Authors: Ernest Kurtz
Not-God (54 page)
Yet the 1987 Conference, as we have seen topically throughout this chapter, lived up to its responsibilities and moved toward measured resolutions of the problems at hand. To an outside observer of A.A.’s General Service Conferences since Bill Wilson’s death, the pattern seems simple: a complacent New York office provokes delegate orneriness; troubled, puzzled, fearful staff members seem on the other hand to inspire Conference responsibility.
In other words, Alcoholics Anonymous continues to be what Bill W. once termed it: “an utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery.”
165
Since the publication of the earlier version of the present book in 1979 (which did not include Appendix B), I have had many occasions to travel and to speak with both members and scholars on topics related to the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. Consistently, echoing questions have arisen: What next? Won’t Alcoholics Anonymous change because of greater acceptance of alcoholism as an illness, or because people know more about all drug addictions? Hasn’t Alcoholics Anonymous already changed from what it was for its first twenty years?
The questions echoed because they repeat queries gently tendered by many oldtimer interviewees during my initial research. Having reminded those generous individuals that a historian is not a prophet, I nevertheless promised to attempt an answer at die conclusion of my study. That promise was kept on the concluding pages of Appendix A, published in 1979:
Alcoholics Anonymous shall survive so long as its message remains that of the not-God-ness of the wholeness of accepted limitation; and this itself shall endure so long as A.A.’s spiritualizers and its liberals — its “right” and its “left” — maintain in mutual respect the creative tension that arises from their willingness to participate even with others of so different assumptions in the
shared honesty of mutual vulnerability openly acknowledged
.
Alcoholics Anonymous will live, in other words, so long as it is “Alcoholics Anonymous”: “an utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery” that no one claims
perfectly
to understand.
166
Today, almost ten years of additional research and observation of the fellowship and program of Alcoholics Anonymous suggest that that answer holds: it does not require revision, but perhaps it could benefit from a slight expansion.
A.A.’s story reveals over and over again that the key to A.A. life and growth is the tolerance that flows from humility. Humility — the acceptance that, although sober, they remain alcoholic — keeps members honest and keeps them coming to meetings: thus they grow in sobriety. The individual member’s humility and consequent tolerance and the A.A. group’s tolerance and consequent growth are mutually related: each promotes the other.
A new yet also not-new challenge faces Alcoholics Anonymous as these words are written. In early 1987, G.S.O.’s trusted servants gingerly explored precedents for answering a singular request: could there be “special interest” groups of A.A.s diagnosed as having AIDS? A new disease — and therefore a new disease metaphor — had seized American consciousness. As had alcoholics for so many decades, sufferers from acquired immune deficiency syndrome bore the stigma of moral degeneracy. And for at least the moment, fear of contagion led the AIDS victim to be even more stigmatized than the alcoholic.
Staff approached the question as A.A. has consistently resolved all questions of “special interest groups”: so long as the group was of alcoholics, meeting without other affiliation for the purpose of their sobriety, and so long as the group would accept any alcoholics who wished to join it for that purpose, it could call itself and be listed as “Alcoholics Anonymous.” A.A.’s Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and Twelve Concepts, as interpreted by each year’s meeting of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, continue to guide the fellowship.
As time unfolds, A.A.’s story reveals ever more clearly the simplicity of that process. From the very beginning, the Twelve Steps have been both the foundation and the apex of the Alcoholics Anonymous way of life. As A.A. began to grow in the mid-1940s, the Twelve Traditions emerged to safeguard and to apply within A.A. group life the principles of the Steps. The years that immediately followed Bill W.’s death confirmed their centrality. The fellowship discovered the pivotal role of service’s Twelve Concepts more slowly. Although Bill penned the Concepts in 1959 and saw them accepted in 1962, although the
A.A. Grapevine
ran a series of articles on them beginning in November of 1971, even today most A.A. members look blank when the Twelve Concepts are mentioned. Some hope that the recent concern over the self-support Tradition might awaken interest in the legacy of Service: few things focus an alcoholic’s mind so well as the ever-difficult relationship between money and “the spiritual.”
