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Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A. A.
Self Help
333 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1957
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March 7, 2025
Imagine that a bunch of addicts got together to form an organization. In addition, imagine they limit themselves from receiving any financial outside help. And they have a thing for anonymity, where they never share their names with press or on TV, etc., a veritable nightmare from a PR perspective. Further, they have basically no money and their only source of income is sales from a couple of books.
Despite these limitations, they want to spark a world-wide revolution. How crazy does this proposal sound?
But such an organization exists. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) started in 1935 and has swept the globe and has about 2 million members—and that’s not even counting the myriad of other 12-step organizations that have al sprung out of AA: Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, ACA, SA, OA, DA, GA…there are literally scores of them. Who knows how many people are in all the programs worldwide.
But how did such an organization come to be? And how did it spread under explosive growth and manage to not fall apart at the seams?
That’s what this book is about. I’m going to walk you through the contents of this book and relate my thoughts as we go along.
First they explain that the title (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age) isn’t intended to mean that AA is all grown up now, but rather simply that they now NEED to grow up, that they are in a stage where they need to come out of their adolescence and mature. Good clarifying point.
The early history of AA is told in satisfying detail, including the Oxford Group, Bill W, Dr. Bob, relation to Bill Silkworth, and other people without whom AA wouldn’t exist. Sister Ignatia and Dr. Silkworth are particularly fascinating characters. Ebby was Bill W’s sponsor and relapsed continually after AA started. And yet somehow Bill didn’t.
Also, Bill W’s story is told in more detail, so that was fascinating. I found it very enthralling.
Then it goes into the burgeoning of AA and what that was like, the bewilderment of how fast it grew in just a few short years.
Then there’s a section that recounts the history of AA starting in a lot of different places around the world. It’s summarized in a way that makes it a bit hard to follow here, but later on the stories are told again and are much more engaging there.
After that there’s a deep dive into the history of how the traditions came to be, which actually is WAY more interesting than it sounds.
AA was really hard-up for funds and was growing so fast that there was a lot of chaos and threats from outside and in. There were people trying to turn AA into a for-profit thing or various professional schemes, hucksters, etc. Bill W himself actually pushed a scheme where they were going to open up hospitals and send out paid “missionaries” (that was his word for them) to different locations. Thankfully, the other AA’s shot him down. In hindsight, he was thankful that they did.
There’s also the story of John D. Rockefeller (yes, THAT one) who was really impressed with them and helped them out a lot, although not—as they initially were expecting—with (much) money.
You see, AA had already established a tradition of declining outside contributions. But after scads of trials with money, grinding poverty on the part of Bill W and others, etc., they came to the point of desperation where they were ready for Rockefeller to make them a sizable charitable donation and get them afloat. Long story short, he threw them a dinner party and let them avail themselves of his advisors, but he did NOT give them substantial money; John Rockefeller himself saw that it was important that AA remain always self-supporting. Really fascinating story.
And AA ended up embracing that stance really hardcore, declining any and all outside contributions even from people who wrote AA into their will, and even ensuring that they limit expenses to the very bare minimum for the express reason that they want to ensure they never have enough money for it to become a point of contention.
It’s hard for me to imagine another organization that purposefully limits itself from getting too much money for its own spiritual good!
There’s a lot of other stories about the early beginnings, centering around dire money problems and the printing of the AA book. The AA book was almost called The Way Out instead of Alcoholics Anonymous, but then they checked in with the library of congress and discovered that 12 other books already had that name.
There’s a lot of miracles with AA surviving despite their extreme self-imposed limitations re the traditions. Another tradition that was a self-imposed limitation after considerable trial and error was “attraction, not promotion.” They refused to break their anonymity and use the endorsements of famous celebrities who were in AA and other tactics like that.
And yet despite all of these severe limitations which seem crazy, they have found that they have actually received enthusiastic support from reporters and journalists and the like, sometimes even censoring AA members more than requested.
All I can say when I look at the history of AA is: look at what God has wrought. The existence of AA is plain miracle after miracle. It is my belief that the next great spiritual revival has already happened, it just didn’t look like what traditional denominations would have recognized as a revival. The revival is AA. If compared to other religions (for AA is best compared to a religion, in my opinion), AA’s progress is astounding. It was formed in 1937 and swept the globe, now in less than a hundred years there are millions of practitioners.
I was also intrigued by just how self-sacrificial these early AAs could be with their time and money. Bill W and his wife had no job and dedicated themselves to helping other AAs despite the fact that they had no salary from AA for the first few years. They were evicted multiple times, had to be humbled to ask for help many times, etc. That’s an extreme level that I wonder if I would ever be willing to go to. It really makes me think about my own level of faith and willingness to do whatever it takes—literally, WHATEVER IT TAKES—to be free of my addiction. This is a really inspiring book.
It’s also really intriguing from the perspective of studying how an organization grows and functions, interesting because of how many of “the rules” it breaks, which I believe to be due to the fact that it is what Simon Sinek (Start With Why) would describe as a vision-based organization. Studying AA reveals some interesting principles. I’m connecting dots between this book and Start With Why and No Rules Rules and my own experiences working for Ramsey Solutions, another vision-based organization.
