pass up the opportunity to deliver a parable where he thought it could do some good or when he thought he could make a point or highlight a principle.⁴ Bill Wilson wasn’t just a great storyteller, he was, at times, a conscious and deliberate mythmaker.

Besides telling a meaningful story or altruistically mythologizing A.A.’s early history, Bill also bent the facts in substantive ways whenever the true story would have shone the spotlight too brightly in his own direction. He knew he needed to move himself off center stage and so, whenever possible, he altered the story and redirected the light elsewhere. As A.A. grew and his contribution became more widely known, Wilson became increasingly aware of the need to curb his natural tendencies toward grandiosity and to somehow temper the constant adulation that increasingly came his way as the founder of the movement, i.e., as "the man who saved my life!" Bill regularly sidestepped these ego traps by modifying the facts, changing the story in ways that deflected attention away from himself. As time went on, Wilson routinely gave liberal credit—in whole or in part—to other people for things that were actually his own accomplishments.

Finally, many aspects of the true stories just did not make for comfortable retelling once Alcoholics Anonymous became a successful national institution. This was the case, for instance, concerning A.A.’s early partnership with the Oxford Group* and, especially, the tenacity with which the Akron members clung to the Group right up until the end of 1939 (and even beyond that). Another embarrassing story that raised serious problems for the Fellowship was the central role played by Hank Parkhurst—Bill Wilson’s right-hand man from 1936 to 1939—because Parkhurst drank shortly after the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published. Whenever possible, mention of Hank and his contributions to the program were judiciously dropped from the stories told about those early years.

These four persistent tendencies toward creative reporting—uncluttered storytelling, willful mythmaking, deliberate self-deprecation, and the omission of uncomfortable facts—coupled with his notoriously bad memory for dates** mean that we should not blithely take anything Bill Wilson said at face value. To accept his stories and statements without the most rigorous kind of cross-examination would be the height of historical folly.

At the same time, this is not to say that everything he said was somehow less than truthful. Bill frequently relates facts and events that are completely uncontaminated by these more creative tendencies. But, given how often Wilson’s version of events is contradicted by other sources, it is always wise to weigh his pronouncements against the testimony of others and, most important, to evaluate them in relation to the available contemporary records.

This caveat about Bill Wilson’s reliability, however, in no way diminishes his towering stature in the history of twentieth century spirituality or in any way compromises the truly remarkable things he accomplished during his lifetime. Bill was a man of vision—a grand, universal, uplifting, deeply spiritual, life-saving vision—and the fact that he elected to tell uncluttered, instructive parables rather than historically accurate stories can hardly be held against him. Had he not done so, it is possible he would never have been successful in transforming his profound vision of widespread recovery into such a vibrant, spiritually enriching international reality—something that he most certainly did before his death in January 1971.

Ebby Thacher’s Visit

A prime example of Wilson’s creative mythmaking can be seen in his version of an encounter considered to be one of the pivotal moments in A.A. history: the hallowed story of Ebby Thacher’s visit to his Brooklyn home in late November 1934. Bill sat on one side of the kitchen table drinking gin while his recently sober friend, Ebby, sat opposite him. Bill told the story of this meeting repeatedly throughout his sober life,* but the most famous version of it appears in Bill’s Story, the first chapter he wrote for the book Alcoholics Anonymous:

Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight.

My musing was interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over. He was sober. It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed. Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity. I wondered how he had escaped. Of course he would have dinner, and then I could drink openly with him. Unmindful of his welfare, I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days. There was that time we had chartered an airplane to complete a jag! His coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility. The very thing—an oasis! Drinkers are like that.

The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened?

I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had got into the fellow. He wasn’t himself.

Come, what’s all this about? I queried.

He looked straight at me. Simply, but smilingly, he said, I’ve got religion.

I was aghast. So that was it—last summer an alcoholic crackpot; now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion. He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right. But bless his heart, let him rant! Besides, my gin would last longer than his preaching.

But he did no ranting. In a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court, persuading the judge to suspend his commitment. They had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. That was two months ago and the result was self-evident. It worked!

He had come to pass his experience along to me if I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless.⁵

Literally millions of alcoholics have read this story and been inspired by its message of hope and the possibility that they too might recover. It is one of the most famous encounters in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, a seminal, founding moment of the Fellowship.

But Ebby Thacher, the man who supposedly sat on the other side of the kitchen table, told a completely different version of that story; one so far removed from Bill Wilson’s account that it is hard to believe they were talking about the same event:

So I called him up one night and I didn’t get Bill, but I got Lois, his wife, and told her what had happened to me … Well, anyway, Lois said why don’t you come over to dinner some night and then she mentioned a date and I said: Fine.

So, that night I went over, at half past five, I guess, in the evening, and I rang the bell at 182 Clinton Street, the only person home was an old colored man named Green* whom I had known for years, he had been with the family, Lois’s family that is, and he said: They’re both out, both Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Wilson are out, but come on in.

