Bill W.

William Griffith Wilson (26 November 1895 - 24 January 1971) (also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W.), was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a fellowship of self-help groups dedicated to helping alcoholics recover from their disease. According to the AA tradition of anonymity, Wilson was and still is commonly known as "Bill W." In 1934, in the course of his struggle with alcoholism, Wilson underwent a spiritual experience that gave him the strength to stop drinking. He then took his method to other alcoholics, starting with AA co-founder Dr. Bob Smith in 1935. Working with the members of a growing society of recovering alcoholics, Wilson developed the Twelve-step spiritual program and the basic organizational guidelines for AA known as the Twelve Traditions. In spite of his sobriety, success, and recognition, Wilson was a deeply troubled man who suffered from compulsive behaviour and frequent depressions. Wilson turned over leadership of AA to the service board in 1955, and for the remainder of his life was free to experiment with alternate cures. He took an interest in spiritualism, in niacin (vitamin B3) as a possible cure for alcoholism, and in LSD as a means of inducing spiritual change. Wilson died of lung diseases in 1971. His wife, Lois Wilson was the founder of Al-Anon, a group dedicated to helping the friends and relatives of alcoholics.

Childhood

When Wilson was 10, his father left on a business trip that turned out to be a permanent absence, and his mother announced that she would be leaving the family to study Osteopathic medicine. Abandoned by their parents, Wilson and his sister were left in the care of their maternal grandparents. Wilson showed some talent and determination in his teen years. He designed and carved a working boomerang after dozens of failed efforts. He taught himself to play the violin by dogged persistence, pasting to the neck of the instrument a diagram of the notes. At school, after initial difficulties, he found success in sports. But he experienced a serious depression at the age of seventeen when his first love, Bertha Bamford, died from complications during surgery.

Marriage, work, and addiction

Wilson met his future wife Lois Burnham, who was four years older than he, during the summer of 1913 while sailing on Vermont's Emerald Lake; two years later the couple became engaged. Wilson was called into the army in 1917. During military training in Massachusetts, the young officers were often invited to dinner by the locals, and Wilson had his first drink, a glass of beer, to little effect. A few weeks later at another dinner party, Wilson drank some Bronx cocktails, and felt at ease with the guests and liberated from his awkward shyness; "I had found the elixir of life," he wrote. "Even that first evening I got thoroughly drunk, and within the next time or two I passed out completely. But as everyone drank hard, not too much was made of that."

Bill and Lois were married on January 24, 1918, just before he left to join the war in Europe as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery. After an uneventful military service but much exposure to wine and beer, Wilson returned to live with his wife in New York, his dependence on alcohol now fully established. He failed to graduate from law school because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. Wilson became a stock speculator and had success travelling the country with his wife, evaluating companies for potential investors. (During these trips Lois had a hidden agenda: she hoped the travel would keep Wilson from drinking.)

However, Bill's constant drinking made business impossible and ruined his reputation. As his drinking grew more serious, starting in 1933 he had to be committed to the Towns psychiatric hospital three times under the care of Dr. William D. Silkworth. Silkworth's theory was that alcoholism took the form of an allergy (the inability to stop drinking once started) and an obsession (to take the first drink). Wilson gained hope from Silkworth's assertion alcoholism was a medical condition rather than a moral failing, but even that knowledge could not help him. He was eventually told that he would either die from his alcoholism or have to be locked up permanently due to alcoholic insanity.

Conversion and turning point

One day, an old drinking friend named Ebby Thacher phoned Wilson wanting to visit with him. Expecting to spend a day drinking and re-living old times, Wilson was instead shocked by Thacher's refusal to drink. "I've got religion," he said to explain his unexpected abstinence. Thatcher had been sober for several weeks under the guidance of the Oxford Group, an evangelical society that, among other pursuits, sought to help drunkards achieve sobriety .

Shortly after Ebby's visit, Bill was admitted to Towns Hospital to recover from another bout of drinking. According to Bill, while lying in bed depressed and despairing, he cried out, "I'll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!". He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity. He never drank again for the remainder of his life. Bill described what happened to Dr. Silkworth, who told him not to discount this experience. Ebby visited Bill in hospital and walked him through some of the basic tenets of the Oxford Group. Upon his release from the hospital, Bill was told to seek out and bring the message of his recovery to others as Ebby had done for him.