167
Meanwhile, Alcoholics Anonymous remains, as always, not Conference nor office but fellowship. And so when questions arise about A.A.’s future, although there rarely is the time to offer all these details or to establish the context of the answer, it does seem worthwhile to try to capture at least that reality:
Whenever, wherever, one alcoholic meets another alcoholic and sees in that person first and foremost
not
that he or she is male or female, or black or white, or Baptist or Catholic or Jew, or gay or straight, or
whatever
, but sees rather another alcoholic to whom he or she
must
reach out for the sake of his or her own sobriety — so long, in other words, as one alcoholic recognizes in another alcoholic first and foremost that he or she
is
alcoholic and that therefore
both
of them need each other — there will be not only
an
Alcoholics Anonymous, but there will be
the
Alcoholics Anonymous that you and I love so much and respect so deeply.
168
For the deeper answer is that alcoholics, once they have tasted sobriety, become addicted to it and therefore to Alcoholics Anonymous — to the way of life encapsulated in the Twelve Steps and protected by the Twelve Traditions and extended through the Twelve Concepts. It is conceivable, I suppose, because all institutions degenerate, that individuals who call themselves “Alcoholics Anonymous” might some day ignore service, violate tradition, and scorn the Steps — or worse, accord them only lip service. But should that happen, I am sure that somewhere, perhaps under a battered bridge or in a dingy alcove, perhaps even in an atmosphere free of cigarette smoke and lacking coffee, some alcoholic who is trying to stay sober will sidle up to some other alcoholic who may even be drinking and say: “Psst, buddy. You must be awfully thirsty, but let me tell you how it was with me when I used to need a drink …” And in that moment an A.A. meeting will begin, and the story of Alcoholics Anonymous will continue.
“Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” So long as they do, Alcoholics Anonymous lives. For A.A.’s story is one of those stories that will never end so long as there are human beings who discover, however painfully, having tried to play God, that they are not-God — that they can be
both
“sober” and “alcoholic,” both whole and flawed.
+
“Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.”
First formulated by an
A.A. Grapevine
editor in 1946, this Preamble usually appears on p. 3 of each issue of the
Grapevine
and is customarily read at the beginning of all A.A. meetings. (
Cf. Final Report of the 1974 General Service Conference
, p. 18.)
+
The themes of A.A.’s annual General Service Conferences suggest an initial outline for the developments that followed in the years under consideration:
1971: Communication: Key to A.A. Growth
1972: Our Primary Purpose
1973: Responsibility — Our Expression of Gratitude
1974: Understanding and Cooperation — Inside and Outside A.A.
1975: Unity: Through Love and Service
1976: Sponsorship — Our Privilege and Responsibility
1977: The A.A. Group — Where It Begins
1978: The Member and the Group — Recovery Through Service
1979: The Legacies:
Our
Heritage and
My
Responsibility
1980: Participation: The Key to Recovery
1981: A.A. Takes Its Inventory
1982: The Traditions — Our Way of Unity
1983: Anonymity — Our Spiritual Foundation
1984: Gratitude — The Language of the Heart
1985: Golden Moments of Reflection
1986: A.A.’s Future — Our Responsibility
1987: The Seventh Tradition — A Turning Point
+
Just before the 1987 Conference, several delegates raised the subject of surveys, indicating a feeling of grass-roots A.A. that the General Service Office was conducting too many surveys. “They feel like they’re being surveyed to death,” commented John B., G.S.O. general manager.
It is useful to distinguish between the triennial surveys seeking data, as those here being treated, and the surveys sent out asking questions in order to determine the group conscience. This practice began in earnest after the 1986 General Service Conference when the groups were polled on the questions of whether Alcoholics Anonymous should publish a softcover edition of the Big Book or a meditation book.
Apparently led by West Coast attendees, delegates to the 1987 General Service Conference reported a general feeling that surveys are not an effective way of measuring the group conscience. For one thing, there did not seem to be enough time for an adequate response: publication of the softcover Big Book was announced while some groups were still filling out their survey. But there was also expressed the feeling that this is not a proper way to determine the group conscience because there is no give or take discussion, therefore no real
“group
conscience.” Traditionally in A.A., “group conscience” has not been the same as taking a vote. (
Cf. Box 4-5-9
33:2, 3 [April/May and June/July 1987], especially p. 3 of the latter, reporting on a discussion of the topic “Use of Surveys in Making Conference Decisions.”)
KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations are used in the Notes. They are explained more fully in “Notes on Primary Sources” at the conclusion of the Bibliography.
AA: Alcoholics Anonymous
, 2nd ed.