So, pretty soon Bill appeared and he’d been drinking but he wasn’t too bad, and said Hello and this, that and the other thing and he’s kind of taking me around. Then he made an excuse, he had to go out and get some ice cream, something else for supper and, of course, I knew what he was going after. I understand. I’ve done it so many times myself.

So, then Lois came in. Now there was another girl invited; there was a girl invited because she lived upstairs—they’d made the place into an apartment. So we all sat down at dinner. And Bill’s got it a little garbled in the book about it being across the kitchen table, but it don’t make any difference, the idea is there. Now we got dinner and then we all moved upstairs—in those houses back there in the East most of the living rooms are on the second floor—so we moved up to the second floor and after a little hemming and hawing, Lois said: Well, let’s hear about yourself. So, I started in and I guess they got me wound up and I guess I talked until pretty near 1 o’clock in the morning.

And I remember Bill said: I’ll walk to the subway with you. And I knew that he wasn’t going to go for a drink, because he had a bottle in the house anyway. And on the way over he put his arms around my shoulder just before I went in the subway and said I don’t know what you’ve got, kid, but you’ve got something and I want to get it.

Well, he didn’t stop drinking right away, any more than I had stopped drinking back there that summer when the Oxford Group boys came to see me,* but the idea was in there and the idea happened to get in Bill’s head.⁶

Ebby told his version of that evening in Brooklyn on several different occasions, always acknowledging that the story you read in the Big Book is a little different. He once glibly explained those differences by noting that, after all, he happened to be sober that night, while Bill Wilson was drunk,⁷ pointing out that there were some details of that talk that Bill doesn’t remember.⁸

Bill didn’t answer the phone? Lois knew about Ebby’s recovery before he arrived? Was the whole evening a set-up by Lois? No one, other than Mr. Green, was home when Ebby got there? No kitchen table? No private one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic conversation? They all had dinner together and then went upstairs into the living room? Lois and the girl who lived upstairs were there too? Bill, with his typical bravado, expressing an interest in Ebby’s solution, but ever so casually and only in private while they were walking back to the subway in the early hours of the morning? It’s not the same story at all. Not even close.

So, what really did happen that afternoon (or was it that evening?) in Brooklyn in late November of 1934? With two such contradictory reports, it would be helpful to have a contemporary account to verify one version or the other, but the closest thing we have to that is a round-robin letter that Lois Wilson wrote to three of her oldest friends on July 20, 1935—a full eight months after Ebby’s visit. In that letter, Lois proudly announces that Bill has stopped drinking thru the Oxford Group and then explains that "last December Ebby Thatcher [sic] appeared sober for the first time in years and with a very strange story to tell about a religion called the Oxford Group which had cured him just as he was about to be committed to an insane asylum."⁹ While this confirms the importance of Ebby’s visit, Lois provides no details whatsoever other than to say it occurred in December, which actually contradicts Bill’s claim that Ebby appeared Near the end of that bleak November—adding yet another layer of confusion to the story.**

With no other direct evidence to rely on, Ebby’s version of the story is far more credible than Bill’s for several reasons. First of all, he presents a coherent, linear narrative—beginning with Lois answering the phone and ending with his walk to the subway with Bill—and he supports that story with a wealth of specific, colorful details. If this is a story Ebby Thacher made up just to counter the more familiar version, it was an amazingly creative effort. Also, the fact that he told this story publicly when he knew he was being recorded, along with his open acknowledgment that it was significantly different from what Bill always said, surely carries significant weight when evaluating the integrity of his memories of that night. Thacher’s story, after all, has the ring of messy truth to it while Wilson’s presentation sounds like the polished parable that it is.

None of this is meant to ignore the fact that Ebby Thacher had a hard time staying sober and that he was not always the most reliable witness. His later recollections of his time with the Oxford Group and his comments on early A.A. meetings and activities are occasionally ‘back dated’ so that they more closely reflect later developments within the program.* Still, the reasons for those lapses are evident and understandable—as noted earlier, memory frequently remembers what the present wants to hear—while the creation of a wildly fallacious story about that fateful meeting with Bill Wilson serves no useful purpose whatsoever.

Ebby Thacher’s version is clearly more believable than Bill Wilson’s and that, of course, begs the question: Why would Bill have strayed so far from the facts when he told his version of the story?

The short answer is that Wilson was taking one of his experiences and recasting it into a story with a message, a message that would in no way be complicated or confused by the messy details of what actually happened. The point of Bill’s much simpler, more direct, and comprehensible story is to dramatically present one of the most basic, foundational beliefs of Alcoholics Anonymous, namely that one alcoholic could affect another as no nonalcoholic could.¹⁰ His story about Ebby’s visit does this admirably: just the two of them are sitting at a kitchen table and their entire conversation is devoted to how his friend has successfully taken control of his drinking and has now come to pass his message of hope on to another suffering alcoholic. It was one drunk talking to another drunk, the only way that the message of recovery could have ever been delivered so effectively, so successfully. In fact, it was this very one-on-one conversation that became the first step of Bill’s own journey on the road to recovery.

