The story of the birth of “Alcoholics Anonymous.”
It was 1934. Bill Wilson was a pretentious, loud-talking New York City alcoholic. Nearly 40, he was feeding his habit by stealing grocery money from his wife. Sometimes he even panhandled. Several times he had been hospitalized, but he always started drinking again, no matter what resolutions he made.
One November day an old alcoholic friend, Ebby Thatcher, paid him a visit. Thatcher was sober and had come to tell Wilson why. He had had a religious experience. Members of an organization called the Oxford Group had visited him in jail, where he had been incarcerated for drunkenness. After talking with them, he had yielded his life to God. The desire to drink was gone, he said. His life was changed.
After several visits, Thatcher convinced Wilson – who was quite hostile to religion – to attend a meeting at a Manhattan rescue mission. Wilson, though quite drunk, was moved by the testimonies and went forward to testify to his own changed heart. This change lasted less than a day: Wilson went on a three-day binge and was hospitalized again. Thatcher visited the hospital, and at Wilson’s request repeated his formula for conversion:
“Realize you are licked, Admit it, And get willing to turn your life over to the care of God.”
After Thatcher left, Wilson fell into a deep depression. But finally, while still in the hospital, he found himself crying out, “If there is a God, let him show himself! I am ready to do anything!” What followed was a powerful spiritual experience in which Wilson felt overwhelmed by a sense of freedom, peace and the presence of God. He never took another drink.
That spring, Wilson went to Akron, Ohio, on a would-be business deal. The deal fell flat. Broke and lonely, Wilson felt strongly tempted to drink. Desperately, he looked in his hotel’s phone directory and called a local Oxford leader, and told her:
“I’m from the Oxford Group and I’m a rum hound from New York.”
He poured out his fear of falling, and she invited him over immediately. She had a project in mind.
For two years she had been working on a surgeon, Bob Smith. Smith was Wilson’s opposite in personality. The surgeon was a silent drinker, stern and distant. The group had confessed with him and prayed with him, but his drinking had remained as uncontrollable as ever.
The next day the two men met in the kitchen of a local home in Akron, and they hit it off remarkably well. Within a month Smith took his last drink. At that kitchen table in Akron, Ohio, in 1934, “Alcoholics Anonymous” was born.