The Real and Complete
Early A.A. History Story
A.A. Had Two Founders, You Know
Tampa Bay Clean and
Sober Plenary Session Address
Dick B. © 2005
I had the privilege, on occasion, of sharing
the podium with Dr. Bob’s daughter, Sue Smith Windows of Akron, Oho. And Sue
frequently began her talks with the statement:
“A.A. had two founders, you know.”
The problem is that a lot of us did not know.
Nor did we learn about the Akron story or the details about Dr. Bob and his wife
Anne Ripley Smith until months or even years along our sobriety trail. In fact,
the chasm between the traditional New York story and the seldom detailed Akron
story has grown so deep that many have proclaimed there were “two” A.A.’s—the
one that one began in 1935 and was abandoned in 1938, while the real “basic”
program didn’t begin until after the Big Book was released in the Spring of
1939. Others thought there had been a “split” between East and West in the
effort that began with Bill and Bob in Akron on June 10, 1935. And, while the
details have been made murky and confusing by neglect, the time is long overdue
to see how A.A. really developed, what its real roots were, and how the complete
historical picture can help us all today as we pursue A.A.’s real purpose –
fostering the mission of one drunk in helping another.
Forget that, and you’ve forgotten what Alcoholics Anonymous gave to America in
the 20th Century.
With Two Distinctly Different
Backgrounds
Though seemingly never at odds with each
other, A.A.’s two founders William Griffith Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith
brought diverse, conflicting, and often ignored backgrounds to the recovery
table.
Dr. Bob, the elder of the two, was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He and his
family were as Christian as they come. His father taught Sunday School at the
North Congregational Church for 40 years. His mother was a fervent, church-going
pillar of that same church. The Smith family did, in its church, what so many
dedicated Christians did in their churches (and many still do). The Smiths often
attended four prayer and other services each week Son Bob dived into Christian
Endeavor, the young people’s group at the church.
Five times a week, Bob was fed the Bible, prayer, Christian literature, quiet
times, conversions, witnessing, and fellowship. This was long before the Oxford
Group was even a twinkle in Frank Buchman’s eye. Later, Bob attended St.
Johnsbury Academy where there was, among other strains, a definite religious
emphasis. And, despite his drinking episodes, Bob was linked to Christian
churches and membership throughout his life. When he completed his college and
medical school educations, he married the Christian lady Anne Ripley. He was
soon affiliated with St. Luke Church, took his kids to Sunday School in Akron,
and later became—with Anne—a charter member of the Westside Presbyterian Church
and worshipped there for several years. Finally, Dr. Bob concluded his church
and earthly life as a communicant at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron.
Moreover, he read the Bible from beginning to end at least three times, devoted
at least an hour each day to reading mostly religious literature, and had quiet
individual prayer sessions three times a day. During these, he studied
Scripture, some important Bible passage, prayed, sought guidance, and then, as
he said, “went about my Father’s business.”
Bll W.’s story is as different as the night from the day except for the fact
that Bill too was born and raised in Vermont – East Dorset, Vermont, to be
exact. I’ve found no record of church participation by Bill’s parents – before
or after they parted ways. Bill apparently was involved in a Sunday School until
age 12 when he left in protest over a temperance pledge.
Bill long characterized himself as a conservative atheist. He said he had never
studied the Bible until he came to Akron in 1935. He never belonged to a church;
and, despite strong and deep friendships with Episcopalian Rev. Samuel Shoemaker
and Roman Catholic Jesuit Priest Ed Dowling, never joined either the Episcopal
or Roman Catholic denominations. Bill married a non-Christian, Lois Burnham, in
a Swedenborgian Church—a marital tie that carried with it Lois’s family who had
been active Swendenborgian clergy. Also Lois’s declaration that she didn’t
believe she needed a “conversion,” and didn’t much care for the First Century
Christian Fellowship (the Oxford Group) through whose auspices her husband
became sober. For his part, Bill often said he had felt superior to most
Christians and that, if he believed in any God at all, it was the “god” of
Science.
Such was the background of the two Vermonters who founded A.A.
And Two Different Starts in Their
Search for Sobriety
Before Dr. Bob and Bill met each other on
Mother’s Day of 1935, each had begun his sobriety in a totally different way and
from totally different starting points.
