Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

When I joined the Fellowship in 1969 (in North Jersey), one of my first

assigned service tasks was that of chauffeuring an old timer to meetings. A

stroke had rendered Eddie Shill physically disabled but his mind was razor

sharp. His personal recollections of those folks we now call pioneers makes

me wonder if his name pops up in any of our archive data bases.

Thanks,

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++++Message 1735. . . . . . . . . . . . Periodixal Lit., Your Life, November

1944

From: Jim Blair . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/2/2004 9:42:00 AM

Miracles at Work for Alcoholics

What is the secret of the success of Alcoholics Anonymous? A famous writer

gives you his answer

By Arthur Hopkins

In Tagore's Memories he tells of walking along a country road with his mother

when he was a small child. They passed a grotesque drunkard. The boy laughed.

The mother said: "Don't laugh. He, too, is on his way to God."

I had read and heard of the work being done by Alcoholics Anonymous. I vaguely

knew that the helpful service was being offered by former victims of alcohol

who had found a way out.

Marcie, a friend of mine, told me of having lunch with a bank executive friend

and was startled when the strong man told him, with no concealment, that he

had been an alcoholic and had come close to wrecking his career. He was one of

the workers in the Alcoholics Anonymous movement and asked Marcie if he would

like to attend a monthly meeting of the workers. Marcie, having a lively

interest in human service, accepted and later asked me if I would like to go

along. Thus I shall always be indebted to Marcie for a strongly revealing and

rewarding experience.

The prologue had a pleasant but conventional aspect. The host had us to dinner

at the Yale Club. He was an athletic, beaming man who showed no marks of

gutter bruises. He spoke of three ladies joining us for the evening. Presently

they came-three gracious and cultured women, probably in the thirties. It

looked more and more like a patronizing expedition of the Upper Ten to the

Lower Five.

Soon the conversation revealed that the ladies, also free of telltale ravages,

had likewise taken a pounding from John Barleycorn, but had managed to come up

for the final count with John left sprawling and were now prepared to step

back into the ring to second anyone who was ready to give John a battle.

Before the entrée the slumming aspect had disappeared. Here were the

privileged seeking the privilege of helping their own, and their own were

alcoholics.

More revealing than their willingness to discuss openly with strangers their

alcoholic ordeal, was the complete absence of any desire to conceal what

others would think shameful. This unusual freedom from the personal, I was

later to learn at the meeting, is one of the key causes of the great success

of the movement.

On entering the hall where there were several hundred men and women, mostly

graduate alcoholics and aspirants, I looked for the derelicts and defeated and

found none. There was gaiety and loud laughter, which had suffered nothing

from the absence of libations.

A little man, with considerable dental jubilation, called the meeting to

order. After a sullen, disapproving phonograph was prodded into action the

assembly sang the national anthem.

The little man then unwrapped his gleaming teeth from the package of his lips

and asked how many had remained abstinent for three months or longer. A number

raised their hands. The teeth gleamed.

Then the little man told his experience in his life's battle with alcohol.

There was nothing sad, self-pitying or exhibitionist about his recital. It was

rather the report of a persistent and hopeless experiment.

The one thing that he always knew after painful recovery from a devastating

bout was that when he got in shape he would know how to handle liquor like

sane people. Liquor wasn't going to lick him. No, sir! His cure began on the

day he was taken to the AA house and became convinced that he was an alcoholic

and the seductive opponent would best him every time. It was a fight in which

there was no compromise, a fight where the decision was already in. He was

talked to by people who knew his whole experience. They had lived the scenario

from beginning to end.

The little man, with AA guidance, gained his freedom and then became a worker

himself. He found he gained new strength by helping others.

"I never need to take an inventory of myself," he said. "I see myself in every

one I try to help. There it is looking right at me, all my liabilities and my

assets. I was never a religious man. Of course, I believed in God, I suppose,

but I never thought he could do anything about me. Now I know that I never

could have come through without Him. I had to have God's help. I kept asking

for it and got it." Shade of Tagore's mother.

There was a good deal of laughter through the little man's talk. It was the

comedy of identical experience. His hearers understood perfectly.

He then introduced a real estate operator from New Rochelle. Like the little

man he opened his talk by saying: "I am an alcoholic." It was a recital of

years of trying hopelessly to become a moderate drinker. There was obviously

an element of pride involved. He could never admit to himself that alcohol was

his master. As soon as he got into shape he would show alcohol how it ought to

be handled. He must be a good businessman because he managed to survive for

years with banks continuing to trust him.