Wilson’s version of the story is a parable, a mythic truth deeply embedded in his story of A.A.’s origins, emphasizing the fact that it all started with one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, personally delivering the message of potential sobriety. Bill told the story this way because it made the point that he wanted to make. In such cases, the actual facts are distinctly secondary to properly packaging and selling the concepts. Wilson had no problem justifying the creation of this much simplified story because doing so served his higher purpose.

Even as he offered his alternate version, Ebby acknowledged that higher purpose, noting that the differences between his memory of that night and Bill’s later recollections didn’t really make any difference because the idea is there and the principle of the thing is about the same.¹¹ And, indeed, as far as Bill Wilson was concerned, it was the idea and the principle of the thing that were far more important than any jumbled collection of actual facts.

Wilson’s story had drama and impact, delivering an unmistakable message of hope. Thacher’s did not.

Bill’s First Meeting with Dr. Bob

A few weeks after Ebby’s visit, Bill found himself back in the hospital, laid low by his alcoholism for the last time. While there, he had a profound white light experience that transformed his life and he never drank again. Unemployed and virtually unemployable because of his drunken past, Wilson spent the next five months diligently trying to help other alcoholics stop drinking, but all his efforts to pass along the message and the method of his own recovery were a complete failure.

A business opportunity arose and he went to Akron, Ohio, to organize a proxy fight that, if successful, would have made him president of the National Rubber Machinery Company. But things did not go according to plan and the situation became tremendously stressful for him, so much so that one night he found himself severely tempted by alcohol. Fearing that he would drink unless he took some positive action to stay sober, he made several phone calls in search of a local drunk to help.

Those phone calls led directly to another key moment in A.A. history, when Bill Wilson met Dr. Bob Smith for the first time on May 12, 1935. The two men, one sober for exactly five months and the other still drinking, were introduced by Henrietta Seiberling, a leader in the local Oxford Group, who had been trying for months to help Bob get sober. That night, Bill and his new friend talked privately for several hours and afterward Bob Smith, who had repeatedly tried spiritual means to resolve his alcoholic dilemma but had failed … began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness he had never before been able to muster.¹² Bob stopped drinking that night and actually stayed sober for a few weeks before going back to the bottle again.¹³

In Doctor Bob’s Nightmare, his personal story that appears in Alcoholics Anonymous, Smith recounted the details of his last drunk:¹⁴

This dry spell lasted for about three weeks; then I went to Atlantic City to attend several days’ meeting of a national society of which I was a member. I drank all the scotch they had on the train and bought several quarts on my way to the hotel. This was on Sunday. I got tight that night, stayed sober Monday till after dinner and then proceeded to get tight again. I drank all I dared at the bar, and then went to my room to finish the job. Tuesday I started in the morning, getting well organized by noon. I did not want to disgrace myself so I then checked out. I bought some more liquor on the way to the depot. I had to wait some time for the train. I remember nothing from then on until I woke up at a friend’s house, in a town near home. These good people notified my wife, who sent my newly made friend over to get me. He came and got me home and to bed, gave me a few drinks that night, and one bottle of beer the next morning.

That was June 10, 1935, and that was my last drink.

On the authority of this story, June 10, 1935, has ever since been celebrated as the founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first day on which two men—sharing a common solution and a commitment to sobriety—were both able to stay sober from that day forward.

But Bill Wilson wasn’t the only early A.A. member who had a problem with dates. Bob Smith claimed he attended the American Medical Association (AMA) Convention in Atlantic City on this trip, but that meeting, it has subsequently been proved, started on June 10 and ended on June 14.¹⁵ If Dr. Bob did in fact attend that Convention, then his first day of sobriety would have been the following Monday, June 17. Of course, it is also possible that Bob simply couldn’t wait another week to go on this bender and lied about the date of the AMA Convention so that he could catch a train to Atlantic City one week early.

Is this incorrect date the result of a faulty memory or just the enshrinement of an alcoholic lie? We don’t know. While this particular piece of misinformation is not particularly significant in the larger picture of A.A.’s history, it does highlight the fact that, during the 1930s, members were not paying careful attention to the details of their early sobriety and, on occasion, their stories were modified to cover up past indiscretions. Both of these failings will play a part—and need to be acknowledged and corrected whenever possible—in the story that follows.

A.A. Number Three and the Flying Blind Period

Back in Ohio, Dr. Bob Smith got sober for the last time and the two men frantically set to work trying to save alcoholics, believing that the best way to preserve their own sobriety was to try to help others who suffered from the same problem. According to Wilson, they began by visiting local hospitals looking for likely candidates and their very first case, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became A.A. number three. He never had another drink.¹⁶

Once again, Wilson is mythmaking. This number three A.A. member was not the very first case they actually worked with after Smith got sober. In fact, there had been at least two rather dramatic failures before this first success: a Dr. McKay and Eddie Reilly (the man who famously threatened to kill Dr. Bob’s wife, Anne, while chasing her around the house with a knife).¹⁷

Bill’s claim that this new member was the very first case they worked on and that he recovered immediately and never had another drink is another parable, one that presents at least three of A.A.’s cherished ideals: the necessity of working with others, the fact that this newfound way of attaining sobriety could actually be passed on from one alcoholic to another and, perhaps most important, that their new method could result in permanent sobriety.