Then sober for a mere five months, Bill Wilson had nonetheless become a zealot
in pursuit of drunks to help—even though he seemingly had no significant message
which would bring them deliverance. By contrast, though drinking heavily for the
previous two and a half years, Dr. Bob Smith had become a zealot in pursuit of
further Biblical knowledge. Yet Dr. Bob seemingly had no significant interest in
bringing his Biblical studies to bear on his drinking problem or even on the
drinking problems of any one else.
Out of these two, totally different beginnings grew a powerful combination of
talent and enthusiasm that has enabled me, and a host of other alcoholics and
addicts, to remain clean and sober for many years. Clean and sober, that is,
with a borrowed zeal that involved helping others get better and a concomitant
zealous quest for a greater understanding of God, our Creator, and greater
knowledge of how God’s power could be called up to help when help from all other
human sources seemed unavailable and ineffective.
In a sense, pioneer AAs drew on the life-changing techniques of Oxford Group
“teams” in developing a method for message-carrying—utilizing story telling. For
knowledge of what God could do and expected them to do, they plunged into the
Bible. That this Bible quenched their thirst for spiritual knowledge is
underlined by the very name they affectionately gave the Bible itself. They
called it “the Good Book.”
Emanating From Two Distinctly
Different Pre-Sobriety Roots
In the past fifteen years of research and
writing, I have taken the liberty of bestowing two totally different names on
the two totally different A.A. programs that marked the beginning of our
fellowship’s growth.
One I called the Akron Genesis. This because A.A. co-founder Dr. Bob landed in
Akron, Ohio from Vermont to own his home and conduct his medical practice. A.A.
itself was founded in Akron. And the real A.A. success story grew out of the
work in Akron.
The other program, I have recently called the New York Genesis. And, although
the real spiritual roots of A.A.—even early New York A.A.—go back much farther
than New York, the elements of the New York program were produced by New Yorker
Bill Wilson, centered in New York, and mentored on the East Coast by activists
in New York’s Calvary Episcopal Church and its rector Rev. Sam Shoemaker. The
New York people ultimately produced the second program which became embodied in
A.A.’s basic text and Twelve Steps.
Regrettably, the real nature and content of the Akron pioneer program had been
overlooked, distorted, and minimized by many AAs themselves, and by historians
and scholars. But it was this program that achieved the astonishing successes
and success rates. And it is, I believe, to this early program that some AAs and
12 Step groups can look today for help with alcoholism and a reversal of today’s
dismal 1 to 5% success rates. I do not believe the answer lies in more
“treatment,” new treatment models, critiques or religious controversy or
bashing. It lies in the power of Almighty God and the way in which He graciously
guided the Akron pioneers as they asked for His revelation and also studied His
Bible for His revealed written will.
The Roots of the Akron Genesis of
Alcoholics Anonymous
I often call The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics
Anonymous (http://www.dickb.com/Akron.shtml;
http://www.dickb.com/drbob.shtml) the “Dr. Bob Root” of A.A. Largely because
it got its thrust way back in Dr. Bob’s youth at St. Johnsbury Church in
Vermont. From that venue grew Dr. Bob’s belief that Bible study, conversion to
Christ, individual and group prayer, a continuing quest for God’s will and God’s
guidance, strenuous and demanding effort to obey God, the reading of religious
literature, fellowship, love, and service—each and all of them—contained the
ingredients for a new and abundant life in Christ. According to his son Smitty,
Dr. Bob was really much more interested in the “message” than in the views of a
“messenger.” Hence his ultimate focus was mainly on Biblical fellowship rather
than on church activity like that in which his parents had been intensely
involved. Perhaps too, it explained his alleged disdain for “sky pilots”
although there is evidence to refute that characterization.
In a nutshell, however, far too little attention has been paid to the research
of Akron A.A. and to the huge United Christian Endeavor Movement that had begun
in Williston, Maine in February, of 1883, not long before Dr. Bob’s birth in St.
Johnsbury, Vermont on August 8, 1879. That dynamic society quickly spread its
outreach like wild-fire to a world-wide and astonishingly large membership of
some three million five hundred thousand people. And its remarkable membership
numbers and growth certainly equaled and probably exceeded that of the combined
memberships, at their peak, of the much-discussed Washingtonians, Oxford Group,
and Alcoholics Anonymous together.