In no particular order, the principles I’m seeing…first: if you help enough people, then eventually you won’t have to worry about money.
Second: self-imposed limitations that align with your organization’s vision make things really painful in the short-term, but are necessary for long-term flourishing.
Another principle I’ve noticed from other books is that it’s really hard to keep it vision-based when the founder stops being in charge, but here’s where AA gets interesting. The founder floundered a lot and tried to break the rules which he had originally set down. But it worked for him to be accountable to peers who had also caught the vision. That’s a really unique pattern; normally it doesn’t work that way in other orgs and this to me is another miracle.
Submitting to the will of the group for making big decisions. That’s a tough thing. They made a lot of decisions by committee, which is a tough way to do it. Decisions on finances, enterprises, and the book, Alcoholics Anonymous.
Holy cow did they have a lot of disagreements about the book. He describes three different factions: the liberal faction, the conservative, and the atheists, each trying to pull in different directions. But eventually the version of the 12 steps in particular that they ended up with was, by Bill’s own admission, much stronger than if he had just ignored certain difficult factions and bulldozed ahead.
For instance the inclusion of the phrase “God as we understood him” in the steps and “Higher Power” instead of merely “God.” Bill reflects that he’s really happy in hindsight they made those changes because countless atheistic and agnostic AAs have said that they don’t think they could have accepted the steps and even begun the recovery journey if not for that wording.
There’s a lot in the book that are about the convention of 1955, when AA turned 20 years old (“came of age”) and after which this book was named. Essentially, after 20 years of AA, Bill W decided that it was high time that AA became fully democratic and handed the reigns over from the founders to the people. Starting with that convention, ever since, the general service board of AA has been elected by a worldwide convention of AA meetings. The shots were no longer to be called by Bill W and the founders that he appointed in AA’s beginnings.
To Bill W, this turning point was a big deal, and something he pushed for for a long time before it was adopted. The analogy he uses is that of a father whose child has come of age and is blessing his child to go forth and make his own decisions from here on out. Naturally, the father can’t help but give a few last parting admonitions, and this is his speech that is given in section III of the book, titled “Four O’Clock Sunday Afternoon.”
After that, there are speeches given by notable men of medicine who support AA. First up is Dr Bauer, president of the American Medical Association. Honestly his speech was forgettable.
I was much more interested in Dr. Harry Tiebout, the second medical speaker. He was a psychiatrist who gave his account of having worked with alcoholics for quite some time, trying to crack the code of how to cure them, before he came across one that went to AA and was apparently cured.
Tiebout studied how AA worked and then tested out his theories on his clients, continually refining his theories as his understanding grew. I myself rather enjoyed this story; he seems like someone who had a truly entrepreneurial and open mindset, who was willing to try anything and continually revise his theories to figure out what would work.
The fifth section is notable clergy who supported AA, and was much more interesting than I thought it would be. First off you have Father Ed of the Jesuit order, who established the first Catholic AA meetings, and this guy is just awesome…self-deprecating, funny, the kind of guy I think I could see myself having a beer with. And he has a section in here about how just as man has his 12 steps to reach God, God has his own 12 steps to reach man, which includes sending his Son to die for us, etc. He also reads a poem called The Hound of Heaven.
The final speaker is Sam Shoemaker, who was the founder of the Oxford Group out of which AA sprung. Interestingly enough, elsewhere in this book it describes how AA dropped some of the more overtly religious and autocratic trappings of the Oxford Group, and Sam Shoemaker himself was immensely proud of AA and in his speech talks more favorably of AA than his own Oxford Group, which he references as having fallen in some way, although he doesn’t explain what he means by that. Very interesting coming from the founder of the whole movement. It seems he was so humble as to be able to admit that when AA took parts of the Oxford Group and added others, AA improved on it.
He also has the banger line that we should “Stop asking God to do what [we] want, and begin to try to find out what it is that God wants.”
One of the things Shoemaker emphasizes is a different kind of faith, not a faith based on dogma, but experience. This is one of the topics that I love because it’s something that deeply impressed me as well about the type of faith I experienced in a 12-step program.
Before coming into the program, I had all of these ideas (theology) about God (a lot of good that it did me). But the 12 steps taught me to re-evaluate my faith and form something more real. Incidentally, having read some philosophy since then, in particular David Hume, I believe that empirical evidence (experiments, things we experience) are in fact the highest form of knowledge. Who can deny what they themselves have experienced? I had an experience of God utterly changing my life and being saved from my addiction; that’s what I mark the beginning of my true faith. Thank God for Sam Shoemaker who started all this mess, although he had no idea the direction it would turn when he did! The Oxford Group had nothing to do with alcoholism and is now long gone, but AA lives on.
Section 6 is an address given by Bernard Smith, the (non-alcoholic) chairman of AA up until the handing over of the reigns. He handled the finances of the Alcoholic Foundation and was pivotal in several of the early stories of AA. Reading his speech here, where he shares his stories of how he got involved with Bill and AA, was revealing and he had some notable wisdom to share.