The point of Bill’s story is that what had happened to him and then to Dr. Bob Smith wasn’t just a fluke—it was something significant, revolutionary and, most important, repeatable. Offering a more historically accurate account would have been irrelevant to the message Bill was trying to deliver and would only have obscured the essential points he was trying to make.

Bill stayed in Akron for four months, working with Dr. Bob and a number of other drunks, but primarily carrying on his proxy fight—a battle he eventually lost. He returned to New York in late August 1935¹⁸ without a job and little hope of finding one, leaving him ample time to continue his work with alcoholics. The following month, Bill had his first success in New York when Hank Parkhurst left Towns Hospital and stayed sober.* Over the next two years, several more local recoveries followed, but they were accompanied by a long list of failures.¹⁹ Meanwhile, still sober back in Ohio, Dr. Bob was preaching the message of recovery to hospitalized drunks in Akron with significantly more success than Bill was having in New York City. The two men communicated with some regularity about their successes and failures via letters, telegrams, phone calls, and during Wilson’s infrequent visits to Akron.²⁰ The Fellowship of recovered drunks was small, but their number was growing slowly and steadily.

Wilson later characterized the time from the beginning of his own sobriety (December 1934) to the publication of the book Alcoholics Anonymous (April 1939) as the flying blind period,²¹ a time when the leadership and the members of the A.A. Fellowship were evolving their program of recovery using what can only be called a trial-and-error method. Wilson’s point was that before the book was published there was no concrete formulation of their program of recovery, and, most especially, there were no clearly articulated Twelve Steps that drinkers could follow as a road map for getting and staying sober.

The Oxford Group

But to think the Fellowship was really just flying blind during this period presents an inaccurate picture of what was happening. While it is certainly true that this was a period of real uncertainty about what did and what did not work—one that involved ongoing experiments with their methods for staying sober—the groups in Akron and New York were in fact following a formula that they had adopted almost wholesale from the Oxford Group, an approach they soon began to modify and change in a number of different ways to suit their own particular needs.²²

Contrary to popular belief, Bill Wilson was committed to the Oxford Group’s approach to religion throughout the first two years of his sobriety. He attended their meetings (sometimes called house parties), witnessed about his personal experiences, participated in group guidance sessions, and generally followed the Oxford Group’s recommendations on how to live a life based on the Four Absolutes (absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love) and the directions that he received directly from God during his quiet time sessions.²³

Bob Smith and his Akron group were even more immersed in the local Oxford Group and they continued to be deeply committed to both its practices and its core beliefs (including an ongoing entanglement with many non-alcoholic Group members) for much longer than Bill Wilson.²⁴ In fact, Smith and the Akron alcoholics did not formally break with the Oxford Group until December 1939, a full two-and-a-half years after Wilson had officially severed his ties with the Group in New York City.

The Oxford Group, founded in 1921 by Frank Buchman, described itself as a First Century Christian Fellowship, i.e., a pre-dogmatic, pre-organizational religious group that endeavored to follow the most basic of Jesus’s commandments: that they love one another.²⁵ They had no formal membership, no dues, no hierarchy, no churches, no paid leaders, and no new theological creed. It was instead a loose confederation of friends who identified themselves as having surrendered their lives to God in order to lead a spiritual life under [His] Guidance and to carry their message so that others could do the same.²⁶

This did not mean, however, that it had no prescribed beliefs or actions. The Oxford Group professed a moral code based on the Four Absolutes and recommended a daily morning period of quiet time in which all its members should seek to discover God’s personal guidance for them; insights that would then govern their thoughts and actions throughout the coming day. (The validity of this guidance was to be tested or checked against the Four Absolutes, and also, on occasion, was to be reviewed by another member.)²⁷

The Oxford Group was far more sophisticated and complex than this brief description allows, but it was, in fact, the soil in which Alcoholics Anonymous originally germinated.* A few of its practices and beliefs would be carried over directly into the new Fellowship of A.A. while many others would be significantly modified or completely abandoned as Wilson strove to extend the effectiveness and the reach of their new Fellowship and its developing program of recovery. The Oxford Group was vastly important and instrumental in launching Alcoholics Anonymous, but it was necessary that A.A. sever its ties with them if their new group was to ever gain the autonomy so essential for its future evolution and growth.

In October 1937, Bill Wilson, sober for just two years and ten months, left New York for Akron to actively begin the process of that complete separation. Having distanced his group of sober men in New York from the Oxford Group, he now had a vision for what they could become once they struck out boldly on their own and he had already formulated a plan detailing exactly how they should do that.

And one important part of that plan was that they should write a book.

* Foremost among these are the Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office Archive in New York City and the Stepping Stones Foundation Archive in Katonah, NY. Other valuable sources of primary documents and information about Alcoholics Anonymous are the Akron and Cleveland, Ohio A.A. archives, the Rockefeller Archives in Sleepy Hollow, NY, and the Chester H. Kirk Collection on Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous at Brown University’s John Hay Library in Providence, RI.