AACA: Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
AAGV: The A.A. Grapevine
ABSI: As Bill Sees It
Amos, “History”: Frank Amos, “History of the Alcoholic movement up to the formation of The Alcoholic Foundation on August 11th, 1938”
“Basic Concepts”: Wilson, “Basic Concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous”
“Beginnings,” [Wilson], “Alcoholics Anonymous: Beginnings and Growth”
CAAAL: The Classified Abstract Archive of the Alcohol Literature
“Co-Founder”: [Wilson], “Alcoholics Anonymous as Seen by W.G.W., a co-founder”
“Fellowship”: [Wilson], “The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous”
HS: Henrietta Seiberling
HS, “Origins”: Henrietta Seiberling, “Origins of Alcoholics Anonymous”
int: interview
JSA: Journal of Studies on Alcohol
(before 1975, the citation is to
QJSA
and the reference to
The Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol
)
Jim B., “Evolution”: Jim B., “The Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous”
LM:
[Wilson], “Talk at LeMoyne College, Syracuse, New York”
“Memo”: [Wilson], “Memorandum to Our Writing Team, subject: Historical Time Table”
NCCA:
[Wilson], “Clergy Conference: talk to the Annual Convention of the National Clergy Conference on Alcoholism”
NCEA: The National Committee for Education on Alcoholism; later, NCA: The National Council on Alcoholism
NW: Nell Wing
NW, “Outline”: Nell Wing, “Outline of A.A. History”
NW, “Pre-History”: Nell Wing, “Pre-A.A. History”
OG: The Oxford Group (for introductory explanation,
cf
. page 9; for in depth treatment,
cf
. pp. 43-52.
QJSA: cf. JSA
, above.
“Review”: [Wilson], “Bill’s Review of the Movement”
“Rockland”: [Wilson], “Transcription of Presentation to Board Meeting, Rockland State Hospital, 14 December 1939”
“Society”: [Wilson], “The Society of Alcoholics Anonymous”
Thomsen: Robert Thomsen,
Bill W
.
tr.:
transcript of tape recording or tape recording
12&12: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
VRE:
William James,
The Varieties of Religious Experience
I 1934–1935
1
The opening story is reconstructed from
AACA
, pp. 58-59;
AA
, pp. 9-13; Wilson,
LM;
Wilson,
NCCA
, pp. 9-10; Ebby’s tr., pp. 12-13; the physical description and details of the setting are from Lois Wilson, interview of 7 April 1977.
2
The final quotation is from
AACA
, p. 58.
3
Regarding Ebby’s sobriety history, letters of Ebby to Wilson: 24 November 1940 (Keswick), 19 November 1942 (Philadelphia), 12 November 1948 (New York), ? November 1949 (Dublin, NH), ? March 1952 (Spring Valley, NY), ? December 1952 (Katonah, NY) — the last three from drying-out facilities.
Cf
. also: Wilson to John T., 27 December 1948; Wilson to Emma D., 21 April 1950; Wilson to Jack T., 3 October 1950; also Nell Wing, interview, 4 April 1977, and Ruth H. tr. Despite his continued drinking, Wilson always regarded Ebby as his “sponsor.” This regard is a profound witness to the central importance of “carrying the message” in Alcoholics Anonymous. This point is most strikingly clear in Wilson, “Review.”
“over one million”: the best treatment of membership figures for A.A. is Barry Leach and John L. Norris, “Factors in the Development of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.),” in Benjamin Kissin and Henri Begleiter (eds.),
Treatment and Rehabilitation of the Chronic Alcoholic
(New York: Plenum Press, 1977), pp. 443-507;
cf
. also John L. Norris, “Alcoholics Anonymous and Other Self-Help Groups,” in Ralph E. Tarter and A. Arthur Sugerman (eds.),
Alcoholism: Interdisciplinary Approaches to an Enduring Problem
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976), p. 764: “We believe the figure of 896,700 active members to be conservative. This does not include those who have recovered in A.A. and are no longer attending meetings.” Nor, of course, does it include those who died between 1935 and 1976.
4
AACA
, p. vii; p. 59 (italics Wilson’s).
5
Ebby’s tr., pp. 9-11; obituary of Rowland H.,
New York Times
, 22 December 1945 — from which I take the spelling “Ro
w
land”: Wilson and those following him habitually omitted the “w”.