"Finally," he said, "I wasn't invited to leave my home as some here have put

it. I was kicked out. I put a cot in the back of the office. I used to lie

down about twelve at night so I could wake up before three and knock over a

couple before the bar closed. Then I was awake at eight to be in time for the

bar opening up.

He tried cures. He tried will power, but always ended up seeing himself in the

bar mirror. He found AA. He knew for the first time that he was an alcoholic

and could never beat it. It was the end of alcohol or the end of him. New

challenge and new pride were awakened.

"Of course when I got off the stuff I began looking at myself to try and find

out what was wrong with me. It must have been more than appetite. Then I

discovered one of my troubles was intolerance. I couldn't bear to be crossed

by anyone. If, in putting through a deal, I thought someone was trying to pull

something I got mad and told them to go to hell, and, of course, I was so mad

I had to have a drink and then I was off again-once for five weeks in a

hospital with a fractured hip.

"One time, after I had been going fine, I blew up again, tore up the contract,

threw it on the floor. There was four hundred bucks in it for me, but to hell

with it. Nobody was going to make a monkey out of me. I stormed out of the

place, but this time I didn't go to a bar. I thought it over and wondered how

I could straighten myself out.

I always hated to apologize to anyone-knowing I'd been wrong only made it

harder. But finally I had to get square with myself, so I called the fellow

up. I said to him: `I'm sorry about that blow-up. I'm an alcoholic and

sometimes I lose my head. I don't want you to think I care about the money.

That's not why I'm calling you. I want you to forgive me.' The man said: `You

know, I've been trying to figure out why I blew up. Come on over and let's

straighten it out.' We did. My fee wasn't due for thirty days, but he gave me

the check then. In the old days it would have ended that way. I'd have tied

the bag on good.

"Soon after AA got hold of me my wife came to me and said: `Why don't you come

home?' I said: `Do you mean it?' `Of course, come on.'

"When I got home, I said: `I don't suppose I could get a drink around here.'

My wife said: `Sure.' She brought me a bottle of beer. The next day I had a

bottle of beer. That night I slept for the first time without drugs. I slept

because I was at peace.

"They tell us around here we can call it anything we like-God, Divine Power

or-well, I call it God. I never believed much, but I know that without God I'm

nothing. That time I blew up I knew I wasn't going to drink because I had

asked God that morning to help me." Shade of Tagore's mother.

I am an alcoholic," began the next speaker. He looked like a football coach.

He was a merchant from New Jersey. His drinking began young and industriously

in the West. As a traveling man he found it convenient to have supplies

constantly at hand by carrying three or four spares in his bag.

His experience was much as the others-releases and relapses, treatments,

sanitariums, lost money, lost business, lost home, lost family.

"In one hospital there was a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the closet. I drank

it to within one inch of the bottom, then turned on my face. When the nurse

came in I asked her to rub my back as I was in such pain. She found the nearly

empty bottle, refilled it and rubbed my back. When she had gone I helped

myself from the refill. Later she told me I had been drinking refuse. Doctors

and nurses had washed their hands in it. Wounds had been cleaned with it.

"After AA I got my family back and am in business again. I then tried helping

others, but I didn't have much success until I finally realized that I was

looking down on them. Now I know that I am only made strong by what I can give

others. I need them as much as they need me. Like the others I wasn't

religious, but I now say boldly and reverently it was God and only God.

Without Him I was helpless." Shade of Tagore's mother.

For a time, the writer was disturbed by people who had obviously been freed

saying emphatically: "I am an alcoholic." It seemed a false and harmful

affirmation.

Thinking back on what the traveling man had said about his feeling of

superiority once he had progressed beyond the other victims, it occurred to me

that a professed alcoholic might easily be more helpful than one who thinks of

himself only as a former alcoholic. Maybe it is better to stay right in the

lodge with the others with never a suggestion of superiority. Perhaps negative

affirmations for the purpose of closer brotherhood have a positive effect with

no injury to the affirmer.

And now the little chairman got up to introduce a product of his own

helpfulness.

One day a telephone call had come from the AA office for him to go to a Long

Island address from which a call for help had come. It was for a woman, so the

little man made sure first that her husband was at home. He called and the

good work was begun. And now, with pride, he presented her.

She was Mary, a darling woman in her late twenties, with shining face,

scoffing eyes and the wide, warm smile of Erin. She looked at the microphone

and laughed. "When I used to see one of those things I thought I was Lily

Pons."

So Mary was off to a great howl. She told the list of almost identical steps

everything-sessions with priests, promises, pledges, treatments.

"But I hid bottles all over the house, even on the roof. Once when I needed it

real bad the bottle on the roof was gone. Maybe some poor devil needed it

worse than I did, but it was hard to see it that way at the time.