* An A.A. General Service Conference-approved biography of Wilson and the early years of Alcoholics Anonymous.

* The Oxford Group was a twentieth century religious Fellowship (in the USA, largely Episcopalian) that tried to practice First Century Christianity. More details about the Oxford Group will be supplied later.

** Ernest Kurtz, for instance, in his justly admired Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, frequently wrestles with Wilson’s inaccuracies as he tries to understand what actually happened and several of his endnotes make explicit references to Wilson’s atrocious memory for dates and to his general lack of precision with the facts. See especially n. 18 and 24 on pp. 329 and 330 respectively.

* The story of Bill’s early recovery was the only one any group ever wanted to hear when he was invited to speak. But, with each retelling, Wilson became increasingly bored with the endless repetition and he began to refer to it sarcastically as the bedtime story. He would have been much happier just to skip over this bit of ancient history and move on to much more current and important topics in A.A. (See Hartigan, Bill W., p. 136 and also Unforgettable Bill W and the "bedtime story," http://www.barefootsworld.net/aabillwreadersdigest.html [retrieved April 24, 2013].)

* Mr. Green had been with Lois’s family for years (he took care of the horse and carriage for Lois’s father) and now lived in the cellar at 182 Clinton Street.

* The story of how three Oxford Group men saved Ebby from a jail sentence in Vermont is another one of the legendary encounters in A.A.’s prehistory.

** In her book, Lois Remembers (pp. 87-88), Lois’s account of Ebby’s visit closely follows Bill’s version, but this is consistent with her loyal repackaging of her husband’s version of his stories throughout her life and in that book.

* To supply just one example, Ebby said that those early [Oxford Group] meetings we attended were basically the same as the A.A. meetings of today. (Fitzpatrick, Dr. Bob & Bill W. Speak, p. 24)

* Hank Parkhurst’s story, The Unbeliever, appeared on pages 194 to 205 of the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. His sobriety date of September 1935 is given in the ‘Questionnaire’ on his alcoholism and recovery, which he filled out in late 1938 (GSO, Box 59, 1938, Folder B[1], Document 1938–201) and confirmed by a letter he wrote to Mrs. J. Frank Baird on September 2, 1938 (GSO, Box 59, 1938, Folder B[1], Document 1938–130).

* Readers interested in knowing more about what it meant to be a member of the Oxford Group at this time are advised to read I Was a Pagan by V. C. Kitchen (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1934), the story of one man’s life and practices both before and after he surrendered his life to Jesus within the Oxford Group.

CHAPTER TWO

The Akron Vote

~October 13, 1937~

The first time anyone mentioned the idea of writing a book about the recently discovered method for getting and staying sober was in the fall of 1937. The suggestion came from Bill Wilson, who claimed that such a book was the only way to keep the message of recovery from changing with every new word-of-mouth transmission. More importantly, it would be the best way, he said, for them to spread the news of their great discovery farther and faster, thereby saving the lives of thousands of suffering alcoholics all across the country.

Bill frequently told the story of the time he made this proposal to a group of sober men in Akron, Ohio, and how they finally voted to approve his plan—by the slimmest of margins. Unfortunately, almost all the particulars in his story of that meeting are contradicted by contemporary documents.

The Akron Vote Story—Bill’s Version

According to Bill, it was November 1937, two years and five months after Dr. Bob Smith’s last drink, and he was visiting the Smiths in Akron. One night, the two men sat down and famously counted noses, suddenly realizing that they now had a total of forty sober members in their Fellowship. Wilson says he got carried away with this proof of their success and immediately proposed that they launch three ambitious projects—a nationwide chain of alcoholic hospitals, paid missionaries to establish meetings all over the country, and a book that would explain their methods. Each of these, he thought, was necessary for them to expand their reach and save many more people than they were currently able to help. Smith questioned the wisdom of these ideas, although the idea of a book did have some appeal for him. He suggested that they call a general meeting of the Ohio members where the matter could be thoroughly discussed and submitted to a vote.

Over the years, Bill Wilson told several versions of the ‘Akron Vote Story’ and each time, he would include a few additional details about what happened that night. Taken together, these different accounts provide a rich and vibrant picture of those events as he wanted to present them. What follows here is not a direct quotation although it does include words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs taken directly from Bill Wilson’s writings and talks. Instead, it is a composite story (indicated here by the use of italics) cobbling together different details that he mentioned at one time or another in his various accounts of that fateful meeting in Akron.