A new spiritual program for recovery

Wilson joined the Oxford Group and set out trying to help other alcoholics, but he had no success in helping anyone get sober. At this time, Wilson as also influenced by his contact with Carl Jung, and became convinced of the importance of having a spiritual experience strong enough to change a person completely. Wilson visited Dr. Silkworth, who told him to stop preaching and to try talk to alcoholics about the grave nature of their disease, about the allergy and the obsession, and about Wilson's personal experience with alcohol. It was not long before Wilson had his chance to try this new approach. In 1935 Wilson made a business trip to Akron, Ohio. The venture fell through, and in a state of gloom and frustration he was tempted to drink again. He decided that his only hope in remaining sober was to help another alcoholic. So instead of entering a nearby bar, Wilson entered a phone booth at his hotel and started calling the phone numbers on a church directory he saw there. He eventually got through to Henrietta Seiberling, who was a member of an Oxford Group circle that had been searching for a solution to Dr. Bob Smith's drinking problem. Henrietta arranged a meeting between the two men. Dr. Bob had been unable to stay sober on his own, so he was skeptical that Wilson would be able to help him, but he agreed to give Wilson fifteen minutes nevertheless. Fifteen minutes turned into four hours as Wilson told Dr. Bob of the solution he had found. Not long after, Dr. Bob had his last drink -- a beer to help steady his hand to perform surgery. The new approach had worked so well that Wilson and Dr. Bob decided to try it with another alcoholic.

Birth of AA

The two men went to a hospital to talk to another alcoholic named Bill D. They used the same approach that Wilson had used on Dr. Bob. Bill D. sobered up and now there were three men carrying the new message of recovery. (Years later, this meeting was recognised as the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.) The three men then carried the message to another alcoholic, and so the fellowship began its growth. Wilson soon returned to New York and began to carry the message there. His efforts bore fruit and soon there was a second group in New York City.

A manual of recovery

In 1938, after about 100 alcoholics in Akron and New York had sobered up, the fellowship decided that a book would be the best way to promote their program of recovery; Wilson was chosen as primary author. The book was written to carry the message as a face-to-face meeting, and included the list of suggested activities for spiritual growth called the Twelve Steps. The title "Alcoholics Anonymous" was selected for the book, and the movement took on the same name.

Leadership of AA

After positive articles in Liberty magazine in 1939 and the Saturday Evening Post in 1941, AA began its rapid growth. But when Wilson and Lois made a cross-country trip to visit AA groups, they found a wide variety of practices and rules, such as groups with charismatic leaders and groups with no concerns for anonymity. Wilson began to form a vision for a purely democratic constitution that would allow no accumulation of money, power, or prestige within AA. Ten years later, these rules were published as the "Twelve Traditions." The AA general service conference of 1955 was a landmark event for Wilson in which he turned over the leadership of the maturing organisation to an elected board.

Life After AA

In the final fifteen years of his life, Wilson experimented with various novel treatments for alcoholism such as niacin (vitamin B3). For a time he became involved in experiments with LSD as a means of inducing the spiritual change he saw as essential to a release from alcoholism. For Wilson, spiritualism (communicating with the spirits of the dead) was a life-long interest. One of his letters to his spiritual advisor, Fr. Ed Dowling, suggests that while Wilson was working on his text book of the twelve steps and traditions he felt that his spiritualist activities were helping him: "I have good help — of that I am certain. Both here and over there," — the 'over there' referring to the spirit world and in paraticular to a dead 15th century monk named Boniface.. AA historian Ernest Kurtz asserts that "... despite his conviction that he had evidence for the reality of 'the spiritual' and so — in his logic — of the actual existence of a 'higher Power,' Wilson chose not to share, much less to proclaim or to impose, this foundation for faith either with, to, or upon Alcoholics Anonymous." Wilson and his AA colleagues took pains to keep Wilson's unconventional spiritual activities away from AA and public scrutiny. During the last years of his life, Wilson ceased attending AA meetings on the grounds that he would always be asked to speak as the co-founder rather than as an alcoholic.

Wilson's life was continuously slowed by another compulsion that he had not been able to drop: smoking, which brought on emphysema and later pneumonia. He continued to smoke even while dependent on an oxygen tank in the late 1960s. During the last days of his life, his health fading, Wilson was visited by colleagues and friends who wanted to say goodbye. Wilson died of emphysema and pneumonia on 24 January 1971 en route to treatment in Miami, Florida.