6
Wilson to Jung, 23 January 1961; Jung’s reply (Zurich), 30 January 1961, accepted Wilson’s portrayal of “our conversation” as “adequately reported.” This correspondence was published twice in slightly edited form in
AAGV
, in January of 1963 and 1968.
Cf
. also NW, “Pre-History;” Wilson, tr., p. 98; Wilson,
LM:
“I suppose it really began in far off Zurich …;” Wilson to Margarita L., 14 January 1946: “So, you see, I could claim to be a lineal descendant from Dr. Jung.” Margarita L. had been a student of Jung:
cf
. Dr. Harry Tiebout (Greenwich, CT) to Dr. Ralph B., 15 November 1945; Wilson to Della C., 6 March 1947. She was Wilson’s most proximate continuing contact with Jung’s thought.
7
Wilson to Jung, 23 January 1961.
8
Wilson, tr., p. 115: In August 1934, a small Oxford Group contingent was vacationing at the H. summer home near Bennington, VT. One of the number, Cebra G., learned that his father, a judge in Manchester, was about to commit Ebby to Brattleboro Asylum. He and another visitor, Shep C., decided with Rowland to make Ebby a “project.”
Cf
. also: Ebby, tr., p. 12; NW, “Pre-History.”
9
Ebby, tr., pp. 12-13;
cf
. Wilson, tr., p. 117.
10
AA
, p. 9;
AACA
, p. 58.
11
Thomsen, p. 15;— on my use of the Thomsen biography,
cf
. p. 340 in the Bibliography; for the background of Bill’s parents,
ibid.
, pp. 12-14. The significance of the “desertion evening” in Wilson’s mind is witnessed by the fact that Thomsen made its description his opening chapter, pp. 3-11.
12
Thomsen, p. 28 (italics Thomsen’s).
13
Thomsen, pp. 17-21. Wilson’s relationship with his mother, and hers with him, always remained constrained:
cf
, e.g., two of her letters to him: 24 November 1940 and 22 November 1953. Bill had been born at Thanksgiving time, and his mother’s straining to transmit acceptance in these annual epistles is striking; e.g., Emily Wilson Strobell (San Diego, CA) to Wilson, 24 November 1940: “Now many children are not wanted, as perhaps you may know, and so it may be of some pleasure to you to know that you were not in the unwanted class.”
Cf
. also Wilson to Fred B., 20 May 1946: “Neither Dorothy [his sister] nor I have ever stood in quite the right relation to Mother in spite of our best efforts to do so.” Wilson mentions the “great disgrace and great stigma” attached to his parents’ divorce as leading him to feel “that I didn’t belong, I was somehow different”:
LM
, [p. 2].
14
Thomsen, pp. 30, 34.
15
Thomsen, pp. 30-31, 34-36.
16
Thomsen, p. 38.
17
Thomsen, pp. 43-44. Neither Wilson nor Thomsen mentions Darwin or Sumner by name, but their description of the ideas bandied by Whalon make clear the impact of these thinkers.
18
Thomsen, pp. 49-51.
19
Burr and Burton: Thomsen, pp. 52-53; the Bertha Banford story is detailed by Thomsen, pp. 56-63. Wilson first told this, somewhat condensed, in
LM
, [p. 3]; he abbreviated it much more drastically in
AACA
, p. 54.
20
Thomsen, p. 63.
21
Thomsen, pp. 104-106.
22
Thomsen, pp. 106-108;
cf
. also pp. 162-163.
23
AACA
, p. 55.
24
Thomsen, pp. 169-174.
25
Thomsen, p. 160; Lois Wilson, interview, 7 April 1977.
26
Wilson recalled the referral to Towns Hospital as by Dr. Strong,
cf., AA
, p. 7. Thomsen follows this from the taped recollections. Lois Wilson, interviewed 7 April 1977, said that she first obtained the reference to Towns from her father, Dr. Burnham. If Lois mentioned this to Bill or to Dr. Strong, the memories need not conflict.