In November of 1937, I had just lost my job, so I took a trip out West looking for work—visiting Detroit and Cleveland before stopping in Akron where I stayed with my friends, Dr. Bob and Anne Smith.¹ Late one afternoon in their living room, Bob and I sat around by the gas log—with Anne listening in—comparing notes on our recent successes and failures in sobering up alcoholics both in Akron and in New York.² As the stories multiplied, we began to realize that we had been even more successful than we had thought. Was this thing really working?³

‘How many sober people do we actually have in our two groups—right now?’* we wondered. Bob and I started counting noses and quickly realized that there was something like forty people who had maintained enough continuous sobriety to be considered real success stories.⁴ And, just months or years before, each of these forty people had been hopeless, dying alcoholics! Sure, there had been a tremendous number of failures in getting to that number, but look at the number—FORTY. Clearly enough time had elapsed on enough desperate cases to prove that this was no longer just some questionable experiment; it was a proven and working method for getting drunks sober. We had found a cure for alcoholism!⁵

The idea that we had discovered something new and truly effective began to sink in. The numbers, however small at this point, didn’t lie. There could be no doubt that our little society for the salvation of drunks was really working and those forty former alcoholics provided concrete evidence to anyone who wanted proof that we had actually discovered a solution for the drink problem.⁶ As the realization of what we had accomplished stole over us, we became ecstatic and immensely grateful to the power of God that had made it all possible. Bob, Anne and I literally wept for joy as we bowed our heads to give silent thanks for the gift that He had given us.⁷

But I am a salesman by nature⁸ and much less grounded than my doctor friend, so I would sometimes go places that he just couldn’t or wouldn’t go—and this was one of those occasions. Given the realization that we had discovered something new, something that really worked, my enthusiasm and imagination quickly leapt into the realm of the fantastic.⁹ Surely, I claimed, this was the beginning of one of the greatest medical, religious and social developments of all time … A million alcoholics in America; more millions all over the world! Why, we only [have] to sober up all these boys and girls (and sell them God) whereupon they would revolutionize society.* A brand new world with ex-drunks running it. Just think of that, folks!¹⁰

After Dr. Bob had calmed me down a bit, I became more pragmatic and began to see the problems that we faced with a little more practicality.¹¹ I began by pointing out that, for the past three years, we had focused almost exclusively on the life and death question of personal recovery, working with just one drunk at a time. But if forty people could recover from the fatal ravages of alcoholism, why not four hundred, or four thousand—or even forty thousand?¹² Clearly there were that many suffering alcoholics in the country. In fact, there were far more than that! Why there were thousands and thousands of people right there in Ohio who were literally dying for lack of our help.¹³ We had a solution, but so far our methods had been tremendously inefficient. Only forty alcoholics had been saved in the past three years. There had to be a better way!

‘Can we really expect,’ I argued, ‘that every drunk in the country will travel to either Akron or New York to be schooled in our solution?¹⁴ And, even if they could, how would they ever learn that they should do that, how would they find out about this revolutionary new solution since it was only transmitted by word of mouth?¹⁵ And, even if they did somehow learn about it—by whatever method—and did come to Akron or New York, how could the sober folks there ever begin to cope with them all?’

The Grand Plan

The plan that I came up with that day as a better way of bringing our solution to the world—the plan that I then sold to Dr. Bob Smith—had three interlocking elements: paid missionaries, a chain of alcoholic hospitals and a book to explain our method of recovery.¹⁶

Missionaries were essential for spreading the message; there was just no other way to get the good news out there. Seasoned members from our two existing groups—I speculated that there were perhaps twenty of these—would have to temporarily give up their jobs (if they had jobs) and go out to establish groups and meetings in other cities around the country.¹⁷ Clearly these people would have to continue supporting their families, so they needed to be paid for their work. But where would all that money come from?¹⁸

One source would be the profits generated by the alcoholic hospitals that we would set up around the country—starting with Akron and New York.¹⁹ After all, Dr. Bob’s practice had never really recovered and this would be a perfect way to utilize his talents while simultaneously helping thousands of alcoholics get sober. And we desperately needed our own hospitals because the regular hospitals really hated dealing with drunks; they were moving them out as fast as possible to take care of people they felt had real problems.²⁰ Granted there would be substantial upfront investment costs to establish these hospitals, which would provide first class medical care and high-powered spirituality²¹—but once they were up and running on a profitable basis, they could easily generate enough money to pay for the missionaries.²² Eventually, our society would have a whole chain of these hospitals, coast-to-coast, just like the new chains of drug stores and grocery stores that were currently springing up all around the country and making huge amounts of money for the people who invested in them.²³

The profits from the sale of the book would also help defray the costs of supporting a national squad of missionaries. Just think about how many potential readers there would be for a book that offers a solution to alcoholism! And, you shouldn’t just count the drunks; remember that this book will appeal to wives, relatives, friends, doctors, priests, ministers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Copies of this book will sell by the carloads and the profits from it should be more than enough to pay for those 24 missionaries.²⁴

And, beyond its fundraising possibilities, having a book would be critically important in its own right because the current word-of-mouth program was exactly that—something that was passed from man to man—and would certainly become distorted unless it was put on paper. Writing down the exact details of the method would ensure that it wouldn’t get garbled and changed as it traveled around the country from one person to the next.²⁵

Bob and I agreed that the word of mouth program we had been following so far could be boiled down to six essential propositions:

1. We had admitted we were powerless over alcohol

2. Had gotten honest with ourselves

3. Gotten honest with other people about our defects

4. Made restitution to those we had harmed

5. Tried to carry the message to other alcoholics

6. Prayed to whatever God we thought there was²⁶*

This was the essence of what we had been doing and without a Book of Experience²⁷ to explain it all in clear and concise language, it would surely get changed with each retelling.²⁸