Wilson bought a house called Stepping Stones on an 8-acre estate in Bedford Hills, New York in 1941 and lived there with his wife until he died. After his wife died in 1988, the house was opened for tours and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Bill W.: the man and his legacy

Wilson was a man of many great strengths and just as great weaknesses. He loved being the center of attention, but after the AA principle of anonymity had become established he refused an honorary degree from Yale University and refused to allow his picture — even from the back — on the cover of Time. Wilson's persistence, his ability to take and use good ideas, and his entrepreneurial flair are revealed in his pioneering escape from an alcoholic 'death sentence', his central role in the development of a program of spiritual growth, and his leadership in creating and building AA, "an independent, entrepreneurial, maddeningly democratic, non-profit organization."

Unknown to most of the AA membership, Wilson received millions of dollars in royalties from sales of AA books. In 1940 Bill bought out his publishing partner, Hank P., for $200 — taking advantage of Hank's being on a slip, "completely broke and very shaky." In a few years the share for which Hank received $200 would have been worth millions.

Wilson was a man of many aspects: he never escaped from smoking and other compulsive behaviours, and he continued to play the violin throughout his life. He was an accomplished leader, yet he was plagued with depression.

Wilson is perhaps best known as a synthesist of ideas, the man who pulled together various threads of psychology, theology, and democracy into a workable and life-saving system. Aldous Huxley called him "the greatest social architect of our century," and Time magazine named Wilson to their "Time 100" list of The Most Important People of the 20th Century. According to Susan Cheever, Wilson's self description was a man who "because of his bitter experience, discovered, slowly and through a conversion experience, a system of behaviour and a series of actions that works for alcoholics who want to stop drinking."

John Sutherland, in a review of My Name is Bill, sums up Wilson's character as follows:

Despite his victory over drink, Wilson remained incurably addictive. He chain-smoked himself into terminal emphysema. Even on his deathbed, he puffed incorrigibly as he suffocated. Although he drank nothing for the last thirty-seven years of his life, he always craved the stuff. As he lay dying, and delirious, he repeatedly demanded whisky. ...

Despite his programme's insistence on "rigorous honesty", Bill W. lived a lie. He had innumerable affairs and a long-term mistress with whom he contemplated eloping to Ireland (the scandal would probably have destroyed Alcoholics Anonymous). Susan Cheever's final judgement is unblinking but forgiving: "Bill Wilson never held himself up as a model: he only hoped to help other people by sharing his own experience, strength and hope. He insisted again and again that he was just an ordinary man". An ordinary man who nonetheless did one extraordinary thing.

See also

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Twelve-step program
• Twelve traditions
• Alcoholism
• Addiction
• William Duncan Silkworth
• Bill W. and Dr. Bob (theatrical play)

Sources and further reading

• Bill W. (2004). The A.A. Service Manual combined with Twelve Concepts for World Service (2004-2005 Edition ed.). New York: Alcoholics Anonymous.CS1 maint: Extra text (link)
• Susan Cheever. My Name is Bill, Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. New York: Simon & Schuster/ Washington Square Press. Template:Auto isbn (paperback).
• Bill W. Alcoholics Anonymous. The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism (4th ed. new and rev. 2001 ed.). New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. ISBN 1-893007-16-2, Dewey 362.29 A347 2001. ('Big Book')
• Bill W. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. ISBN 0-916856-02-X, LC HV5278.A78A4, Dewey: 178.1 A1c.

" ignored (help)

• Bill W. (1967). As Bill Sees It. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. ISBN 0-916856-03-8, Dewey 616.861 ASB.
• Bill W. (2000). My First 40 Years. An Autobiography by the Cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 55012-0176. ISBN 1-56838-373-8, Dewey B W11w 2000.
• Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. 1980. ISBN 0-916856-07-0, LCCN 80-65962, LC HV5278.D62 1980.
• Hartigan, Francis (2000). Bill W. A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 0-312-20056-0, Dewey B W11h 2000.
• Kurtz, Ernest (1979). Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden. ISBN 0-89486-065-8 or ISBN 0-89486-065-8 (pbk.), LC HV5278, LCCN 79-88264, Dewey 362.2/9286 or 362.29286 K87 1979.
• Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. 1984. ISBN 0-916856-12-7, LC HV5032 .W19P37x 1984, LCCN 84-072766, Dewey 362.29/286/O92.
• Raphael, Matthew J. (2000). Bill W. and Mr. Wilson: The Legend and Life of A.A.'s Cofounder. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-245-3.
• Thomsen, Robert (1975). Bill W. New York: Harper & Rowe. ISBN 0-06-014267-7, Dewey 362.29 W112t.
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous. 1953. ISBN 0-916856-01-1.