His speech closes out the official chapters of the book, and then there are several appendices, most of which I skipped, however there were two notable exceptions.
Appendix E:a is an article written by Bill Silkworth, the doctor who was so instrumental in helping Bill W understand the approach he needed to take with alcoholics to help them have the same spiritual experience that he had had. (Really, as you get into the story of AA, there are so many links in the chain without which the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.)
Silkworth mentions that half of alcoholics seem to recover using AA, and gives in his observation what the process of helping an alcoholic in AA seems to be, which I found enlightening.
He also says that the weakest approach one can make to an alcoholic is the typical intervention through family and friends; it has to come from another alcoholic and be when they are desperate and preferably while detoxing in a hospital.
Appendix E:b is an article by Tiebout, the psychiatrist, and includes a table showing the (estimated) numbers demonstrating the explosive growth of AA in early years.
He also has a great psychiatric description of an alcoholic’s personality, including narcissism and grandiosity. Ouch. He also says that about 10% of alcoholics appear to have the more dramatic variety of spiritual experience (blinding white light, etc.), and 90% the more gradual variety.
The book also has a few pictures, of course not of any members of AA, but of various friends of AA. There’s Dr Silkworth, Sister Ignatia, Dr. Tiebout, Sam Shoemaker, Dick Richardson, and a hilarious goofy picture of Father Ed. (I feel like I really would have liked that guy.) There’s also a picture of the convention of 1955 gathering, of a telegram from President Eisenhower, and a few notable locations.
I’m really glad I read this. The composition of the book could have been improved, but the contents were worth it. Some of the speeches at the convention had grandiose language that got repetitive, but one can forgive the speakers for their elation at having arrived at the point that AA had at that time.
I recommend this to anyone interested in the history of AA.
Despite these limitations, they want to spark a world-wide revolution. How crazy does this proposal sound?
But such an organization exists. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) started in 1935 and has swept the globe and has about 2 million members—and that’s not even counting the myriad of other 12-step organizations that have al sprung out of AA: Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, ACA, SA, OA, DA, GA…there are literally scores of them. Who knows how many people are in all the programs worldwide.
But how did such an organization come to be? And how did it spread under explosive growth and manage to not fall apart at the seams?
That’s what this book is about. I’m going to walk you through the contents of this book and relate my thoughts as we go along.
First they explain that the title (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age) isn’t intended to mean that AA is all grown up now, but rather simply that they now NEED to grow up, that they are in a stage where they need to come out of their adolescence and mature. Good clarifying point.
The early history of AA is told in satisfying detail, including the Oxford Group, Bill W, Dr. Bob, relation to Bill Silkworth, and other people without whom AA wouldn’t exist. Sister Ignatia and Dr. Silkworth are particularly fascinating characters. Ebby was Bill W’s sponsor and relapsed continually after AA started. And yet somehow Bill didn’t.
Also, Bill W’s story is told in more detail, so that was fascinating. I found it very enthralling.
Then it goes into the burgeoning of AA and what that was like, the bewilderment of how fast it grew in just a few short years.
Then there’s a section that recounts the history of AA starting in a lot of different places around the world. It’s summarized in a way that makes it a bit hard to follow here, but later on the stories are told again and are much more engaging there.
After that there’s a deep dive into the history of how the traditions came to be, which actually is WAY more interesting than it sounds.
AA was really hard-up for funds and was growing so fast that there was a lot of chaos and threats from outside and in. There were people trying to turn AA into a for-profit thing or various professional schemes, hucksters, etc. Bill W himself actually pushed a scheme where they were going to open up hospitals and send out paid “missionaries” (that was his word for them) to different locations. Thankfully, the other AA’s shot him down. In hindsight, he was thankful that they did.
There’s also the story of John D. Rockefeller (yes, THAT one) who was really impressed with them and helped them out a lot, although not—as they initially were expecting—with (much) money.
You see, AA had already established a tradition of declining outside contributions. But after scads of trials with money, grinding poverty on the part of Bill W and others, etc., they came to the point of desperation where they were ready for Rockefeller to make them a sizable charitable donation and get them afloat. Long story short, he threw them a dinner party and let them avail themselves of his advisors, but he did NOT give them substantial money; John Rockefeller himself saw that it was important that AA remain always self-supporting. Really fascinating story.
And AA ended up embracing that stance really hardcore, declining any and all outside contributions even from people who wrote AA into their will, and even ensuring that they limit expenses to the very bare minimum for the express reason that they want to ensure they never have enough money for it to become a point of contention.
It’s hard for me to imagine another organization that purposefully limits itself from getting too much money for its own spiritual good!
There’s a lot of other stories about the early beginnings, centering around dire money problems and the printing of the AA book. The AA book was almost called The Way Out instead of Alcoholics Anonymous, but then they checked in with the library of congress and discovered that 12 other books already had that name.
There’s a lot of miracles with AA surviving despite their extreme self-imposed limitations re the traditions. Another tradition that was a self-imposed limitation after considerable trial and error was “attraction, not promotion.” They refused to break their anonymity and use the endorsements of famous celebrities who were in AA and other tactics like that.