"I went to Sanitarium, too." The place had been mentioned twice before and

each time had raised a great laugh. "And, of course, like the others I tried a

psychiatrist. After he talked for some time I asked him if he drank. He said

that if he took two drinks it made him sick to his stomach. He couldn't take

two drinks without losing his stomach and there he was trying to tell me how

to handle liquor."

Perhaps Mary there touched one of the cardinal reasons for the success of the

AA movement. Their applicants soon learn that they have nothing to explain.

They are talking to experts who have gone all the way down the road, have lain

in every pitfall and tried every false exit. They cannot be shocked or

deceived.

"Finally," said Mary, "I landed in that lovely resort on the river, Bellevue,

and what I saw there in two days left nothing but the bottle.

"At last my husband gave up. He said there was nothing for us but a divorce.

When we were in court someone asked us why we didn't try AA. So we telephoned,

and the little man came. They asked me to the house on Twenty-fourth Street. I

went and as soon as I was in the place I knew this was it. They talked to me

some about God. I was raised in a convent school and that wasn't hard to take.

Well, it worked. There's nothing more to say except that five weeks ago I had

a baby." There were applause and cheers for Mary.

"When I came out of the ether the doctor said to me: `Never lose your sense of

humor, Mary. When you were still under you said: "What's all this talk about

no atheists in foxholes? I guess you won't find any in delivery rooms,

either."' From what my husband tells me you won't find any in the corridor."

Mary was a joyful benediction. She filled the place with a sense of blessing.

I doubt if there were any atheists there either.

The words of a sainted woman spoken nearly a hundred years ago had come true.

Drunkards, with the help of fellow victims, had found God. Whatever the pain

to themselves and their loved ones the journey was worth it. Perhaps in no

other way would they have found God. It seemed to one present that God was

nearer in that hall than He had ever been before, that the God long accepted

by the head had moved into the heart and only there can God's banners truly

fly.

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++++Message 1736. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Traditions Question

From: Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/2/2004 1:12:00 PM

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The data below is historical info on the development of the Traditions. I could not find anything to spell out what went into determining their sequence.

Arthur

*The history of the Twelve Traditions constructed from the following sources*

Steps and Twelve Traditions

AACOA AA

Comes of Age

BW-FH Bill

W by Francis Hartigan

BW-RT Bill

W by Robert Thompson

DBGO Dr

Bob and the Good Oldtimers

Service Conference (report)

GTBT Grateful

to Have Been There by Nell Wing

Gv Grapevine

LOH The

PIO Pass

SM AA

*1942:* Correspondence from groups gave

early signals of a need to develop guidelines to help with group problems that

occurred repeatedly. Basic ideas for the Twelve Traditions emerged from this

correspondence and the principles defined in the Foreword to the 1st

Ed. Big Book. (AACOA 187, 192-193, 198, 204, PIO 305-306, LOH 154)

*1945: *Apr, Earl T, pioneer member and

founder of AA in Chicago (whose story is _He

Sold Himself Short_), suggested that Bill codify the Traditions and write

essays on them for the Gv. Initially, the Twelve Traditions were qualified as

_Twelve Points to Assure Our Future_. (AACOA 22, 203, GTBT 54-55, 77, SM S8,

PIO 306, LOH 20-24)

Aug, the Gv

carried Bill's first Traditions article (titled _Modesty One Plank for Good

Public Relations_)

setting the ground work for his campaign for the Traditions. The July Gv had

an

article by member C.H.K. of Lansing, MI about the Washingtonians. Bill used

*1946: *Apr, the Gv carried the article _Twelve Suggested Points for AA

Tradition_. These would later be called the long form of the Traditions.

(AACOA viii, 96,

203, LOH 20, 154, Gv)

*1947: *Jun, the _AA Preamble_ first appeared in the Gv. It

was written by Tom Y, Grapevine's first editor.

Aug, in his Gv

Traditions essay _Last Seven Years Have Made AA

Self-Supporting_, Bill wrote 'Two years ago the trustees set

aside, out of AA book funds, a sum which enabled my wife and me to pay off the

mortgage on our home and make some needed improvements. The Foundation also

granted Dr. Bob and me each a royalty of 10% on the book Alcoholics Anonymous,

our only income from AA sources. We are both very comfortable and deeply

grateful.''

Dec, the Gv

carried a notice that an important new 48 page pamphlet _AA Traditions_ was

sent to each group and

that enough copies were available for each member to have one free of charge.

