AA – First Five years

Lois W, wife of Alcoholics Anonymous’ Co-founder, Bill W, recalls the time in AA when there were few members and no Big Book In the early days of AA things were really different. For five years there was no Big Book. The only way to communicate with people was to go tell them, so that was what we did of course, all the meetings were held in peoples homes, the homes of those people lucky enough to have them. Anybody who had one made it wide open to whoever the boys brought in. Our houses, Dr. Bob’s in Akron and ours in Brooklyn were just filled up with drunks, either drinking or stopped temporarily; or well on the way to real sobriety. Then 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 those 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 did not 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 sad, sad things that happened, many very humourous things, and inspirational things, too. Several are coming to mind now. Bill, as you know, came from Vermont and someone sent him some Maple Syrup from there. It came in a Whisky bottle. O...
Source: Recovery Is Sexy.com - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Adult Children of Alcoholics Al-anon Alateen Alcoholics Anonymous Recovery Women big book co-founder Lois W Source Type: blogs