Christian Endeavor societies were numerous and their literature was
voluminous—with hymnals, guide books, pamphlets, and newspapers, as well as
Christian books and articles. Their focus, like that of early A.A., was local.
Yet their membership and conventions were world-wide in scope. Their program was
very simple – much like the simplicity in approach that was so much stressed by
Dr. Bob.
The Christian Endeavor Tree
The Christian Endeavor Society tree had four,
simple roots: (1) Confession of Christ. (2) Service for Christ. (3) Fellowship
with Christ’s people. (4) Loyalty to Christ’s Church (See Francis E. Clark.
Christian Endeavor in All Lands. Boston: The United Society of Christian
Endeavor, 1906, p. 93). Its founder, Dr. Clark, said it was “an organization as
nearly self-governing and self-propagating as any organization can be” (Clark,
supra, p. 50)—with these later to be descriptive of two major group
characteristics of its A.A. step-child. The required, simple pledge, or
covenant, was:
Trusting in the Lord Jesus for strength, I
promise Him that I will strive to do whatever He would like to have me do; that
I will make it the rule of my life to pray and to read the Bible every day, and
to support my own church in every way, especially by attending all her regular
Sunday and mid-week services, unless prevented by some reason which I can
conscientiously give to my Savior; and that, just so far as I know how,
throughout my whole life, I will endeavor to lead a Christian life. As an active
member, I promise to be true to all my duties, to be present and to take some
part, aside from singing, in every Christian Endeavor prayer-meeting, unless
hindered by some reason which I can conscientiously give to my Lord and Master.
If obliged to be absent from the monthly consecration-meeting of the society, I
will, if possible, send at least a verse of Scripture to be read in response to
my name at the roll call (Clark, supra, p. 252).
Christian Endeavor In Summary
Extensive research—still ongoing—establishes
to my satisfaction that the actual practices of a Christian Endeavor Society can
be described as: (1) Acceptance of Christ as one’s Saviour—with conversion
meetings to foster such decisions.. (2) Daily individual Bible study and group
Bible study meetings. (3) Daily individual prayer as well fellowship prayer
meetings. (4) Study and topical discussion of religious literature. (5) Quiet
Hour—involving individual confession of Christ, Bible study, prayer, and seeking
God’s guidance. (6) Support of one’s church. (7) Love and service as the code of
conduct.
The Distinctly Different Oxford
Group Practices
Many who are not familiar with Christian
Endeavor or its practices and who are equally unfamiliar with the details of
early Akron A.A. meetings, practices, and principles hold their noses while
joyously reporting—without justification—that early Akron A.A. was a part of the
Oxford Group and therefore unsuccessful. Simply not so.
The Oxford Group did not involve decisions for Christ or conversion meetings.
Nor did it give special emphasis to Bible study and prayer meetings. Nor did it
encourage the reading of much Christian literature other than the many Oxford
Group writings themselves. Nor did it allow for self-propagation or
self-government. The Oxford Group founder Frank N.D. Buchman was the boss, and
Buchman called the signals for his followers. Most significant, the Oxford Group
was primarily a life-changing entity rather than an organization that fostered
conversions, Bible study, prayer, and reading. It was, however, derived from,
and much involved in, the pre-Christian Endeavor and pre-Oxford Group practice
of Quiet Time, which was sometimes called a Quiet Hour, and earlier called the
“Morning Watch.”
The Match-up of Christian Endeavor
and Early A.A.
In almost every aspect, the Akron pioneer
Christian Fellowship, as they called themselves, was a solid match in principle,
meetings, and practice for the Christian Endeavor Movement in which Dr. Bob had
intensely—by his own characterization—been trained as a youngster.
The proof of the Akron Christian Endeavor pudding comes from comparing with each
other three types of societies: (1) The long-ignored Christian Endeavor groups.
(2) The monolithic Oxford Group and its self-characterized “First Century
Christian Fellowship” devoted to “world-changing through life-changing.” (3) The
pioneer A.A. group in Akron, which characterized itself as a “Christian
Fellowship,” had no national or international leadership, and devoted itself to
Bible study, old fashioned prayer meetings, use of Christian devotionals,
regular quiet times, conversions to Christ, and serving God and their fellow
suffers by love and practical service.
Today there is ample evidence to show which society resembled which, and which
society differed from which. The primary evidence can be found in the A.A.