Worse yet, without having it all explained in black and white, we were laying ourselves open to any uninformed reporter’s interpretation of what we were doing. That would surely lead to misunderstandings and to our method being held up to ridicule as a racket by certain members of the press who would like nothing better than an opportunity to discredit us.²⁹*

Finally, where would all this start-up money come from that would be needed for the hospitals, the missionaries, and the book? Clearly these projects would require tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars, so it would have to come from the rich. ‘Think of all the money donated in the past to salvation projects that didn’t work anywhere near as well as this new method we have for getting people sober,’ I argued. ‘Think of all the money that was poured into the failed Temperance and Prohibition movements over the years.’³⁰

‘What we have here is a proven project of human reclamation,’ I stated with certainty. ‘People will be more than willing to provide us with the cash when they see the amazing amount of human suffering that can be alleviated and the spiritual growth that will come about by using our methods.’³¹

Bob liked the idea of the book, but he had strong reservations about the missionaries and the hospitals.³² It all seemed so overwhelming and he worried that money and property would contaminate the beautiful Christian spirit that had been the foundation of our group from the very beginning. ‘Wouldn’t money, paid missionaries, and hospitals somehow ruin everything?’ he wondered.³³ I did not share Bob’s fears; I was confident that whatever problems might arise, they could all be overcome.³⁴

The Akron Squad Responds

Dr. Bob suggested we consult with the others, so he called for a special meeting of the Akron Alcoholic Squad. ‘Let’s try these ideas out on them,’he said.³⁵

The meeting was duly called and eighteen sober members arrived at T. Henry Williams’s house, their regular weekly meeting place.³⁶ By this time, I was wildly excited about the new approach. I could already see the movement spreading all over the world, if only we could get the approval for these three critical proposals from this group. Dr. Bob opened the meeting and then turned it over to me. I immediately went into my best salesman mode, enthusiastically pitching the ideas of paid missionaries, a chain of alcoholic hospitals, and a book of our experiences—pouring out a constant stream of arguments in favor of each proposal.³⁷

But, as the crowd grew progressively quieter, it was clear to me that the Ohio group didn’t really approve of these ideas.³⁸ I knew that, on a good day, they were a conservative and skeptical lot and these proposals were obviously far too revolutionary to be accepted without a heavy round of arguments.³⁹

But it was worse than that. As soon as I finished my pitch, the group launched into a storm of outraged objections: ‘We’ve got to keep this thing simple,’⁴⁰ they said. ‘If you bring money into it, you’ll be creating a professional class and the whole movement will be ruined.⁴¹ Paid missionaries are a terrible idea. They would completely destroy our good will with new alcoholics and they wouldn’t trust us anymore.⁴² And, after all, Christ’s apostles weren’t paid missionaries—and that’s the example we should be following here. They spread the word of God in a spirit of selflessness and that is exactly what we have been doing all along.⁴³ If you try to change that by paying people for that kind of service, it will absolutely ruin the whole thing!’⁴⁴

Alcoholic hospitals fared no better. Several people complained that if we went into the hospital business, everyone would say that we were running a racket.⁴⁵ And they’d be right. Once you go into business, you have to deal with all of the problems that come up for every business, and we don’t want any part of that. How, for instance, would we ever deal with the bankruptcy that inevitably happens to any business that has been around for too long a time? And, how could we continue to hold our heads up when offering our cure for alcoholism to a new man, if that recovery now comes with a price tag attached to it?⁴⁶

The group also rejected the idea of a book. ‘Jesus didn’t have any pamphlets or books when He started out,’ they argued.⁴⁷ ‘All He had was a simple word of mouth method for carrying the message from person to person and from group to group. Why would we ever want to deviate from His example? Do you think the apostles traveled around with printed pieces of literature in their pockets?’⁴⁸

‘And, we absolutely do not need the publicity a book would bring down upon us. It would be a disaster! How could we ever handle all of the inquiries that this publicity would create? We’d be swamped with requests and we would have no way of dealing with them all.’⁴⁹

These objections had a strong impact, but Bob and I rose to the challenge,⁵⁰ presenting counterarguments to the objections, although Bob was most vocal in his support of the idea of a book.⁵¹

I used all the arguments I had worked out the day before when talking with Dr. Bob, pointing out that we had a cure for alcoholism, but at the rate we were going it would be another ten years before it reached the outskirts of Akron.⁵² ‘If you keep it too simple,’ I argued, ‘we end up with nothing but anarchy and then everything gets really complicated. We’ve got to take some chances here if we are ever going to spread this thing to all of the dying people who need it.’⁵³

And I wasn’t above getting personal in my arguments when challenging the nay-sayers. I asked them: ‘How can you people sleep at night when there are drunks in California who are dying right now because there is no way that they could ever hear about our solution?⁵⁴ And, are you really willing to allow the successful methods that we have so painfully developed over the past three years to become distorted and twisted into something completely different, just because we didn’t make the effort to write them down and put them in a book?’⁵⁵

