The Sober Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

that designated certain members “maximum” after they had attained a state of purity and seniority that others lacked.
    One bedrock tenet of the Oxford Group, however, would influence AA for years to come: an absolute opposition to medical or psychological explanations for human failings and thus a complete prohibition on professional treatment of any kind.
AA IS BORN
    AA is said to have been born when Bill Wilson met Dr. Bob Smith, who would eventually become Wilson’s first successful sobriety effort. Wilson had tried to help many alcoholics before “Dr. Bob,” but discovered to his exasperation that the story of his own miraculous conversion did not have the effect he desired. When a business trip took him to Akron, Ohio, however, he successfully made the case for spiritual rebirth for the first time to the doctor, whose drinking had shredded his life and practice.
    Wilson and Smith soon joined forces to share their sobriety with others. They strongly believed that helping other people get sober had a salutary effect that flowed both ways: it would cure the “target” and it would help to shore up their own recovery. During this early stage in the organization’s history, the two men also developed some theories of their own, including the notion that alcoholics were “in a state of insanity rather than a state of sin.” 13 They soon systematized their outreach efforts:
    They would first approach the man’s wife, and later they would approach the individual directly by going to his home or by inviting him to the Smiths’ home. The objective was to get the man to surrender, and the surrender involved a confession of powerlessness and a prayer that said the man believed in a higher power and could be restored to sanity. This process would sometimes take place in the kitchen, or at other times it was at the man’s bed with Wilson kneeling on one side of the bed and Smith on the other side. This way the man would be led to admit his defeat. 14
    This approach met with tremendous resistance. In one early internal audit, Wilson and Smith calculated their success rate at just 5 percent. Even many of those who seemed willing to listen and try returned to drinking.
    Still, after a couple of years the two men felt encouraged: “Among those they had tried to help, the failures were endless, and many of those who seemed sincerely willing to try their approach were struggling. When they were done counting, though, they realized that between Akron and New York there were now forty alcoholics staying sober, and half of them had not had a drink for more than a year. Their program was working.”
    Wilson decided it was time to write a book.
THE BIG BOOK
    When Bill Wilson sat down to write
Alcoholics Anonymous
, he first prayed for guidance. The Twelve Steps themselves reportedly came to him in a single inspiration. (He identified the number twelve with the Twelve Apostles, and felt that this was a fitting number.) Besides enumerating the steps for the first time, the “Big Book,” as it came to be known, included a number of “case studies” describing the lives of early members who recovered with the help of AA. (Throughout his life, Wilson quietly kept track of those members whose experiences had been considered solid enough for inclusion in the book: about half of them had not remained sober.)
    Wilson and his early acolytes promoted the book every chance they could. So devoted were AA’s early members to burnishing the reputation of their fledgling organization, in fact, that when one member, Morgan R., secured an interview on a widely popular radio show, members kept him locked in a hotel room “for several days under 24 hour watch” out of fear that he would drink before the show. When the interview went off successfully, another early backer, Hank P., mailed twenty thousand postcards to doctors, urging them to purchase
Alcoholics Anonymous
. 15
    Despite these efforts, AA would not become widely known until a few