And yet despite all of these severe limitations which seem crazy, they have found that they have actually received enthusiastic support from reporters and journalists and the like, sometimes even censoring AA members more than requested.
All I can say when I look at the history of AA is: look at what God has wrought. The existence of AA is plain miracle after miracle. It is my belief that the next great spiritual revival has already happened, it just didn’t look like what traditional denominations would have recognized as a revival. The revival is AA. If compared to other religions (for AA is best compared to a religion, in my opinion), AA’s progress is astounding. It was formed in 1937 and swept the globe, now in less than a hundred years there are millions of practitioners.
I was also intrigued by just how self-sacrificial these early AAs could be with their time and money. Bill W and his wife had no job and dedicated themselves to helping other AAs despite the fact that they had no salary from AA for the first few years. They were evicted multiple times, had to be humbled to ask for help many times, etc. That’s an extreme level that I wonder if I would ever be willing to go to. It really makes me think about my own level of faith and willingness to do whatever it takes—literally, WHATEVER IT TAKES—to be free of my addiction. This is a really inspiring book.
It’s also really intriguing from the perspective of studying how an organization grows and functions, interesting because of how many of “the rules” it breaks, which I believe to be due to the fact that it is what Simon Sinek (Start With Why) would describe as a vision-based organization. Studying AA reveals some interesting principles. I’m connecting dots between this book and Start With Why and No Rules Rules and my own experiences working for Ramsey Solutions, another vision-based organization.
In no particular order, the principles I’m seeing…first: if you help enough people, then eventually you won’t have to worry about money.
Second: self-imposed limitations that align with your organization’s vision make things really painful in the short-term, but are necessary for long-term flourishing.
Another principle I’ve noticed from other books is that it’s really hard to keep it vision-based when the founder stops being in charge, but here’s where AA gets interesting. The founder floundered a lot and tried to break the rules which he had originally set down. But it worked for him to be accountable to peers who had also caught the vision. That’s a really unique pattern; normally it doesn’t work that way in other orgs and this to me is another miracle.
Submitting to the will of the group for making big decisions. That’s a tough thing. They made a lot of decisions by committee, which is a tough way to do it. Decisions on finances, enterprises, and the book, Alcoholics Anonymous.
Holy cow did they have a lot of disagreements about the book. He describes three different factions: the liberal faction, the conservative, and the atheists, each trying to pull in different directions. But eventually the version of the 12 steps in particular that they ended up with was, by Bill’s own admission, much stronger than if he had just ignored certain difficult factions and bulldozed ahead.
For instance the inclusion of the phrase “God as we understood him” in the steps and “Higher Power” instead of merely “God.” Bill reflects that he’s really happy in hindsight they made those changes because countless atheistic and agnostic AAs have said that they don’t think they could have accepted the steps and even begun the recovery journey if not for that wording.
There’s a lot in the book that are about the convention of 1955, when AA turned 20 years old (“came of age”) and after which this book was named. Essentially, after 20 years of AA, Bill W decided that it was high time that AA became fully democratic and handed the reigns over from the founders to the people. Starting with that convention, ever since, the general service board of AA has been elected by a worldwide convention of AA meetings. The shots were no longer to be called by Bill W and the founders that he appointed in AA’s beginnings.
To Bill W, this turning point was a big deal, and something he pushed for for a long time before it was adopted. The analogy he uses is that of a father whose child has come of age and is blessing his child to go forth and make his own decisions from here on out. Naturally, the father can’t help but give a few last parting admonitions, and this is his speech that is given in section III of the book, titled “Four O’Clock Sunday Afternoon.”
After that, there are speeches given by notable men of medicine who support AA. First up is Dr Bauer, president of the American Medical Association. Honestly his speech was forgettable.
I was much more interested in Dr. Harry Tiebout, the second medical speaker. He was a psychiatrist who gave his account of having worked with alcoholics for quite some time, trying to crack the code of how to cure them, before he came across one that went to AA and was apparently cured.
Tiebout studied how AA worked and then tested out his theories on his clients, continually refining his theories as his understanding grew. I myself rather enjoyed this story; he seems like someone who had a truly entrepreneurial and open mindset, who was willing to try anything and continually revise his theories to figure out what would work.
The fifth section is notable clergy who supported AA, and was much more interesting than I thought it would be. First off you have Father Ed of the Jesuit order, who established the first Catholic AA meetings, and this guy is just awesome…self-deprecating, funny, the kind of guy I think I could see myself having a beer with. And he has a section in here about how just as man has his 12 steps to reach God, God has his own 12 steps to reach man, which includes sending his Son to die for us, etc. He also reads a poem called The Hound of Heaven.
The final speaker is Sam Shoemaker, who was the founder of the Oxford Group out of which AA sprung. Interestingly enough, elsewhere in this book it describes how AA dropped some of the more overtly religious and autocratic trappings of the Oxford Group, and Sam Shoemaker himself was immensely proud of AA and in his speech talks more favorably of AA than his own Oxford Group, which he references as having fallen in some way, although he doesn’t explain what he means by that. Very interesting coming from the founder of the whole movement. It seems he was so humble as to be able to admit that when AA took parts of the Oxford Group and added others, AA improved on it.
