It was a hot, humid July evening and I knew that the room wouldn’t be air conditioned. I also knew that the atmosphere would be stuffy and repressive. It had been more than a decade since I’d been to an Al-Anon meeting but, strangely drawn to return, I walked in and was banded an information packet for newcomers. Then, as the group members went through the ritual of their readings, I went through the printed materials. And there it was: the very same pamphlet I’d found so offensive my first visit. I’d come back for one last look to see if anything had changed, but it was just as I’d remembered. The message was clear end essentially as before. The same, it turns out, can be said of the larger twelve-step movement and the addictions field in general: the message has developed riffle in the last six decades.

William Griffith Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was born November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont. When he was nine, his parents divorced, apparently because of his father’s drinking, and he was left in the care of his grandparents. In 1918, Wilson married Lois Burnham and began a career as a stockbroker; he also continued his father’s career of drinking.

Later, after years of alcohol abuse and its associated miseries, Wilson began admitting himself to the Charles B. Towns Hospital in Manhattan. On December 11, 1934, he admitted himself for the fourth time and was treated by a neurologist named William Duncan Silkworth. Dr. Silkworth sedated Wilson and began administering treatment with belladonna. What happened next can best be described in Wilson’s own words from his book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:

My depression deepened unbearably and finally it

seemed to me as though I were at the very bottom of

the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power

greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the

last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at

once I found myself crying out, “If there is a God, let

Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything”

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light.

I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words

to describe. It seemed to me, in a mind’s eye, that I was

on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit

was blowing.