Conference Approved title, DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (NY: Alcoholics
Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980). That excellent and official A.A. history
establishes that John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s agent Frank Amos investigated the
Akron A.A. scene in great depth, specifically described its ingredients, and
left us with a splendid and simple description of its program that very little
resembled that of the Oxford Group or its principles and practices, and yet—in
almost every particular—is a dead ringer for the local Christian Endeavor
proto-type groups of Dr. Bob’s youth.
Christian Endeavor’s “Five Great
Principles”
British Christian Endeavor leader Rev. F. B.
Meyer, who inspired both Christian Endeavor and the later Oxford Group founder
Frank Buchman as to Quiet Time practices, declared: “Christian Endeavor stands
for five great principles:
(1) Personal devotion to the living Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ and his will in every department of life. (2) The pledge
obligation which implicates the Spirit of God as the only source of the
endeavor. (3) Constant religious training. (4) Strenuous loyalty to the local
church. (5) Interdenominational spiritual fellowship to realize the Lord’s
prayer for spiritual unity (Clark, supra, pp. 101-102).
Christian Endeavor Societies carried on
autonomous local programs, centered on a particular church. Those local groups
embraced – as did early Akron A.A. – confession of Christ, Bible study,
conversion meetings, revival prayer meetings, the Quiet Hour, love and service.
These local societies never crumbled because of their collateral, though
sometimes outspoken, interest in temperance—a political action that many claimed
to have sounded the death knell of such groups as the Washingtonian Movement.
Add to this mix a specific focus on helping of drunks—which Christian Endeavor
did not undertake—and you have almost the prototype for the Akron program which
we will soon discuss.
The New York Genesis of Alcoholics
Anonymous
I call the New York beginnings of A.A. “The
New York Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous.” I have chosen this name of late in
order to distinguish the A.A. timeline on the East Coast of the United States
from the timeline that began in St. Johnsbury, Vermont with Dr. Bob’s youth and
wound up in Akron, Ohio. The New York story is fairly well known, though some of
its ingredients are not. Unfortunately, this New York timeline has become “the”
A.A. story – the one in Bill’s Story, the one in many biographies of Bill, and
the one usually mentioned by A.A. historians. It is, of course, important if
fully and correctly told. But it really only reports on the program Bill
fashioned with his 1939 publication of the Big Book. It ignores the details or
Dr. Bob’s religious training during his childhood to his renewed religious quest
in Akron in the 1930’s. And it winds up highlighting New York A.A. as an unhappy
Oxford Group offshoot instead of as a successful Christian Fellowship offshoot
unique to Akron. Nonetheless, the New York story is one which also needs fully
to be told. And here is what I believe is an accurate synopsis.
Rowland Hazard and Dr. Carl Jung
The exact time of occurrence of the
Hazard/Jung events is murky and disputed. But it seems safe to conclude that
Rowland Hazard, member of a prominent Rhode Island family, had been suffering
the pangs of alcoholism for many years. Around 1930 or 1931, he paid two
different visits to the famed Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. The
first was for treatment, but was followed by Rowland’s return to drinking. The
second was for Rowland’s despairing report to Jung that the treatment had
failed.
Whereupon Dr. Jung told Rowland that Rowland had the mind of a chronic
alcoholic, and could never be helped by human means, but might be cured through
a conversion. Jung recommended religious association. Rowland sought out the
Oxford Group and followed its life-changing precepts. And a seemingly accurate
conclusion as to the resultant facts, would have it that Rowland was permanently
cured, went on the start the A.A. ball rolling with Ebby Thacher in New England,
and figured prominently in the subsequent writings about, and activities of,
Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Jr. and Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. The
Hazard/Jung events are often characterized as an introduction by Jung of
“conversion” as a viable solution to alcoholism.
Ebby Thacher and Rowland Hazard
Rowland appears to have mastered the Oxford
Group’s life-changing principles and practices. And certainly one of these was
the principle of Sharing for Witness—passing on the message of what God had done
that the Oxford Grouper could not do for himself. Rowland and a couple of other
Oxford Group friends (Shep Cornell and Cebra Graves) procured the release by a
judge to their custody of an alcoholic from Albany, New York, named Edwin T.
Thacher (often known as “Ebby”). It seems quite clear that Rowland Hazard
thoroughly indoctrinated Ebby with Oxford Group ideas.