He also has the banger line that we should “Stop asking God to do what [we] want, and begin to try to find out what it is that God wants.”
One of the things Shoemaker emphasizes is a different kind of faith, not a faith based on dogma, but experience. This is one of the topics that I love because it’s something that deeply impressed me as well about the type of faith I experienced in a 12-step program.
Before coming into the program, I had all of these ideas (theology) about God (a lot of good that it did me). But the 12 steps taught me to re-evaluate my faith and form something more real. Incidentally, having read some philosophy since then, in particular David Hume, I believe that empirical evidence (experiments, things we experience) are in fact the highest form of knowledge. Who can deny what they themselves have experienced? I had an experience of God utterly changing my life and being saved from my addiction; that’s what I mark the beginning of my true faith. Thank God for Sam Shoemaker who started all this mess, although he had no idea the direction it would turn when he did! The Oxford Group had nothing to do with alcoholism and is now long gone, but AA lives on.
Section 6 is an address given by Bernard Smith, the (non-alcoholic) chairman of AA up until the handing over of the reigns. He handled the finances of the Alcoholic Foundation and was pivotal in several of the early stories of AA. Reading his speech here, where he shares his stories of how he got involved with Bill and AA, was revealing and he had some notable wisdom to share.
His speech closes out the official chapters of the book, and then there are several appendices, most of which I skipped, however there were two notable exceptions.
Appendix E:a is an article written by Bill Silkworth, the doctor who was so instrumental in helping Bill W understand the approach he needed to take with alcoholics to help them have the same spiritual experience that he had had. (Really, as you get into the story of AA, there are so many links in the chain without which the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.)
Silkworth mentions that half of alcoholics seem to recover using AA, and gives in his observation what the process of helping an alcoholic in AA seems to be, which I found enlightening.
He also says that the weakest approach one can make to an alcoholic is the typical intervention through family and friends; it has to come from another alcoholic and be when they are desperate and preferably while detoxing in a hospital.
Appendix E:b is an article by Tiebout, the psychiatrist, and includes a table showing the (estimated) numbers demonstrating the explosive growth of AA in early years.
He also has a great psychiatric description of an alcoholic’s personality, including narcissism and grandiosity. Ouch. He also says that about 10% of alcoholics appear to have the more dramatic variety of spiritual experience (blinding white light, etc.), and 90% the more gradual variety.
The book also has a few pictures, of course not of any members of AA, but of various friends of AA. There’s Dr Silkworth, Sister Ignatia, Dr. Tiebout, Sam Shoemaker, Dick Richardson, and a hilarious goofy picture of Father Ed. (I feel like I really would have liked that guy.) There’s also a picture of the convention of 1955 gathering, of a telegram from President Eisenhower, and a few notable locations.
I’m really glad I read this. The composition of the book could have been improved, but the contents were worth it. Some of the speeches at the convention had grandiose language that got repetitive, but one can forgive the speakers for their elation at having arrived at the point that AA had at that time.
I recommend this to anyone interested in the history of AA.
June 17, 2021
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
- [ ] Read two books about addictions a year, this is the first one of 2021
- [ ] I might have few notes about this, the story of AA, its playing in the background
- [ ] The groups in Cleveland, Akron, NYC, then the Texas groups
- [ ] The debates over a spiritual or psychological book
- [ ] The poor meeting with Rockefeller to fund AA
- [ ] Dave R - Charlotte NC
- [ ] The traditions
- [ ] Bill and Louise travel to Europe in 1950 and encounter the different practices of AA, different countries are doing it different ways, Sweden had seven steps, France did not count wine as liquor. They did not judge, rather observed. They did say that the groups were making the same mistakes that American AA had 10 years previously
- [ ] I am curios how AA spread in Europe and the effect WWII had on its spread. Were there AA’s on the western front?