*1949: *As plans for the 1st Int'l Convention were under way, Earl T suggested

to Bill that the _Twelve Suggested Points for AA Tradition_

would benefit from revision and shortening. (AACOA says 1947). Bill, with

Earl's help, set out to develop the short form of the Traditions. (AACOA 213,

GTBT 55,

Nov, the short

form of the Twelve Traditions was first printed in the Gv. The entire issue

was

Convention. Two wording changes were subsequently made to the initial version:

'primary spiritual aim'' was changed to 'primary

purpose'' in Tradition Six, and 'principles above

personalities'' was changed to 'principles before

personalities'' in Tradition Twelve. (LOH 96)

*1950: *Jul, AA's 15th anniversary and 1st Int'l Convention at Cleveland, OH

(est. 3,000 attendees). Registration was $1.50 per person. (AACOA 213,

BW-RT 308, PIO 338). The Twelve Traditions were adopted unanimously by the

attendees by standing vote. (AACOA 43, LOH 121, PIO 338)

*1953: *Jun, the book Twelve

Steps and Twelve Traditions was published. Bill W. described the work as 'This

small volume is strictly a textbook which explains AA's 24 basic

principles and their application, in detail and with great care.'' Bill

was helped in its writing by Betty L and Tom P. Jack Alexander also helped

with

through AA groups, and a $2.75 edition distributed through Harper &

Brothers for sale in commercial bookstores. (AACOA ix, 219, PIO 354-356)

*1955:* AA's 15th anniversary and 2nd Int'l Convention at St Louis, MO. On Jul

3, by resolution, Bill W and its old-timers turned over the

stewardship of the AA society to the movement. The Conference became the

Guardian of the Traditions and voice of the group conscience of the entire

Fellowship. The resolution was unanimously adopted by the Convention by

acclamation and by the GSC by formal resolution and vote. (AACOA ix, 47-48,

223-228)

that 'No change in Article 12 of the [Conference] Charter or in AA Tradition

or in the Twelve Steps of AA may be made with less than the written consent of

three-quarters of the AA groups.'' (SM S87)

*1958:* the GSC passed an advisory action

'the GSC recognize the original use of the word `honest'

before `desire to stop drinking' and its deletion from the

Traditions as part of the evolution of the AA movement. Any change to be left

to the discretion of AA Publishing, Inc.'' This advisory action is worded

in a manner that can give the erroneous impression of a change to the wording

of Tradition Three. It actually involved removing the word 'honest''

from 'honest desire to stop drinking'' in the AA Preamble in the Gv_. _It also

led to changing the wording of

the Preamble from 'AA has no dues or fees'' to 'There are no

dues or fees for AA membership; we are self-supporting through our own

contributions.'' The changes were approved by the General Service Board in

the summer of 1958 (www.aagrapevine.org also _Best

of the Grapevine_, vol.1, 274-275)

*Third Tradition Story (Two items that often are erroneously

intermingled)*

*1937: *On the AA calendar of 'year

two,'' the spirit of Tradition Three emerged. A member asked to be

admitted who frankly described himself to the 'oldest'' member as

'the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized than

alcoholism.'' The 'addiction'' was 'sex deviate.'' (Note:

info provided by David S from an audiotape of Bill W at an open meeting of the

1968 GSC. See also the pamphlet _The

Co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous_, P-53, pg 30). Guidance came form

Dr Bob (the oldest member in Akron) asking, 'What would the Master

do?'' The member was admitted and plunged into 12th Step work.

(DBGO 240-241 12&12 141-142) Note: this story is often erroneously

intermingled with an incident that occurred eight years later in 1945 at the

41st

St clubhouse in NYC (described next).

would later author _Living Sober_)

from the 41st St clubhouse. Bill persuaded the group to take in a

black man who was an ex-convict with bleach-blond hair, wearing women's

clothing and makeup. The man also admitted to being a 'dope fiend.''

When asked what to do about it, Bill posed the question, 'did you say he

was a drunk?'' When answered, 'yes'' Bill replied, 'well

I think that's all we can ask.'' The man disappeared shortly after.

(BW-FH 8, PIO 317-318) Anecdotal accounts erroneously say that this individual

went on to become one of the best 12th Steppers in NY. This

story is often erroneously intermingled with that of a 1937 incident

('year two'' on the AA calendar) involving an Akron member that is

discussed in the Tradition Three essay in the 12&12 (pgs 141-142).

*The Order of the Traditions*

The order of

the Traditions was defined in April 1946 and I cannot find anything that

influenced

the sequence in which they were written.

The April 1946

Grapevine article states:

Almost any A.A. can tell you what

our group problems are. Fundamentally they have to do with our relations, one