“four times”: Thomsen, p. 191. Wilson habitually indicated
three
stays at Towns as a patient, and does so in tr. at this point. The hospital records, except for photostats of Bill’s final two admissions in September and December 1934 have been lost. I incline to agree with Thomsen here: Bill seems to elide his June and September 1934 hospitalizations, and the page reference to his first admission on the September admission photostat seems to imply a late 1933 date for his first admission. Yet Dr. Silkworth,
AA
, p. xxiii, indicates three stays, adding to the confusion, as does Thomsen in placing his
third
admission in July of 1934 (p. 194). The solution to this quandry, given the destruction of the hospital records, would seem forever veiled. In Thomsen’s almost despairing summary of the tapes at this point: “In fact, [Wilson’s] memories of the entire period from ‘33 until about the end of ‘34, were totally disordered.” (pp. 192-193). Thus, whether the conversation between Silkworth and Wilson narrated below took place in June or September (or even July) must remain unknown in the obscurity of “mid-summer 1934” —
AACA
, p. 52, despite the fact that on p. 56,
idem
, Wilson says “September.” My own considered preference is for late June.
27
Dr. Silkworth’s understanding of alcoholism, as offered to Wilson on this occasion, will be analyzed below, pp. 21-22 with fuller citations. Here,
cf
. Thomsen, pp. 191, 194-195.
28
Thomsen, p. 193;
AACA
, p. 52. “on a clerk’s salary;”
cf
. notes #26, above, on the problem of timing, and #58, below, for Lois’s employment history.
As a doctor who received his training in the pre-Freudian era, Silkworth was most properly a specialist in neuropsychiatry;
cf
. also note #46, below.
29
AACA
, p. 57.
30
The sources cited in note #8, above, make clear that although Ebby’s commitment had been formalized, it had not been actually executed before his friends intervened.
31
AACA
, p. 58. Wilson’s “wonderful engineering college” was Norwich, the Vermont military academy to which he had repaired in 1914 after having failed almost every subject of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology entrance exam. The wonders of the memory of alcoholic grandiosity! —
cf
. Thomsen, p. 72.
32
Bill’s grandfather: Thomsen, pp. 31-34;
AA
, p. 10; “leaving the church”: Wilson, NCCA, pp. 3-4;
AA
, p. 10; Wilson to Herb B., 3 June 1968. The “self-conscious wariness of ‘religion’” is most clearly illustrated within A.A. by the insistently reiterated claim: “This is a spiritual, not a religious, program.” That exact phrase appears nowhere in the literature, and its origin eluded discovery, yet it is pervasive. The concept as fundamental is best witnessed by the “We Agnostics” chapter of
AA
, pp. 44-57; its importance (to A.A.) and motive, by
AA
, p. 93, where the concern is presented as the first caution about “Working With Others” Its significance will be examined in detail in
Part Two
, especially within Chapter Eight, below.
33
AACA;
p. 59 (italics Wilson’s).
34
Cf. AA
, p. 12;
LM
, [p. 5]; NCCA, p. 10.
35
Thomsen, pp. 211-212.
36
Thomsen, pp. 213-214; on the Wilson tape, the word “different” at the end of the second-last paragraph of this quotation from Thomsen is heavily stressed, and there is a touch of sarcasm in Bill’s voice. Clearly, the word should be italicized.
37
Thomsen, p. 214;
AACA
, p. 59; Lois Wilson, interview of 7 April 1977.
38
Thomsen, pp. 215-216;
AACA
, pp. 59-60.
39
Thomsen, pp. 216, 219;
AACA
, pp. 60-62. A confusion about timing exists here: in the foregoing narrative, I have preserved — because of no specific reason to change — the time intervals indicated in Thomsen and the other sources: “two days later,” “the next day,” etc. Yet since Ebby’s first visit was in late November (probably between the 26th and the 30th) and Wilson’s final Towns Hospital admission began indisputably (from hospital records) at 2:30 PM on 11 December, there is an unexplained hiatus. Best conjecture would place it between Ebby’s first visit and Bill’s trip to the Calvary Mission: Lois Wilson (interview of 7 April 1977) recalled Ebby visiting several times, once even staying for dinner, before Bill set off on his “investigation.”
40
Cf. AACA
, pp. 62-63; Thomsen, p. 221.
41
AACA
, p. 63;
cf
. Thomsen, pp. 222-224;
AA
, pp. 12-13. Wilson’s most succinct later understanding of this experience appears in a letter to Marjorie W., 3 April 1958: “What 1 really meant was this: I was catapulted into a spiritual experience, which gave me the capability of feeling the presence of God, His love, and His omnipotence. And, most of all, His personal availability to me.”