- [ ] Could AA survive without Bob and Bill? They set out to find out
- [ ] The first National convention in St. Louis
- [ ] Anonymity is not just about protecting the individual, it is about protecting AA as an institution. No one can profit, gain fame, prestige, or any other form of attention from AA. Without anonymity AA would be destroyed - wow this is brilliant
- [ ] God guides the group and the individual, it is he we serve
- [ ] The power of admitting powerlessness and that our lives were unmanageable
- [ ] The traditions were approved unanimously in 1950 - AA made many mistakes in those first 14 years. Yet we survived, we owe our survival to the traditions
- [ ] AA came of age when Bill turned off control to the trustees/next generation
- [ ] Extended Bill’s story
- [ ] His high school girlfriend died and he fell in to a deep three year depression, he could not accept that a part of him was taken away - geez I relate to this
- [ ] Recovery, unity, service
- [ ] AA owes its founding to the Oxford group. I have been told that the Oxford group failed because they did not have the traditions. This book says that they were too concerned with rigid fundamentalism
- [ ] Came to Ireland in ‘47 and England in ‘48
- [ ] Psychology v spiritually - early AA debate, which model would the program follow, spiritual
- [ ] San Quentin was the first prison program established in ‘42. It was revolutionary and reduced recidivism
- [ ] The traditions protect us from ourselves, they ensure that no group or person profits or gains from AA. The traditions are our single greatest source of survival. They set us apart from other organizations. They symbolize our sacrifice to each other and the group. They ask us never to use the AA name in any quest for personal power, gain or money. They ensure the independence of all groups and the equality of all groups. They indicate how we relate in harmony as a great hole. They ask that every person, group, and area, shall lay aside all desires, ambitions, and untord actions that could bring serious division among us or lose the confidence for us of the the world at large
- [ ] Tradition one - group welfare ensures personal welfare
- [ ] Pride, fear, and anger - biggest threats
- [ ] You can’t profit from AA, money would destroy us
- [ ] Rule 62 - don’t take yourself too seriously
- [ ] Tradition 4 - we are not aligned with any group. We have ultra liberty, but that liberty keeps us free from all other conflicts. We can atheist groups and we can Christian groups but they can not be affiliated with anyone other than AA and then must answer to God and possibility of to drink is to die
- [ ] This is brilliant, it is ultimate free at its simplest form. It keeps us out of any conflicts. Our single purpose is to stay sober. We answer to god
- [ ] Any time AA put its name to anything we got in trouble. We could not be all things to all people
- [ ] Our singleness of purpose is to carry to the message to the still sick and suffering alcoholic - that is the sole purpose of AA
- [ ] Meeting with Rockefeller - money would ruin this thing
- [ ] We use the least amount of money possible, we have the least organization possible
- [ ] A section about money
- [ ] There is no governing body, no punishment, no expulsion, no reward. It is a truly unique society
- [ ] Great suffering and great reward are the punishments and rewards
- [ ] No personality should ever be used for advancement or attention. Principals above all else
- [ ] Anonymity - don’t let anyone know. Anonymity is the sacrifice that we make
- [ ] Attraction rather than promotion
- [ ] You can live these traditions in your personal and professional life
- [ ] Service, unity, recovery
- [ ] Getting the book written and published
- [ ] Writing the steps. 12 steps, 12 apostles. There was too much god in the steps. There was much debate about the steps and the book
- [ ] Akron v NY, Liberal V Conservative, biblical v spiritual
- [ ] The book/steps really is one of the most inclusive documents available
- [ ] Bill became the final arbiter of what went in the book
- [ ] The story section was finished in January ‘39 with edited down from 18 Akron/Cleveland submissions and 10 New York submissions
- [ ] 400 original copies of the book were printed
- [ ] New York broke off from the Oxford group in ‘37
- [ ] Higher power and suggestions, were the great compromise to invite others in
- [ ] Not just for the low bottom drunks, AA is for all, reaches all levels, people don’t have to go to the depths that others went to
- [ ] Did AA cross boarders, cultures, languages, customs? It did and the general service committee was committed to translating materials and making AA available to the world
- [ ] The three challenges: anonymity, money, what to do when the founders passed
- [ ] 2/3 of the original stories writers stayed sober
- [ ] We do not have a monopoly on recovery, we are not experts in religion, we are not experts in health, this is not a religion. AA is only an expert in itself and it’s experience. This is a powerful section with a clear statement
- [ ] Most issues I have had with AA have been able to be answered/solved with the traditions. The steps are how we are sober, the traditions are why we exist
- [ ] Politics or religion has not come in our way thanks to the traditions
- [ ] Pride, anger, and resentment can destroy us
- [ ] Ego destruction, the ego can always come back and destroy you. We have to constantly be on guard for our ego
- [ ] We must hit bottom, defined as admitting defeat, admitting we were powerless, and we surrendered to something higher. The admission of defeat and surrender are the start of our recovery
- [ ] Defeat, surrender, ego destruction
- [ ] The medical and religious perspective of AA from experts/friends of the program
- [ ] The AA general service board is the founders turning it over
- [ ] We are alcoholics - we have a tremendous drive of fear and shame
- [ ] The importance of a spiritual experience
- [ ] Come to god, he is waiting and willing of you are willing and seek him
- [ ] Let go and let god, align your will with his
- [ ] The legacy of AA, the spirit of service, the strength of saying ‘I am an alcoholic.’ We have an obligation to keep AA alive, we need AA, we need the traditions, we need the legacies, we need to survive for the still sick and suffering wondering in the dark. We need it so that all are welcome. This is a beautiful and powerful program. AA is important for the individual but no one individual is ever more important than any other
- [ ] I am glad that I read this book, I am grateful for AA, this is a beautiful and fascinating program/organization
- [ ] Read two books about addictions a year, this is the first one of 2021
- [ ] I might have few notes about this, the story of AA, its playing in the background
- [ ] The groups in Cleveland, Akron, NYC, then the Texas groups
- [ ] The debates over a spiritual or psychological book
- [ ] The poor meeting with Rockefeller to fund AA
- [ ] Dave R - Charlotte NC
- [ ] The traditions
- [ ] Bill and Louise travel to Europe in 1950 and encounter the different practices of AA, different countries are doing it different ways, Sweden had seven steps, France did not count wine as liquor. They did not judge, rather observed. They did say that the groups were making the same mistakes that American AA had 10 years previously
- [ ] I am curios how AA spread in Europe and the effect WWII had on its spread. Were there AA’s on the western front?