After a truly passionate discussion, which resolved little and left the meeting in what seemed to be an angry deadlock, it was grudgingly decided that a vote should be taken.⁵⁶ Over the strenuous objections of the minority, the Akron meeting finally voted to approve the proposals to employ paid missionaries, to establish a chain of alcoholic hospitals and to write a book. All three measures were carried by the slimmest of margins—two votes—with ten men voting in favor and eight casting their vehement ‘No’s.’⁵⁷

I had gotten the approval I needed from Akron, but it was a very reluctant approval. I might have their grudging support for the three new initiatives, but they wouldn’t exert any further energy to move this agenda forward. If I wanted missionaries, hospitals and a book—all of which would cost a tremendous amount of money—then I should just go back to New York and try to raise that money.⁵⁸ After all, that was where the money was and there certainly wasn’t going to be any money coming out of Akron to support any of these projects.⁵⁹

Such is the collective substance of Bill’s several colorful accounts regarding the Akron Vote and A.A.’s momentous decision to write a book—the only one of these three ambitious proposals that ever became a reality. It is an appealing and lively story, capturing the elation of the moment, highlighting all of the problems that would surely come from rapid expansion, and painting a vibrant picture of the emotions that flared up on both sides of the issue. Equally vivid and clear are the positions taken by the two sides along with the anger and the tension generated by their heated arguments (and the uncertainty of who would eventually win). It is a wonderful story that deftly builds with suspense, culminating in the drama of Bill Wilson’s victory in the final vote.

The problem is that many of the details reported in this story are simply not true and, even more important, Bill leaves out a host of important facts and critical factors that are essential for any understanding of what really happened that night in Akron. Fortunately for us, as the Fellowship grew, it generated (and preserved) more and more documents that can now be used to verify, modify, or contradict elements found in these frequently told tales of A.A.’s early history. In this case, the story that emerges from a careful collation of those primary materials is substantially different from the one that Bill Wilson told so many times over the years.

But before getting to a more historically accurate account of the Akron Vote meeting, any proper understanding of that gathering must begin with a recounting of what was going on in Bill Wilson’s life during the year 1937, especially as it relates to his job, to the growth of the group in New York, and to his deteriorating relationship with the Oxford Group.

Bill and the Fellowship in Transition

Bill is frequently identified as a stockbroker,* but he never held a license to sell stock and today he would more accurately be described as a stock speculator or, more kindly, an entrepreneurial Wall Street analyst. In January 1937, he finally found a job with Quaw and Foley, a small New York firm that specialized in speculative business ventures. In the past, Bill had done occasional work for these two business friends—he described them as a pair of good-hearted Wall Street Irishmen⁶⁰—but he now had a full-time job with his own desk and the use of a secretary whenever he was in town. But much of the time Bill wasn’t actually in New York during 1937; instead he was traveling around the country visiting other cities, investigating promising business situations the firm hoped to turn to their own advantage. His destinations during the first seven months of the year included Boston (January and March), St. Louis (January and June), Detroit (January, February, May, and July), Cleveland (February, April, and May), Rochester (February), and Springfield (March).** On March 11, 1937, for instance, Lois writes that Bill was leaving for Boston to see the chairman of Fisk Tire to be put on the board of directors.⁶¹ Throughout the year there had been many such opportunities, but, in the end, no real successes.

All of this travel would have had a significant impact on Bill’s participation in the regular recovery meetings that were typically held at his house in Brooklyn every Sunday night. In addition, the daily requirements of the new job surely limited the amount of time he could spend working with other alcoholics even when he was in town. But despite all these new responsibilities and his frequent absences, Wilson did manage to stay involved. He continued his active participation in a number of local Oxford Group activities while also maintaining his regular efforts to help his recovering friends in the small but growing Fellowship in New York City.

The group in New York was growing slowly, the number of sober members fluctuating as new people came in and tried to stay sober while others quit and returned to drinking. The estimated size of the New York group when Bill drove out to Akron in October 1937 was ten sober members; these included Wilson himself, Hank Parkhurst (First edition story: The Unbeliever), Fitz Mayo (First edition story: Our Southern Friend), Myron Williams (First edition story: Hindsight), Florence Rankin (First edition story: A Feminine Victory), Bill Ruddell (First edition story: A Business Man’s Recovery), along with Silas Bent, Douglas Delanoy, Paul Kellogg, and Sterling Parker.*** The group may have been small, but they were all tremendously happy to be sober and they were doing their best to pass that gift of sobriety on to as many other people as possible.

But more important than Wilson’s new job or the slow growth rate of the New York group was the fact he had been gradually distancing himself from the Oxford Group in New York City, at first by holding alcoholics-only meetings at his house in Brooklyn and eventually by completely and permanently breaking all ties with the Oxford Group in April or May 1937. Wilson’s participation in the Group and the events that led to his break with them will be dealt with

Reviews for Writing the Big Book

[soraxtm-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting history of the big books writing. It is good to hear about these humble beginnings and about the real people who were around when the big book was written. You wonder what it would be like now.