In AA's First Five Years - Lois Wilson
Lois Wilson, wife of AA's co-founder, Bill Wilson, recalls the time in AA
when there were few members and no Big Book. From the January 1967 AA
Grapevine.
In the early days of AA things were really different. For five years
there was no Big Book. The only way to communicate with other people was
to go and tell them, so that's what we did. Of course, all of the
meetings were held in people's homes, the homes of those who were lucky
enough to have them. Anybody who had one made it wide open to whomever
the boys brought in. Our houses, Dr. Bob's in Akron and ours in Brooklyn,
were just filled with drunks, either drinking, or stopped temporarily, or
well on the way to real sobriety.
Yes, AA was quite different in those days for many reasons. One was that
there were no people in AA except those who had gone to the very bottom.
Only these would listen to the story that one drunk was telling another.
When AA first started, before there was a book, it was more anonymous
than it is now, because even the Fellowship was without a name. AA didn't
have a name until the book was written. Before that it was just a bunch
of drunks trying to help each other, a bunch of nameless drunks. They had
to be worked with over and over; families and everybody did what they
could to help.
There were many, many sad things that happened, many very humorous
things, and inspirational things, too.
Several are coming to mind right now. Bill, as you know, came from
Vermont and someone sent him some maple syrup from there. It came in a
whiskey bottle. One of the boys saw this attractive container in the
kitchen and he was so drunk at the time that he gulped the whole bottle
of syrup, thinking it was whiskey.
We had a rule that no one could come into the house when he was drinking.
One night one of the boys came home drunk. We wouldn't let him in so he
pried open the coal chute and slid into the cellar. Since he was very fat
it was surprising that he could slide down it, yet somehow he made it.
But this same fat man did get stuck one night in the washtubs. He lived
in the basement apartment. Old city houses used to have stationary tubs
in the kitchen. He thought he'd try to take a bath in one. But after
getting in he couldn't get out so one of us (and I think it was I) had to
pull him out.
There were many other things.a man committed suicide in our house after
having pawned our dress clothes, left over from more prosperous days.
These included Bill's dress suit and my precious evening cape. We have
never owned such articles again.
AA was always thrilling. The families were included in all of the
meetings; wives and parents (there weren't many alcoholic women then),
and the children came too. The children were vitally interested in
everything that went on. They would inquire about all the members and
want to know how they were. They'd learn the Twelve Steps and really try
to live by them. I don't think youngsters can be too young to be thrilled
by the AA program and be helped by it.
One of the first women who came in was the ex-wife of a friend of Bill's.
She had been in Bellevue and had come from there to our house. At that
time there was a wonderful man - I think he was the fourth or fifth AA -
who was trying to start a group in Washington, D.C. This woman went down
to help him and she stayed sober for quite a long time. Then she married
a man they were trying to bring onto the program. He really didn't go
along with the idea himself and used to say to her every once in a while,
"Florence, you look so thirsty." And so she did something about that,
Florence disappeared. Everybody looked for her everywhere and couldn't
find her. After a couple of weeks they found her in the morgue.
At that time each group used to visit every other group. New York members
would go to New Jersey or Greenwich, Philadelphia or Washington or even
Cleveland or Akron. Those were the groups I recall were in existence in
the first five years.
If anybody had a car a bunch of us would pile in and we'd go wherever we
knew there was a meeting. Families were just as much a part of AA as the
alcoholics and we did feel we belonged.
But after a while the AA's thought that they should have an occasional
meeting - at least one every week - of just alcoholics so that they could
really get down to business. When this occurred the wives thought they'd
meet together, too, at the same time. At first these little gatherings of
wives didn't have any particular purpose. Sometimes we'd play bridge and
sometimes we'd gossip about our husbands.
Then a few of us began to see that we really needed the AA program just
as much as the alcoholics. The famous case of my throwing a shoe at Bill
started me wondering about myself and realizing that I needed to live by
the Twelve Steps just as much as he did. He was getting way ahead of me.
I always thought of myself as being the moral mentor in the house, but
Bill, who never was a mentor, was certainly growing spiritually while I
was standing still. Or perhaps there is no standing still - if I wasn't
going ahead, I must be going backwards.
I decided I'd better live by the Twelve Steps. Annie S. and a number of
other people had come to the same conclusion. So, whenever we visited
another group, we would tell the wives and families how we found that we,
too, needed to live by the Twelve Steps of AA. Little groups of wives and
families all over the country began to feel the same need for something
to help overcome their frustrations and help them become integrated human
beings again.
That's the way Al-Anon started. We followed the AA program in every
principle. I want to thank AA's so very much for showing us the way.
Without your leading us we would still be the unhappy folks we were.
In our meetings we tell our own experiences just as AA's do. We tell how
we came to find that we needed Al-Anon and what Al-Anon has done for us.
And we seek to help other families that were, or are, having the same
sort of experience.
In 1950 Bill traveled all over Canada and the United States to see how
AA's would react to the idea of a general conference for Alcoholics
Anonymous, and in doing so he discovered quite a few types of groups of
the family of alcoholics. He thought that they should have a Central
Office here in New York, just as AA did, so that they could be unified in
their use of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions - a place where
inquiries could be received, literature prepared and the public informed
so that those in need would know where to turn.
A good friend and I started a small office in Bedford Hills. By then AA
had had eighty-seven inquiries from wives or groups who wished to
register. As AA was not equipped to handle the families of alcoholics it
handed over this list to us and we wrote to them. Fifty groups responded
and were registered with us. That was in '51. Today (1967) there are over
3,000 Al-Anon groups.
The numerical potential of Al-Anon is greater than AA's because it is
composed not only of mates of alcoholics, but children, parents and other
relatives and friends. It is estimated that five people are seriously
affected by one alcoholic.
Though we have barely scratched the surface, the future is bright, thanks
to you AA's for your wonderful example and inspiration.
Lois Wilson's 1967 Grapevine Article
Contact:
The Legacy Group of Alcoholics Anonymous © 2005