- [ ] Could AA survive without Bob and Bill? They set out to find out
- [ ] The first National convention in St. Louis
- [ ] Anonymity is not just about protecting the individual, it is about protecting AA as an institution. No one can profit, gain fame, prestige, or any other form of attention from AA. Without anonymity AA would be destroyed - wow this is brilliant
- [ ] God guides the group and the individual, it is he we serve
- [ ] The power of admitting powerlessness and that our lives were unmanageable
- [ ] The traditions were approved unanimously in 1950 - AA made many mistakes in those first 14 years. Yet we survived, we owe our survival to the traditions
- [ ] AA came of age when Bill turned off control to the trustees/next generation
- [ ] Extended Bill’s story
- [ ] His high school girlfriend died and he fell in to a deep three year depression, he could not accept that a part of him was taken away - geez I relate to this
- [ ] Recovery, unity, service
- [ ] AA owes its founding to the Oxford group. I have been told that the Oxford group failed because they did not have the traditions. This book says that they were too concerned with rigid fundamentalism
- [ ] Came to Ireland in ‘47 and England in ‘48
- [ ] Psychology v spiritually - early AA debate, which model would the program follow, spiritual
- [ ] San Quentin was the first prison program established in ‘42. It was revolutionary and reduced recidivism
- [ ] The traditions protect us from ourselves, they ensure that no group or person profits or gains from AA. The traditions are our single greatest source of survival. They set us apart from other organizations. They symbolize our sacrifice to each other and the group. They ask us never to use the AA name in any quest for personal power, gain or money. They ensure the independence of all groups and the equality of all groups. They indicate how we relate in harmony as a great hole. They ask that every person, group, and area, shall lay aside all desires, ambitions, and untord actions that could bring serious division among us or lose the confidence for us of the the world at large
- [ ] Tradition one - group welfare ensures personal welfare
- [ ] Pride, fear, and anger - biggest threats
- [ ] You can’t profit from AA, money would destroy us
- [ ] Rule 62 - don’t take yourself too seriously
- [ ] Tradition 4 - we are not aligned with any group. We have ultra liberty, but that liberty keeps us free from all other conflicts. We can atheist groups and we can Christian groups but they can not be affiliated with anyone other than AA and then must answer to God and possibility of to drink is to die
- [ ] This is brilliant, it is ultimate free at its simplest form. It keeps us out of any conflicts. Our single purpose is to stay sober. We answer to god
- [ ] Any time AA put its name to anything we got in trouble. We could not be all things to all people
- [ ] Our singleness of purpose is to carry to the message to the still sick and suffering alcoholic - that is the sole purpose of AA
- [ ] Meeting with Rockefeller - money would ruin this thing
- [ ] We use the least amount of money possible, we have the least organization possible
- [ ] A section about money
- [ ] There is no governing body, no punishment, no expulsion, no reward. It is a truly unique society
- [ ] Great suffering and great reward are the punishments and rewards
- [ ] No personality should ever be used for advancement or attention. Principals above all else
- [ ] Anonymity - don’t let anyone know. Anonymity is the sacrifice that we make
- [ ] Attraction rather than promotion
- [ ] You can live these traditions in your personal and professional life
- [ ] Service, unity, recovery
- [ ] Getting the book written and published
- [ ] Writing the steps. 12 steps, 12 apostles. There was too much god in the steps. There was much debate about the steps and the book
- [ ] Akron v NY, Liberal V Conservative, biblical v spiritual
- [ ] The book/steps really is one of the most inclusive documents available
- [ ] Bill became the final arbiter of what went in the book
- [ ] The story section was finished in January ‘39 with edited down from 18 Akron/Cleveland submissions and 10 New York submissions
- [ ] 400 original copies of the book were printed
- [ ] New York broke off from the Oxford group in ‘37
- [ ] Higher power and suggestions, were the great compromise to invite others in
- [ ] Not just for the low bottom drunks, AA is for all, reaches all levels, people don’t have to go to the depths that others went to
- [ ] Did AA cross boarders, cultures, languages, customs? It did and the general service committee was committed to translating materials and making AA available to the world
- [ ] The three challenges: anonymity, money, what to do when the founders passed
- [ ] 2/3 of the original stories writers stayed sober
- [ ] We do not have a monopoly on recovery, we are not experts in religion, we are not experts in health, this is not a religion. AA is only an expert in itself and it’s experience. This is a powerful section with a clear statement
- [ ] Most issues I have had with AA have been able to be answered/solved with the traditions. The steps are how we are sober, the traditions are why we exist
- [ ] Politics or religion has not come in our way thanks to the traditions
- [ ] Pride, anger, and resentment can destroy us
- [ ] Ego destruction, the ego can always come back and destroy you. We have to constantly be on guard for our ego
- [ ] We must hit bottom, defined as admitting defeat, admitting we were powerless, and we surrendered to something higher. The admission of defeat and surrender are the start of our recovery
- [ ] Defeat, surrender, ego destruction
- [ ] The medical and religious perspective of AA from experts/friends of the program
- [ ] The AA general service board is the founders turning it over
- [ ] We are alcoholics - we have a tremendous drive of fear and shame
- [ ] The importance of a spiritual experience
- [ ] Come to god, he is waiting and willing of you are willing and seek him
- [ ] Let go and let god, align your will with his
- [ ] The legacy of AA, the spirit of service, the strength of saying ‘I am an alcoholic.’ We have an obligation to keep AA alive, we need AA, we need the traditions, we need the legacies, we need to survive for the still sick and suffering wondering in the dark. We need it so that all are welcome. This is a beautiful and powerful program. AA is important for the individual but no one individual is ever more important than any other
- [ ] I am glad that I read this book, I am grateful for AA, this is a beautiful and fascinating program/organization
March 31, 2016
Eye opening experience!