This tutoring produced several results: (1) Ebby learned the Oxford Group
life-changing ideas quite well. (2) Ebby was placed in by Hazard in Rev. Sam
Shoemaker’s Calvary Rescue Mission and there answered an altar call and made a
decision for Christ (facts seldom correctly or adequately reported). (3) Ebby
applied the Oxford Group Sharing for Witness technique and sought out his old
alcoholic friend, Bill Wilson, to give him a deliverance message. (4) Though
Wilson was kicking and screaming, Ebby presented Bill with a straightforward
statement that he (Ebby) had “got religion,” that God had done for him what he
could not do for himself, and that, by learning and applying the Oxford Group’s
principles, he had been converted and cured. The Thacher/Hazard events are
sometimes characterized as constituting the introduction into A.A. of the Oxford
Group’s “practical program of action” as the method for achieving the conversion
ingredient of recovery that Dr. Jung had told Rowland Hazard would be needed for
recovery.
Conversions, Calvary Mission, and
Bill’s Recovery
This part of the story is frequently omitted,
distorted, or misinterpreted. But 15 years of research have now documented some
its important aspects. First, Ebby went to the altar at Calvary Mission, made a
decision for Christ, and was converted. Second, Bill Wilson followed suit, went
to Calvary Mission stating that he wanted what Ebby had received. Wilson soon
responded to the altar call, made a decision for Christ, and was
converted—though wandering drunk and aimlessly for a short time and then
checking in to Towns Hospital.
Ebby visited Bill in Towns Hospital and elaborated on the Oxford Group
“practical program of action.” Bill followed directions, “humbly offered himself
to God as he then understood God,” cried out “If there be a God, let Him show
himself,” and reported having his famous “hot flash experience.” Bill’s
experience and recital of it was much like that of his grandfather in Vermont.
It caused Bill to believe that he had “found” God and had had a conversion
“experience.” Whatever Bill had—whether at Calvary Rescue Mission or at Towns or
at both—Bill Wilson never drank again.
The Dr. Silkworth and Professor
William James Ingredients
Just exactly how valid the so-called “disease
theory” of alcoholism may be is a matter that has been discussed and disputed
for many years. And Dr. William D. Silkworth, chief psychiatrist at Towns
Hospital, who had often treated Wilson, may have espoused it. But if we take
Wilson at his word, Dr. Silkworth, both during and after Bill’s last
hospitalization, imbued Wilson with the theory that his malady was both mental
(an obsession of the mind) and physical (accompanied by an allergy of the body),
and perhaps required some kind of “moral psychology” to cure it. The fact is
that Dr. Norman Vincent Peale later made clear that Silkworth himself believed
that the “Great Physician, Jesus Christ” was the one who could successfully cure
alcoholism. And, when Wilson reported the “hot flash” to Silkworth, the good
doctor said he couldn’t explain the event but could observe the change in Bill,
and that Bill should hang on to what he had found. These events, in context,
have often been characterized as linking the problem (alcoholism as defined by
Silkworth) with the solution (conversion as prescribed by Jung), which was
produced by a religious program – the practical life-changing program of the
Oxford Group as Rowland had described it to Ebby and Ebby to Bill.
While in Towns Hospital, Bill had been given a copy of Professor William James’s
The Varieties of Religious Experience. The book was reportedly given to Wilson
by either Rowland Hazard or Ebby Thacher. Wilson believed that the religious
experience accounts by William James, plus the professor’s analysis of them,
validated Wilson’s own “religious experience.” Bill also felt he had discovered
from the James book another founding recovery ingredient—that the conversion or
religious experience had to be preceded by “deflation in depth.” So at this
point, Wilson felt he had been cured through a program that addressed seemingly
hopeless alcoholism, articulated surrender of self through life-changing
techniques, and produced a resultant conversion and relationship with God, which
in turn assured a cure for alcoholism. One that needed to be told abroad. This
he began trying almost the moment he got sober, but without success.
The Interim Failure of Wilson’s
Outreach
Regrettably, secular, universalist, and
revisionist A.A. observers have erroneously fallen for Bill Wilson’s own
explanation of his failure as an evangelist. Bill said that he had been totally
unable to get anyone sober during the first five months of sobriety when he had
chased drunks at Towns Hospital, at Calvary Rescue Mission, and at Oxford Group
meetings. He concluded that he had failed because he needed to follow
Silkworth’s suggestion that he must hit his witnesses hard first with the bald
facts about “medically incurable” alcoholism and then present them with the
Oxford Group program. But, the record is clear from the statements of Wilson and
his wife Lois that this effort produced absolutely no successes, either with the
drunks they took into their home, or with those approached during Bill’s
outreach. And these failures continued for some time, as Bill himself related..
Apologists in A.A. and in the Oxford Group have often chortled that, while Bill
got nobody sober, he himself did not drink. Huzzah! But that’s not a program or
successful outreach. The far more reasonable and logical conclusion is that Bill
was a messenger without a message. He had never been to church. He had never
read the Bible. He had not even had much sober exposure to Oxford Group ideas;
and he was reportedly not a reader. How then, could he have roused the drunks to
conversion and salvation!
A Change of Scene in Akron
We have told before and elsewhere the story
of the Wilson-Smith meeting at Henrietta Seiberling’s Gate Lodge in Akron (See
Dick B., Henrietta B. Seiberling: Ohio’s Lady with a Cause). We’ve also
recounted what Bill and Bob did together in the summer of 1935 (See Dick B., The
Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous). But what we have devoted our time to
most recently is the totally different scene Bill encountered in Akron when he
met and stayed with the Smiths. Bill participated in arranging hospitalizations,
Bible study, group prayers, seeking God’s guidance, acceptance of Christ, Quiet
Times, and team outreach by groups of individuals. And right away, these efforts
produced cures. Bob was cured in a few weeks. A.A. Number Three (Bill Dotson)
was cured in a few days. And so it went through the chain of pioneers up to
mid-1938 (See Dick B., When Early AAs Were Cured and Why).
A Change of Program in 1939
Though he was commissioned, after much
argument and a split vote in Akron, to write a book reporting the Akron program
to the world, Bill did not do that. He began work on his Big Book in mid-1938.
But from the beginning, its writing and publication was a commercial venture
that he worked on with his partner Hank Parkhurst. Bill drew on a variety of new
sources: (1) One was the alcoholism treatment comments by lay therapist Richard
Peabody. (2) Another was the New Thought ideas from Emmet Fox and others. (3)
Still another—and the major one—was a prototype of the Oxford Group principles
as reduced from 28 to 12 and embodying almost the very language Bill had learned
from Oxford Group leader Rev. Sam Shoemaker (See Dick B., The Oxford Group and
Alcoholics Anonymous and New Light on Alcoholism). (4) Moreover Wilson salted
into the language of the Big Book several New Age counterfeits of Christian
words and phrases. (5) But he left out the major elements of the Akron program:
the Bible, Akron’s Christian literature, Anne Smith’s Journal, and Quiet Time.
(6) A new idea and a new language were fashioned to appeal to atheists and
agnostics and those of non-Christian faiths. (7) The simple United Christian
Endeavor principles and practices from Dr. Bob’s youth were never once
mentioned. (8) The word “cure” was deleted from A.A. vocabulary and replaced
with “once an alcoholic always an alcoholic.” And the results seem to have
verified the validity of the new, “no cure” proclamation in all but a small
percentage of fellowship members.
The Conclusions of Some
1. Statistical surveys show that
today’s A.A. produces only a small percentage of permanent abstainers – one to
five percent.
2. Documented records of the 1930’s and early 1940’s show a 75 to 93% success
rate during that A.A. period.
3. Christian and atheist groups alike point out that alcoholism can be cured
without A.A.—Christians stressing the power of God, and secularists the power of
the will.
4, A.A. itself has stopped growing. Treatment programs are being eliminated.
Treatment money is being directed toward every conceivable malady that will
enable government or insurance money to be received.
5. Watered-down A.A. (with ever-increasing idolatry, simplistic emphasis on
Meetings, and the rejection of religious beliefs and religious expressions) has
not
cut the mustard with enviable support or results.
6. A huge number of alcoholics and addicts, both within and outside of A.A., are
simply not recovering.
7. The time is long overdue for a careful look at the early A.A. history story.
Summarized, our suggested history concerns an understanding that God had done
for real alcoholics what they could not do for themselves. And the remainder of
my talks will enable you really to see what our Creator did and what the
pioneers did to produce real victories in recovery battles within early A.A.
END
©Dick B.
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