Sheds a new light on a a wonderful time of change and growth among and for those whom have been freed from the enslavement of alcoholism!
Sheds a new light on a a wonderful time of change and growth among and for those whom have been freed from the enslavement of alcoholism!
April 20, 2021
I found this book to be extremely interesting and well written. Alcoholics anonymous is a book that explains the history of a sobriety organization known as A.A (Alcoholics Anonymous). The book informed me about several key details about this organization and the statistics when it comes to the number of people who were helped and joined this group. The book also follows a former member of the group, Bill W., and follows his story through hard times and sobriety. I found this book very interesting because I was interested in writing a small screenplay in which one of the characters happened to be an alcoholic, luckily, I found this book and it informed me of several important things I can add to this character. I recommend this book to anyone who is suffering from alcholicsm or is somewhat interested in what happens behind the scenes, and how people can get help due to certain issues.
January 24, 2022
A fantastic history of the Program, as well as transcripts of talks to further enhance your understanding of various concepts, from spiritual to medical and psychological, in relation to the illness of alcoholism. A MUST read for Friends of Bill, and highly recommended to those interested in an important piece of recovery history.
December 8, 2022
If your an alcoholic or an addict in the program, this is a good read. There are some dry spots, but it's really great to know the history behind a program that has saved so many lives.
January 29, 2025
Excellent history of early AA, the founders... And what happened next, beautiful
November 17, 2025
A great book of AA history!
December 3, 2024
Me llevo una muy grata sorpresa respecto al contenido de este libro. No esperaba que estuviera tan especializado en la historia de la comunidad. Sin duda será de gran ayuda pars próximas consultas. Apéndice A. 23 dice 2022. Leí el compendio de plenitud número 3 que consta de 328 páginas pero al no estar registrado en Goodreads uso este libro como referencia. Apéndice B. 5 de jul 23, leí el compendio de Plenitud número 10 que consta de 348 páginas. Leí ahora el compendio 13 que consta de 326 páginas. Ahora sí leí este libro. Del 20 de noviembre al 2 de diciembre.
April 20, 2024
Very Helpful to Understand
This great fellowship that we are part of is for me a life-saving organisation that has given me a new way of life. To understand where it has come from and how it was built and how it should continue to be maintained is absolutely paramount and is described in this book for all to read. It never ceases to amaze me how well-thought-out this programme is and on reading this book it describes how much thought had gone into it and how it's been structured. A must read
This great fellowship that we are part of is for me a life-saving organisation that has given me a new way of life. To understand where it has come from and how it was built and how it should continue to be maintained is absolutely paramount and is described in this book for all to read. It never ceases to amaze me how well-thought-out this programme is and on reading this book it describes how much thought had gone into it and how it's been structured. A must read
April 9, 2018
A fascinating yet understated account of how something grows and takes hold. This particular account was of course written by the man who was pivotal to it all happening, which surely shapes it, but nonetheless one cannot help but be impressed. I read up to page 222, which is where other voices take over.
I am reminded of Dorothy Day and how she grew a movement. Her granddaughter's account feels quite different! I'm interested in reading this story from different angles as well.
I am reminded of Dorothy Day and how she grew a movement. Her granddaughter's account feels quite different! I'm interested in reading this story from different angles as well.
July 24, 2011
Written by Bill Wilson, it gives a history of AA from the perspective of the vantage point of 1955 Convention commemorating the twentieth anniversary of it founding. Included the text of talks by early supporters like Sam Shoemaker, and Dr. Harry Tiebout.
March 13, 2010
Essential reading for anyone in A.A. General Service or for anyone interested in A.A. history.
January 20, 2011
This book really gives you insight into the even-now, growing fellowship of AA. It describes how a small band of men grew into one of the world's leading recovery program, almost overnight.
August 7, 2011
good history of AA and even has a little write-up about the 1955 convention in St Louis.
December 27, 2015
4/4/15. I am reading this with Mike Meeks. We are making slow progress.
August 19, 2020
History books are amazing.
April 6, 2023
Wonderful
I absolutely loved reading all the speeches that were said and the history of AA from its founders.
Thank God for AA
I absolutely loved reading all the speeches that were said and the history of AA from its founders.
Thank God for AA
April 13, 2023
A must reat for fans of AA
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews