Bill W. (2012) Movie Script
1
Bill Wilson was, first and
foremost, an alcoholic in
recovery.
He was a stinking, rotten drunk
who, by some divine grace, was
granted sobriety, was empowered
to bring to the world this
fellowship, this message.
But I think, like any gift of
this magnitude, simply to
protect him, he was not granted
the full knowledge of what the
price would be.
He was spellbinding on his
own story anytime I ever heard
him.
And I think everybody else had
that same sense because I think
what people realized they were
listening to was the founding
myth, I guess would be... it was
not myth.
It's reality, simply a story of
a founding, and that's what this
was.
And it was endlessly wanted and
effective.
One day I was sitting in a
brokerage shop, and I fell into
a conversation with a man who
proved to be an heir to a great
fortune.
And I began my sales talk on how
cheap securities work, how a
syndicate ought to be put
together to gather these things
up.
And he fell in with the idea.
And I was to be the manager.
Moreover, I was to have 1/3
interest.
Well, by the time we got that
far in the conversations, they
discovered about my drinking.
So, they came to me, and they
said, "look, bill, we know you"
got a real liquor problem.
Would you be willing, during the
life of this thing, to sign an
agreement that you will not
drink, that if you do drink,
your interest in it will be
"ended?"
You know, the curious thing is,
I really believed that I could
stay sober when the incentive
was so great.
The work began.
Money came in.
We began to buy securities.
But now see what happened.
[ Telephone rings ]
One day some old business
acquaintances called me up.
They said, "bill, we hear you're
sober."
They said, "well, won't you go
over in Jersey and do a piece of
work for us?"
I said, "sure."
That evening we put up at a
small hotel, and one of the boys
brings out a jug.
And I said, "well, what you got
there?"
[ Laughter ]
"Why," they say, "that's
applejack, Jersey lightning."
"No. No, thanks.
No, I'm not drinking.
I can't handle it."
They fall to playing cards.
Every now and then, the jug
comes my way.
With ease, I say, "no, thanks,"
because I can see my name on
that contract.
So, quite easily I say no...
I'm happy
my cares have flown away
a new day with nothing...
Until about 10:30,
perhaps.
[ Laughter ]
Something occurred within me.
And if that could be ever fully
explained, we would completely
comprehend the mystery of this
obsession of drinking.
"Why, bill Wilson, in all your
drinking, in Europe and the
states, never in all your life
have you had any applejack, not
one single drink of Jersey
"lightning."
[ Laughter ]
And that idea began to take hold
and possess me so that when that
jug was passed to me, a curtain
had fallen between me and
reality.
So, I said, "thanks very much.
I will have one little shot this time.
It couldn't hurt me at all."
You know, at the end of the
last century, they were talking
about the most important people
in the century.
From my personal perspective,
there's not a more important
person in the 20th century than
bill Wilson.
I'd be a dead man without him.
He had probably 30,000
wonderful opportunities not to
go forward with a.A.,
discouragements that an ordinary
man would have taken as
sufficient.
But he was not that sort.
He was not an ordinary man.
He looked like one and... well,
he was tall, he was rather
good-looking, in a dignified
sort of way, but by and large he
didn't seem someone you would
say, "well, here's a Beethoven
or here's a whatever."
But he was an absolutely unusual man.
There's no question about that,
in my opinion.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite" by
[bach plays ]
His father left immediately,
and his mother would soon
follow.
She left bill and his sister,
Dorothy, with her parents to
become a doctor, never to be
fully a part of his life again.
[ Birds chirping ]
[ Water splashes ]
Well, back in those days,
there was as much or more stigma
bon divorce in a small yankee
town as there was on being the
town drunk... almost.
So, at 10 years of age, I heard
the gossip of the neighbors.
I began to feel different.
I began to feel that I didn't
belong.
Then, too, I was awkward,
physically awkward, pretty
homely, just like I am now,
except then I cared much, and
now I don't care a damn.
[ Laughter ]
And then this fierce desire to
win out over these handicaps
took possession of me.
My grandfather, seeing this
trait in me, wanted to encourage
it, so he was always proposing
the impossible.
One day he said, "uncle."
Clarence's fiddle is up there in
the trunk, but, Willy, I don't
think you got any ear for
"music."
Right up to that trunk, out with
the fiddle, put a chip on it for
a bridge, get some wire strings
at the grocery store, and I
fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, until I
drove him just nuts, a desire so
fierce that it turned into what
the medics call a neurosis, an
obsession... to be what?
The first violin of the high
school orchestra.
And bill would often tell
this story.
And he always did instants,
something that became
very characteristic of his life
from that day forward... maybe
it already had been... but what
he called power drives.
He would set his eye on
something, and he would work
like a fiend to get it done.
He got to be president of the
class, captain of the baseball
team, first violinist in the
orchestra.
But there was still one thing
missing from his life.
I'd had a terrible
inferiority about gals until
finally the minister's daughter
took me up.
I say "took me up" because
that's the way women do it, you know.
[ Laughter ]
He had become enamored of...
And apparently it was
reciprocated... a girl named
Bertha bamford.
So, now I'm in love for the
first time.
I'm deliriously happy.
I'm a success.
I'm the number-one fella all
over the place.
And this has never been very
well explained, but apparently
the parents and Bertha went off
to New York, and the next thing
known back in Manchester is
Bertha has died in an operation
in New York City.
It was so sudden and shattering
that it simply took years for
him to get over it.
And would that be true or a
normal boy?
How abnormal was bill, to have
that happen to him?
I don't know.
Maybe my experience can have
some value to somebody else.
The most powerful thing I will
ever have... and a lot of it is
what I want to keep in mind.
The most powerful gift that I
can give anybody is where I was
broken and healed.
When I can share with somebody
where my life was broken and
healed will be the greatest gift
I can give any alcoholic and a
lot of other people, too.
[ Bell chiming ]
[ Up-tempo piano music playing ]
Bill's love for Lois had a
hitch, though.
He was a country boy and felt he
could never rise up to the level
of her family's sophistication.
But he was determined to do
right by her.
Even before they were
married, they seemed to have a
whole bunch of, you know, ideals
that they were planning on
living up to and theories about
the way to live and be healthy
and smart and well-read and
educated and they had all of
those plans and one of them was
that they didn't believe in
drinking.
And he writes to her in the
summer of 1917, and she puts a
note on the side of the letter
that says "first drink."
And she stars it.
So, it says, "darling one, I"
went to a most peculiar party
Sunday night.
A lady and three daughters
"entertained us."
He has this experience of
finding out that this stuff
they're talking about is the
elixir of the gods, for heaven's sakes.
I mean, it does perfectly
marvelous things for you.
You talk. The women listen.
Even the men listen.
Bill started drinking, and
being alcoholic from the start,
he got drunk every time he
drank.
Although I worried some about
this, I was not deeply concerned
because, like most young wives,
I thought I could change him...
[ Laughter ]
And that our life together
would be so happy and complete
that he would not need an
artificial stimulus.
But all went fairly well, you
know?
Everybody was very jolly.
It's wartime, and a few drinks
here and there... as bill
himself said, writing about it,
everybody was drinking and
having a grand time, and he was,
too.
The first time I drank, it
was a magical experience for me.
It was... it was like I had been
holding my breath my whole life
and I finally exhaled.
And I just... I felt like I fit
in with everyone else, and I
finally found my place in life.
It felt grown-up, mature, and I
even was able to interact with
guys that night on a level that
I had never been able to do so.
And so it was a solution for me
from the very first night.
I remember that there were three
of us girls and we had four
drinks and we each got one and
then there was one left over.
And I guarded that drink from
the very first night.
I had to have more from the very
first time.
[ Fireworks exploding ]
[ Crowd cheering ]
When bill came back from the
war, it apparently never
occurred to bill to go back to
Vermont.
From the beginning... and he
doesn't even say very much about
this... but we are in New York.
He connects with some people in
the world of finance and had a
knack for it.
[ Bell ringing ]
Bill Wilson is sometimes
referred to as a wall street
broker, and he never really was
a broker.
He got the idea in the 1920s,
when people were invested sort
of wildly on rumors, of going
around and investigating these
firms and finding out what was
really going on. G out what was
so, bill convinced Lois to
quit her job, hop on her
motorcycle, and risk everything
for a chance at success.
He bought shares of stock so he
could look at the books of
companies that interested him
and then wrote very detailed
reports to send to his friends
on wall street.
And one way to find out what
was going on in the plant is
headed for the nearest bar at
quitting time and, you know,
sort of hoisted a few with the
workers who were out, to find
out what was going on in the factory.
And he did this in a lot
of places.
And I think that his skill was
being able to take lots of
discrete pieces of information
and see what the whole picture
was that they made up.
What Wilson brought back to the
people who hired him was stuff
that really allowed them to get rich.
These were ordinary Joes that
were making a lot of money fast,
and bill was one of them.
You know, he had rented an
apartment in Brooklyn, and it's
not being enough, so he rents
the one next door and knocks
down the wall between and has a
big living room.
And so I don't think they ever
had a terrible time personally
with each other, except over the
booze.
And she was forever forgiving of
him.
I mean, I don't know why.
I wouldn't.
[ Soft jazz music playing ]
Lois said that she didn't
know whether she or bill wanted
to have children more.
Lois had had three miscarriages
in their early marriage, and at
one point they finally tried to
adopt.
And they waited for this baby to
come, and the baby never came,
but it was later on in life that
her childhood friend fessed up
to her that the adoption agency
had contacted them for a
reference and that she was
unable to give a good reference
because of bill's drinking.
Alcoholism is a treacherous
disease.
[ Horn honks ]
It is very difficult to admit to
being an alcoholic because
there's a real barrier to
recognizing this.
[ Soft jazz music playing ]
Addiction is this belief that
something outside of me can fix
something that's wrong within
me.
I can find a new medicine.
I can find a new women.
I can find a new car.
I can find a new boat.
I can find a new job.
I can find a new...
No.
The emptiness is still there.
[ Dog barking ]
[ Siren wails ]
Around the same time that
bill is starting to really
realize that he's powerless over
his drinking, she writes a
letter to him explaining how
awful she's feeling, and she
says, "it seems each night as if"
I couldn't go through another,
and yet another comes and yet
another till my heart is like a
stone within me.
It is so heavy, and a great
dullness spreads over me till
all things good or bad taste
"alike."
She said she had a terrible time
staying mad at him because he
was so pathetic and so sincere
about wanting to quit.
Bill had really hit bottom
when he met a man who would help
turn his life around.
Like bill, Dr. Silkworth lost
everything in the crash of '29,
but he found a home in a
drying-out place called
towns hospital.
He had a knack for working with
drunks, and though he couldn't
offer a cure for alcoholism, he
treated it as a disease.
No formal introductions today.
I agreed to abide by the rules
of alcoholics anonymous.
Bill, do you want to just start
right out by telling us how and
when you founded a.A.?
Yes.
If you don't mind, I'll start a
little bit in the middle.
All right.
In the summer of 1934, I lay
in a drying-out hospital on
central park west.
My wife was downstairs talking
to the doctor, and she was
asking the doctor why I couldn't
stop drinking.
And the good man was obliged to
tell her that I had an obsession
of the mind that condemned me to
drink against my will so that if
the drinking was continued, I
would be destined to go mad or
to die.
In fact, he told her, frankly,
that she would soon have to lock
me up if my life was to be
saved.
When the psychiatric asylums
became almost the only resource
that alcoholics had outside of
jails in the opening decades of
the 20th century, there was a
sense... there was a kind of
belief that there was no such
thing as alcoholism as a primary
disorder.
There was only untreated
underlying psychiatric illness.
So, what that meant was
alcoholics were subjected to
mandatory sterilization laws,
along with the mentally ill.
It meant they were subjected to
the heydays of electro and chemo
convulsive therapies.
It means they were subjected to
psycho surgery, particularly
pre-frontal lobotomies...
On the theory that there was
an alcoholic personality and if
they altered that personality by
brain surgery, that it would
cure their alcoholism.
I well remember leaving the
hospital.
And I suppose it was mainly fair
and constant vigilance that kept
me sober for the next few
months.
Then came that day when you had
to work in the department store.
It was November 11, 1934,
armistice day.
And I proposed to go to
staten island to play some golf
all by myself.
So, bill gets out to
staten island, where this public
golf course is, and he's riding
on a bus.
And the guy sitting next to him
has got a rifle, a target rifle
of some sort, and they get into
a conversation about this
wonderful rifle the guy's got.
And they're having a
conversation, and all of a
sudden... accident.
So, we sat at a table.
I ordered a ginger ale.
"What?" he said.
"Don't you drink?"
"No," I said, "I am an
alcoholic.
I am a guy who has an obsession.
This obsession drives me to drink.
According to the doctors, I've
got a physical sensitivity that
can damage me to go mad or die
if I keep it up.
That's how bad I am.
That's why I'm drinking ginger
"ale."
"Well, okay," the fella said.
"Please go right on."
[ Laughter ]
So, here he's telling this
guy this story and drinking his
ginger ale.
The new bus arrives.
They get on the bus.
They go to wherever they were
gonna go, the end of the line,
and now it's lunchtime.
The guy says, "why don't we go
in and have some lunch?"
We got into that barroom.
That buzz that we all know in
bars was rising.
My mind again began to wander
back to the days when I could
drink.
The obsession was descending
upon me.
Suddenly, the bartender comes
along, beaming, and he has one
in each hand, and he planked the
drinks down in front of us and
said, "boys, have one on the
house.
It's armistice day."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
My new friend looked at me in
astonishment.
And he said, "my god, man."
After what you've just been
telling me an hour ago, you can
do this?
"Are you crazy?"
And I said, "yes, that's just
it.
I am crazy."
I think he was at a point
where he really, really thought
that self-knowledge was gonna
keep him sober.
Understanding the problem,
understanding how it worked in
him was gonna keep him sober.
I mean, it wasn't even that his
nose was rubbed in it.
It was like he was smacked up
the side of the head with a bat,
you know?
It was just... it was so clear
that he believed, in the depths
of his soul, the last thing he
should be doing... the last
thing he should be doing is
picking up a drink.
Picks up a drink.
My name is Phil, and I'm an
alcoholic.
I had a brief period in.
New York City where I got good
jobs and lost them, which is
sort of the story of my life.
I would get very good jobs.
People would have a lot of
confidence in me.
I was able to not drink.
I knew that I had to watch my
drinking... not really stop, but
watch my drinking.
But I would always pick up a
drink and destroy everything.
[ Guitar playing jazz music ]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And I would always say,
"never, never, never again."
Somewhere along the way, I
picked up the drink, and the
whole thing happened all over
again, except worse.
I hustled 42nd street.
I did just about anything with
anybody, as long as a drink was
involved, and finally wound up
at the bowery, at the men's
shelter at third street.
And by the time I got there, I
had pretty much determined that
I couldn't function, that this
world was not a place for me.
And I think I had just about
bottomed out.
I didn't know what was wrong
with me.
I didn't know from alcoholism.
But I was ready to listen and
maybe not debate so much inside
my head because I was a great
debater, especially if anybody
said anything about my drinking.
I could always justify it, you
know?
He came in.
I looked across the kitchen
table.
I pushed him a tumbler of gin,
and he said, "no, thanks."
I said, "what?"
"No, thanks," he said.
"I'm not drinking."
And he looked across the table
at me, and with a half-smile, he
said, "well, I've got religion."
Gee, might as well have hit me
in the face with a wet mop.
[ Laughter ]
Oh, boy. What a disappointment.
"Well," I said at last, rather
weakly, "what brand is it?"
"Well," he said, "I wouldn't
call it 'brand.'"
it's just common-sense ideas
that I've picked up from a group
over here.
They call them the Oxford group.
Six months ago, I got released
from my desire to drink by
practicing very simple
principles.
Now we see nations free
on the march for god
What ebby brought to bill was
the whole Oxford group message,
which was, "you become part of"
our group and you acknowledge
the existence of a higher power
"and clean house," meaning clean
up your life and so on...
Something like that, which
ultimately, of course, is
expressed exquisitely in the
a.a. Program in the 12 steps.
Lois comes home one day and
finds this letter on her coffee
table from bill, and it says,
"dear Lois, I think I said that
if matters approached a crisis,
the inevitable result of the
first drink, I should go to towns.
I am going there.
I shall not delay a moment.
Yours you do not know how
"dearly... bill."
And then, with no
particularly hope or faith, I
cried out as a child in the
dark, "if there is a god, will
he show himself?"
And then it seemed that that
room lit up in a great glare.
I was transported into an
ecstasy.
It seemed that I stood on the
top of a mountain and a great
clean wind was blowing, not of
air, but of spirit.
And I was free.
At length, of course, I realized
I'm still on the bed, but I am
in a different world.
A great peace has settled down.
Well, for me, that was the
beginning of feeling that
everything was completely all
right, that indeed now I was a
part of life at last, that I had
touched the ultimate reality of
a loving god.
The kind of thing that bill
had is a thing that absolutely
takes the entire human persona
or the complex of mind, body,
soul, psychology, the whole
thing, and shakes it up and sets
it down again, and it's all new.
It's different.
It is life change.
And bill said, "I knew I was a
free man."
Oh, boy, it would be fun to have
such an experience, wouldn't it,
that whatever is wrong, it's all
right?
God is in his heaven.
All is well with the world.
That is the bottom line of this
kind of experience.
And you go forth as bill Wilson
did, and you do what you can to
make things better.
And he spends months
wandering around, in and out of
bars, grabbing hold of drunks,
telling them they got to get
this.
Well, very nice if they can, but
of course none of them could.
He didn't get a single soul to
sober up...
And that's when silkworth
dragged him in and said, "you're"
going at this wrong.
This isn't gonna work.
You can't get people to sit down
and have your kind of spiritual
experience.
"It isn't gonna happen."
Tell them how bad it is.
Go back to the pre-condition.
Tell them they're hopeless.
At this point, bill was
offered the chance to go to
akron, Ohio, to take control of
a rubber machine corporation there.
If he could win the confidence
of its shareholders, he would
become president and, more
importantly, start making money
again.
We get to akron.
The deal blows up in my face.
My friends depart in disgust.
I am in the mayflower hotel with
$10 in my pocket... not enough
for a fare home.
For the first time since that
experience in towns hospital,
I began to be afraid.
It was Saturday afternoon.
The barroom was filling up.
I found myself walking up and
down in the mayflower lobby.
And there stood a church
director.
And absently, I kept looking at
him.
Then suddenly I was seized with
a real panic.
I said to myself, "look, my
friend, you're in a fair way to
get drunk."
And then it occurred to me that
even though the effort I had
made with other alcoholics had
apparently brought nothing to
them, it had brought a great
deal to me.
I need another alcoholic to so
that I can forget my troubles by
talking to him.
I need him as much as he needs
me.
Bill was famous in telling
his stories, for making them
sound good and not fussing too
much with precise detail.
And so the version of the story
that comes down to us is that he
called reverend tunks.
[ Laughter ]
Henrietta's been praying for
her good friend Dr. Bob, who's a
chronic alcoholic and can't stop
drinking.
They're ready to foreclose on
his home.
His life is a mess.
His practice was about defunct.
He was out of friends at the
time he had gone into the
Oxford group.
He was reading the Bible.
He was praying.
He was doing everything the
Oxford group said to do, and yet
he was facing failure every
time.
So, I think it was really
difficult for Bob to have the
hope that the prayers would be
answered.
[ Laughter ]
And all we know is that
apparently bill told Bob what he
knew about alcoholism and what
his experience had been.
You stop and think of it.
Back at that famous meeting in
akron, bill is sitting there,
talking to an older man... 15
years older... who is a doctor.
But where is Dr. Bob?
He's lost in the alcoholic
labyrinth, can't get out of it,
trapped.
And so bill Wilson, little old
stockbroker from New York, sits
down and starts telling him how
bad it is.
Well, Bob stopped drinking.
So, for a few weeks, things were
looking up.
Then Bob went off to a yearly
medical convention in
Atlantic city.
He was blind from the start, as
an occasion for drinking.
And he continued to drink on the
train home, had sense enough and
wit enough to get home.
At this point, bill thought he
had bombed, that his new friend,
Bob Smith, was not gonna make
it.
And Anne pleaded with him to
stay and give Bob one more
chance.
And now the job was to get
Bob ready for this operation.
They had these cures they went in for.
I don't know what stage of the
game... they involved Sauerkraut
and karo syrup and kind of wild
stuff, you know?
But they were doing their best.
Well, he was still in rugged shape.
Anne and I drove him to the
hospital.
Just outside, he had a final
bottle of beer and one goofball,
went inside, and performed that
operation.
Bill and Anne waited back
home for word.
Hours passed. No call.
Dinnertime passed. Not a word.
And Bob's track record could
only mean one thing.
And what he's doing... and
they don't find this out for
some hours... is going around
akron, talking to everybody he's
been skulking away from, telling
them he's a drunk who has quit
drinking and intends to change
his life.
Bill's success with Bob
invigorated both of them.
They decided to work together to
help as many others as they
could.
This partnership would only be
broken by Bob's death 15 years
later.
Well, certainly, bill spent
the summer in 1935 in akron
with... he was staying with
Dr. Bob, and certainly they were
working with drunks.
They were doing that.
But I don't think that was
really the reason that bill
spent as much time as he did in
akron.
Bill didn't give up the dream of
being successful with this proxy
fight he had going.
And I think one of the things
that was driving that was that
bill felt his failure in the
past had been caused by the fact
that he had always given up and
given in too easily.
So, there's some great letters
between bill and Lois during
that time frame, where she
clearly wants him to come home.
She misses him.
And he says, "I really have to
stay here."
He hung in there and he fought
and he fought and he fought
until finally it was absolutely
clear that there was no
possibility of him being
successful in this.
And once he'd done that, it was
okay for him to pack up and go
back home to New York.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite" by
[bach playing ]
Bill goes back to New York
with a great deal of enthusiasm,
starts carrying this message in
a new way, and very quickly
picks up two new recruits...
Hank p. And Fitz m.
And Henry 9. Parkhurst was the
first drunk bill sobered up
towns hospital after he returned
from akron in September of 1935.
So, he had a special bond with
Hank.
The next few years were a
great experiment.
Bill was willing to try anything
to help people get sober.
By this point, Hank parkhurst
had become bill's right-hand man
in New York, and together they
fought through the failure's to
find out what worked.
I had got back into business
briefly, but again wall street
collapse and took me with it,
as usual.
Failure, failure, failure was
our constant companion.
What bill Wilson
fundamentally understood was the
issue with alcoholism, in terms
of recovery, is not stopping
drinking.
It's not starting drinking.
So, this is the first society
that made a significant
distinction between the act of
stopping drinking and building a
life that allowed you not to
return to drinking.
I had found out about this
meeting.
Of all things, they had a woman
speaker.
And I kept thinking, "these
people drink like I do, and yet
they're staying sober.
How do they do it?"
And she said, "the way we do"
it, " she said, " is we turn our
life and our will over to the
care of god, as we understand
"him, for 24 hours at a time."
She said, "just one day at a
time."
And I looked at the clock.
And it was about 10:00.
Tomorrow night, it's Thursday
night.
At 10:00, mcguire's will still
be open.
I don't know how I might feel,
but I'm gonna turn my life and
my will over to him.
Up to this time, a.A. Was
utterly simple.
We didn't even have a name.
We just called ourselves a bunch
of drunks trying to get sober.
But it wasn't until one late
fall afternoon we began to put
down the names of those people
in akron, in New York, and the
little sprinkling in Cleveland
who had been dry awhile.
And despite the large numbers of
failures, it finally burst in on
us that 40 people had really
significant dry time behind
them.
I shall never forget that great
and humbling hour of
realization, that new life had
begun to shine upon the children
of the night.
Bill rushed back to New York
to raise money so they could
spread the word about their new
answer for alcoholism.
But he couldn't find anyone
willing to help.
He complains to his
brother-in-law.
His brother-in-law is a very
successful doctor.
And his brother-in-law says,
"you know, I know this guy who
works for the rockefellers."
Could there be a better
connection for a guy who's in.
New York City and he's looking
for funding for a project that's
gonna get people sober?
The rockefellers had been
pouring a lot of money into this
temperance movement for years
and years and years.
They want your sweet,
innocent girls to take your
booze so they can be enticed
into honky-Tonks by slick-haired
vultures who prey on the flower
of American womanhood!
I say alcohol must go!
[ Cheers and applause ]
Even though prohibition
eventually failed, rockefeller
was still interested in the
problem.
And bill was able to meet with
some of his closest advisors,
who took a real interest in
helping bill find a way to
spread the word.
For the better part of a year,
bill and Bob, along with Hank in.
New York, tried to solve this problem.
Finally, the answer came in
writing a book to show others
how they learned to stay sober.
But writing a book wouldn't put
food on the table.
So, the story goes that Hank
went down to the stationery
store and got a blank
stock-certificate pad and
started making out stock
certificates for works
publishing.
We write across the top of
them, "works publishing company,
par value $25."
[ Laughter ]
So, we take the pad of these
stock certificates to the next
a.a. Meeting, where you
shouldn't mix money with
spirituality, you know?
And the drunks all gave us this
stony look.
[ Laughter ]
And I said, "what the hell?"
[ Laughter ]
"You mean to say you're asking
us to buy stock in a book that
you ain't written yet?"
[ Laughter ]
They didn't have anybody in.
New York City that could fork
over $25, so they come up with a
time payment plan... $5 a month
for five months to pay for your
$25... and they started selling
shares of stock.
[ Keys clacking ]
Now, there's these legendary
stories that there were huge,
huge, huge fights over the words
and the verbiage used.
Well, the fact of the matter is,
in the beginning, that was not
the case.
The earlier chapters talk about
alcoholism as they understand
the problem.
And I don't think think there
was a lot of argument over how
they understood the problem.
The arguments come up on "how do
we understand the solution?"
So then came that night when
we were up around chapter five,
where we really had to say what
the book was all about and how
this deal worked.
On this particular evening, the
idea came to me, "well, we need
a definite statement, a concrete
principle that these drunks
can't wiggle out from."
It was a 6-step program then.
So, I started to write, trying
to bust it up into little
pieces.
And when I've got the pieces set
down on that piece of yellow
paper, I put numbers on and was
rather agreeably surprised when
it came out at 12.
I said, "well, that's a good",
significant figure in
christianity and mystic lore.
Then I noticed that, instead of
leaving the god idea to the
last, I'd got it up front, but I
didn't pay much attention to
that.
And, well, next meeting comes
along... boy, pandemonium broke loose.
"What do you mean by changing
the program?
This thing is overloaded with god.
We don't like this.
You got these guys on their knees.
"Stand them up."
[ Laughter ]
Bill was really interested in
what worked, you know?
I think... one of the things I
love about alcoholics anonymous
is the fact that it's without
dogma, it's without theology.
There's no requirement to
have any religion at all.
The phrase "god as we understood"
"him" was included in the steps
to make the program available to
everyone.
Bill was looking for more of
an open-ended thing, opening up
the solution to more and more
possibilities, so that it's a
bigger tent, a bigger umbrella
for people to get under.
One of the things that intrigues
me, historically, about the
steps is how well those steps
have held up in time.
Part of that is they're broad
enough to be able to be
re-interpreted over time... and
I'm talking historically now...
But they're also broad enough to
be re-interpreted over the life
of long-term recovery.
In other words, the same 12
steps that people can understand
hours and days into their
recovery are re-interpreted for
people in 5 years and
re-interpreted for people who
are 10 and 15 and 20 and 30 and
40 and 50 years into recovery...
So that what began as a program
of "how do I stop drinking?" Are
the same steps that will be used
by other people for profound
spiritual growth long after the
point of any appetite for
alcohol has long ago
disappeared.
I was in prison.
And I went to a meeting one day,
and a fella came in from
outside.
And he spent the entire meeting.
He's talking about that process
of inventory.
The fourth step in our program
is the inventory step... fourth
and fifth, having to do about
identifying what we call causes
and conditions, sort of
examining my life... you know,
what is it that drives me in
such a strange kind of way?
And so I listened to that fellow
and went back, and I said, "all
right, I'm gonna do that."
And I sat down on the bunk
myself.
And I intended to write a little
story about what a victim of
circumstances I was, and I
really wasn't this kind of guy,
you know?
That's what I had in mind.
But literally, what happened...
I wrote two lines about that.
And then it wasn't a clap of
thunder or anything, but all at
once I think that delusion came
to an end, and I saw with
clarity who I was.
That day I surrendered.
And I acknowledged deep, deep
down that I can't drink.
That war is over.
It is over.
And 50 years later, I have never
doubted for one second.
I understood from the
beginning that I was listening
to uncommon wisdom.
I had that very word.
These people know something that
I didn't know, I mean, even such
idiotically simple things is
it's the first drink that does
it.
I didn't know that.
One of the last two or three
drunks I went on, I made a
formal resolve that I would have
but two drinks.
Well, you have the first one,
and the fellow making the next
decision is a different fellow.
He's chemically changed from the
first... the guy who bought the
first drink, you see?
And I didn't understand that.
I didn't know.
I thought you were the same
fellow all along.
No, no, you're different.
It was a rough haul to get
these, but the book was finally
finished.
Nearly 5,000 copies sat in a
warehouse, held hostage for lack
of payment.
Then a huge radio star agreed to
have an a.A. Friend of his on
his show and promote the book.
Bill and Hank saw a golden
opportunity in this and sent
postcards to 20,000 doctors.
In akron, New York,
Cleveland, the areas within the
radio, we vision the books going
out in carloads.
Little ruthie hock,
Hank parkhurst, and I just
couldn't wait to get over to see
what was coming into that box.
We stuck it out for four days.
And finally we went and looked
in the box, and you could see a
few of these cards.
And I had a terrible sinking
sensation.
But Hank was an incorrigible
optimist.
He said, "well, they couldn't
put them all in the box."
He said, "they got several
mailbags full out there."
[ Laughter ]
So, the clerk came with the
cards.
Hank said, "ain't there any
more?"
"No."
We took them over to the desk
and we counted them and there
were 12.
And 10 of them were from
doctors... obviously stewed,
themselves...
[ Laughter ]
Who lambasted the hell out of
us.
And we had exactly two
orders for the book
"alcoholics anonymous."
And at that very opportune
moment, the house in which Lois
and I lived was foreclosed, and
we and our furniture were set
out in the street.
And that was the state of the
book "alcoholics anonymous" in
the summer of 1939 and the state
of grace that the Wilsons were
in.
As Lois put it, she and the
drunks and bill all had to go.
They lost the only home she had
ever known, the home she had
been born in.
They lived, as bill put it,
entirely at the goodwill of a.A.
Members for two years.
What would we do?
An a.A. Lent us a summer camp.
Another a.A. Lent us a car.
The folks around New York began
to pass the hat for groceries
for the Wilsons.
It was really a very
confusing and difficult time.
I remember going through
grand central, wondering where
we'd light next.
We were very tired that day, and
we walked off the main floor and
sat on one of those gorgeous
marble stairways leading up to
the balcony.
And we both began to cry and
say, "well, will we ever have a
home?"
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Piano playing "amazing grace ]"
Bill had a couple of job offers.
One was from towns, and then he
had another one, as well.
And he was, you know,
ecstatic... "God, I'm finally"
getting back to work, and, you
know, I can support my wife and
buy food and put, you know, food
"on the table."
And he went into the group and
explained this, and they all
just were frowning back at him.
And they were like, "bill, don't
do this.
You can't do this."
And so, you know, he was put in
the place of having no money, no
job, and then being asked to
continue to have no money and no
job and a wife to feed and
himself to feed.
But bill thought it would
only be for a few more years,
expecting that he could then
move on because the fellowship
would be strong enough to
survive on its own.
Well, I think one of the
biggest shocks to early
alcoholics anonymous... and, I
think, to bill Wilson... was the
fact that five months after the
book comes out, Hank parkhurst
is drinking.
[ Keys clacking ]
That must have been a crushing
and painful thing for
bill Wilson.
I mean, they'd been business
partners together.
They're in the same office together.
They put this book project
together.
They talked to the rockefeller
people together.
I mean, Hank was a really
critical, critical factor in the
success of alcoholics anonymous.
And bill Wilson can't do
anything to get him sober.
I was full of fear, and I
didn't know how to live life on
life's terms.
I didn't know how to face the
world.
I didn't know how to work.
And so I did what anybody's
gonna do when they're that
completely miserable, is I
started drinking again.
And I was off and running
immediately, but it wasn't the same.
It was more physical, like I
just absolutely... you know, it
was... I mean, sure, I don't
think like to think to much or I
don't like to be present, but it
was really, really like I
couldn't physically stop
drinking.
And I went to the detox round
and I would be out and I would
call a.A. People and they would
come pick me up and take me to a
meeting and I would get to the
meeting and I would walk out the
back door.
I wouldn't even stay for the meeting.
I was just trying to get a ride
across town.
And I'd try to get money off of
them, or they'd come pick me up
and take me and make me take a
shower 'cause apparently I stunk
too bad to go to the meetings.
So they'd make me take a shower
and then take me, you know, to
the meeting.
And every day they'd pick me up.
[ Voice breaking ] They would
act... they would act like
that's the first time I was
gonna get sober.
You know, like they never got
sick of me, they never, um...
They never got sick of me, you know?
They never acted like I was
wearing them out or I was whatever.
It was always new.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite"
[by bach plays ]
Meanwhile, Lois and I had
moved to the club at old 24th
street, taking a room upstairs,
next to Tom mulhall, the
caretaker.
And in one way or another, we
slid through the year 1940 on
this basis.
It's very interesting, the
change, I think, that took place
in bill Wilson's understanding
of what alcoholism was.
And where this change began was
that story again going back
that's retold so often... bill's
at the 24th street clubhouse.
He's told there's another drunk
who wants to see him.
Father dowling... by the way, a
non-alcoholic... was a chronic
arthritic who really spent the
whole of his life in great pain.
And so to find a situation where
there can be shared honesty,
where two people let each other
know how much they hurt... it's
only in that setting, it seems,
that healing came take place,
this healing of the spirit, of
the soul, of whatever part is
being torn apart inside of us.
And part of bill's working with
alcoholics was he had this
thirst for more always, and he
tells dowling how this thirst is
just something that... [ sighs ]
"Will it ever be quenched?"
And dowling's answer is, "no,
never, bill, because we are
meant to thirst."
The question is, "where do we"
"aim what we thirst for?" And
that his thirst to help
alcoholics was surely an
expression of his seeking of
god.
So, what happened... when
a.a. Began to be successful, it
was electrifying.
I kid you not.
It was electrifying to the
people in the program and to
anybody who came up and looked
at it... for example, like
Jack Alexander, who in '41 did
the article for
Saturday evening post.
He came to scoff.
He came to deride.
He was sent to blow up this
crazy notion that this spiritual
program was gonna work.
He stayed to honor it.
[ Up-tempo classical music
[playing ]
In fact, the post at that
time said no pictures, no
article.
So, if you will look up the
march 1, 1941 issue of
the Saturday post, you will see
a picture of the interior of the
club and a plaque of us sitting
before the fire.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
And with the advent of that
piece, there was a prodigious
rush of inquiry.
[ Music continues ]
During this year, something very
good happened to Lois and me.
A Mrs. Helen Griffin appeared at
our clubhouse meeting at 24th
street.
She began to talk of her house
in Westchester.
She said we couldn't live
forever in the club, we'd need a
place like that.
The women was 48 years old
when she became homeless.
When they finally did make it to
stepping stones, bill writes a
letter to Dr. Bob where he says,
"thank god that girl's finally
being taken care of at last.
[ Laughter ]
And I'm a gemini.
[ Laughter ]
I just want to tell you, I
started doing bill's work in
'50, and then in '54 I started
going up to bedford hills.
On Friday afternoon, bill would
pick me up in the station.
Then we'd go home, and bill
would say, "let's sit down and
do some of the old chestnuts."
Lois and bill had marvelous
sessions with the violin and the
cello.
And Saturday morning... that was
the work day.
And bill would be dictating,
which he liked to do.
That's why he'd get up... 'Cause
he liked to dictate at home.
He didn't like to come down to
the office and do all that
dictating.
And however, I was to learn
later on what was going on in
this era of the '40s that was
supposed to be an era of unity,
and most of the time it was an
era of dis-unity.
Groups began to spring up
everywhere, like mushrooms.
We began to be bombarded by
group problems.
Bill was the lightning rod.
People were always sending him
letters... "Oh, you know, our
group's fighting about this,"
and, "what are we gonna do about that?"
And he would send back some sort
of solution.
And then somebody would be
charging for
alcoholics anonymous admission,
and somebody else would complain
and send him a letter.
So, he'd write about that.
We had an a.A. Group in
Richmond, Virginia, that drinks
beer at their meeting.
We have women coming into the
fellowship.
Dr. Bob thought that if there
were women around, the men
wouldn't get sober.
And one of Dr. Bob's famous
sayings was, "under every skirt,
there's a slip."
We have the first attempts
to racially integrate groups.
Bill had gone out to the
Rockland state hospital and met
a couple of black alcoholics
there.
And he invited them to come to
the meeting in New York when
they got out of the hospital.
Well, when they showed up,
members objected.
So, they took a vote on whether
these two members could belong
to the group.
Now, these were a.A. Members,
people who had the 12 steps and
the spiritual program and
everything else.
And they voted to exclude these
two black men that bill had
invited to the meeting.
Well, instead of having a
knockdown, drag-out fight about
it, bill asked them to take
another vote, and this vote was
whether black people should have
the program, whether they were
entitled to have the a.A
program.
And so they did vote and agreed
that they should have the
program.
Well, then bill got them to let
the two men come to the meeting
as observers.
And bill began to think
about, "what are we gonna do?"
Because he had... if you will,
if I may put it this way, he had
solved the problem of the
individual drunk getting sober.
Now, how do these individual
drunks hang together long enough
to stay sober?
And that's where the traditions
come in.
Bill saw that a.A., as a
movement, would cease to exist
if there weren't some set of
practices to guide it.
But he also knew how loud the
objections would be to the
thought of any kind of
structure.
So he made great use of a.A.'S
national newsletter,
the grapevine, to explain the
concepts behind the 12
traditions.
Now, it wasn't all going
forward with great guns.
There was a lot of dissension, a
lot of second thought, a lot of
disagreement and anger.
And bill was not one to give in.
As I say, he could do a little
arm-twisting when it was
necessary.
Bill knew he needed to have
the fellowship's approval to
move forward with the 12
traditions, and with Bob's
blessing he set out on a
cross-country trip to get it.
You know, odd he went to
three years of night school and
law, and he never picked up his degree.
He was drunk the time he was
supposed to do it, but I always
thought it paid off because a.A.
Is a brilliant instance, in my
opinion, of the design of
structure of an organization for
survival.
A genius.
"Genius" is not a word I use lightly.
I think the man is a genius for
what he did with the 12
traditions of
alcoholics anonymous.
We just would not be here
without the 12 traditions.
We would not be here.
And he shared so much.
Bill just didn't talk about
alcoholism all the time to people.
He talked about depressions.
I've heard people come up to him
and say, "thank you for saving
my life twice."
With the passing of Dr. Bob,
in 1950, bill lost the only
person who really understood his
position and could help him
carry the weight of a.A.'S
success.
Bill Wilson was really
worried about how alcoholics
anonymous was gonna continue to
run and to work.
He was writing pieces, saying,
"I need a real life."
I just can't be doing this
anymore.
This thing should be
"self-sustaining."
So, in 1955, bill was
preparing for St. Louis, where
he formally turned over
leadership of a.A. To the
members themselves.
Back in 1948, Dr. Bob and I
wrote a joint piece in
the grapevine.
And we said, "why can't we join
a.a., too?"
Well, this is the day we join
a.a.
This is the day you'll come of
age.
Bill formally handed over the
leadership of a.A. To the
fellowship.
He had wanted this for 10 years,
and finally the time had come.
But the constant demands of a.A.
Had drained bill and placed a
strain on his marriage to Lois.
The rental house became not just
a haven for bill and Lois, but
also a refuge from the
unrelenting adoration of the
fellowship.
Bill would always have trouble
letting go of a.A., but a.A.
Refused to let go of him.
He had become number-one man in
the one place he didn't want
it... a society where everyone
was equal but him.
Here's the man who founded
alcoholics anonymous, but he
couldn't be a player in a.A.
'Cause he was just turned into
some sort of icon, some sort of
god.
[ Applause ]
It came home to be strongly when
my sponsor went to Mexico
several years ago, and he
mentions the fact that he had
met bill Wilson and shook his
hand.
And everybody in the meeting
lined up and shook my sponsor's
hand because that was the hand
that shook bill Wilson's hand.
I mean, I just... I don't know
how bill Wilson dealt with that.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
There's a renegade quality to
bill Wilson that, at the time,
everybody else is ready to
celebrate the achievements of a .a.
Bill's obsessed with the people
who still aren't making it in a .a.
And that obsession is going to
lead him into sound boundary
areas that could bring great
controversy to a.A...
Bill Wilson's experiments with LSD.
LSD... those three letters
conjure up some decadent
injury... Timothy leary in the
heyday of haight-ashbury.
But this was before then, when
it was still a drug of promise,
not a drug of abuse.
One sure way to prove that
value of a medical product is by
hospital testing under doctors'
supervision, and that's why I'm
proud to recommend surin.
Take comeback.
Comeback eases...
This was the 1950s, a time
when the wonders of modern
medicine seemed able to fix
anything that was wrong with us.
We have early reports coming
from two psychiatrists, hoffer
and osmond, really proclaiming
this as a potential breakthrough
in the treatment of alcoholism.
And in the context, they're
describing some alcoholics
beginning to have a spiritual
breakthrough under the influence
of these LSD-guided experiences
that are really contributing to
their development of sustained
sobriety, in individuals where
many other methods had failed.
My name is norm.
I'm an alcoholic.
Well, I went to a.A. In an
effort to quit.
I wanted to quit.
And a.A. Just didn't work for
me.
I heard about LSD, a drug that
some doctors in western Canada
had found out about and felt
that it might help.
I took it several times in
hospital settings, in doctors'
offices.
Each experience lasted for
several hours and did cause me
to do a lot of thinking about
myself.
And then the doctor asked me if
I would like to take LSD again.
And my experience was instant.
It changed my life.
It changed my thinking.
It changed the way I look at
things.
And that happened in seconds.
And it was over.
The whole experience was over.
I never wanted LSD again.
I went back to a.A. And worked
very hard at it for a long time.
And he really did go through
a period of deep infatuation
with this drug in the thought
that this might both
revolutionize the treatment of
alcoholism and also be a tool
for great spiritual
enlightenment.
It's unimaginably difficult
to be that person whom so many
recovering alcoholics are
looking up to with such
expectancy, with such unspoken
demands.
And this was an extraordinary
burden to carry.
And I think, as his life went
on, his spirituality was being
drained by the thing he created.
And more importantly, as the
years went on, he felt himself
to be farther and farther
removed from that experience,
that enlightenment that gave him
the gift that he gave to us.
Bill used LSD on and off for
over five years as a way to
explore his own spirituality, to
recharge himself.
But when LSD became a drug of
abuse, bill, like the doctors
who had helped him, had to back
away from using it.
So, bill's search for what he
called emotional sobriety
continued.
He wanted to be free of the
depression and anxiety that
plagued him.
Then Dr. Abram hoffer introduced
him to niacin, also called
vitamin b3, as a possible
solution.
After about two weeks, he was
well.
He lost his tension, anxiety,
depression, his insomnia.
He was able to sleep.
And of course he was, therefore,
very much happier than he had
been.
He saw niacin as some kind of
a cure or an aid in dealing with
depression.
And he started handing it out to
people.
He wrote the equivalent of three
small books about vitamin b3.
And I think this is part of the
entrepreneur in him.
He needed something new to work
on.
So, he became very
enthusiastic, and he became so
enthusiastic he made the
international headquarters
pretty angry at him.
Bill develops a professional
relationship with a woman,
Helen wynn, who's occupied with
bill in the vitamin b3 therapy
and in bill's experimentation
with LSD.
Joe was a...
[ Laughs ]
Nell didn't necessary want to
talk that much about Helen's
relationship, but what did did
say was that in most of bill's
darkest moments, Helen pretty
much comforted him and brought
him back to life, you know,
possibly even bill's wanting to
commit suicide, bill's wanting
to just, you know, crawl
underneath the bed and never
come out.
And Helen wynn just helped him
through that and helped him
through his darkest days.
My mother... bless her
soul... was Helen wynn.
She was a very inspiring human
being.
She was very joyful.
She was very life-giving.
He was very intelligent.
She was very gracious.
She was very good at what she
did, and she had had some
publicity when she was an
actress... probably for some of
her drinking escapades, too,
I think.
He and you and jed think I'm
a bum, while you're just a
perfect woman, just a Lily-white
angel.
Stop.
How dare you talk like that?
Guess whose father's right.
Helen wynn was a very
competent editor of
the grapevine and she wrote to
me in the mid-'50s and asked me
to write an article and we
seemed to get along real well.
And I met her in 1958.
And she was just moving up to
pleasantville.
She had a young son.
But it was her relationship with
bill that apparently terminated
her employment.
I think from the very start,
they were extremely aware that
their attraction to each other
was fraught with difficulty
because both of them...
Particularly bill... was
extremely concerned about the
future of a.A.
I do know that cost them a great
deal.
The very essence of a.A. Is
about this spirituality of
imperfection and the idea that,
within that, you would elevate
one of the co-founders as sort
of the perfect person.
I don't think there's any
illusion to that.
I think, if anything, it sort of
adds testament that this
recovery thing is complex, that
people can stay sober and have
other flaws that they're still
gonna continue to wrestle with
and work on.
That's the nature of recovery.
And in this particular
instance, my mother also
suffered from depression and
doubt and fear.
So, it was a blessing and a
revelation to bill to be able to
be so open and trusting and
fearless with another human
being who loved him him for whom
he was for sure.
He recognized who and what my
mother was and took enormous
pleasure in her company.
And I...
God bless them.
[ Sighs ]
It's hard for me to believe
that she couldn't have known
about it.
But Lois was a very practical
woman, and I think she could
have understood this about bill
and accepted it in her way.
You know, bill and Lois had had
53 years together when he died.
And she was really devoted to him.
He was the man in her life.
It would have been very hard for
them to separate, I think.
Some sugar, lady.
You know, bill adopted the.
St. Francis prayer in his later
years, got it from
father dowling, his spiritual
advisor.
And it's almost a formula.
I've often said I don't know
that bill was being at all pious
in taking this prayer up.
If you present me with hate,
what's my response?
My normal, natural human
response is to hate you,
good and solid.
But what old Francis said was,
"when you confront that..."
And bill Wilson confronted a lot
of this in his life later on.
People who didn't like him and
were jealous of him... you turn
around, and you spill back over
them benignity, kindness,
compassion, love, you know?
That's absolutely marvelous, a
marvelous thing, and bill did
it.
Bill's visibility as the
leader of a.A. Began to reach
society at large.
He was offered an honorary
degree from Yale university, but
bill turned it down because he
felt he needed to set the best
possible example for anonymity,
concerned that ego-driven
members might follow and
threaten a.A.'S very survival.
Likewise, he turned down time
magazine's offer for a cover
story.
Bill's concerns for a.A.'S
future were tied to the state of
his own health.
He was a lifelong smoker and had
developed emphysema.
In retrospect, he never
really recovered from that fall.
From ever afterwards, he was a
little more hesitant and a
little slower and so on,
progressively so.
But I must tell you about his
last appearance.
It was at one of these
international conventions down
in Miami, Florida.
And he came Sunday, and there's
a closing part of the program.
And as we were all in this great
big room, by god, up on the
stage, the curtains part, and of
course the place just went wild
with applause and cheers and
what have you.
And he, with effort, got himself
to his feet and just made a
very, very short talk.
Dear folks, there's always
something new in one's a.A.
Life.
And what do you think it is with
me this morning?
It is that I am absolutely
speechless.
[ Laughter ]
So, I can only say may god
bless and keep you and
alcoholics anonymous forever.
[ Cheers and applause ]
He had an oxygen mask on.
He could hardly breathe.
And I held his hand for a few
minutes.
My mother was there, some other
people.
And I think everyone stood at
the brink of powerlessness and
bewilderment and just stood
there watching.
And thinking about how sick
bill was before he died, I don't
think the average person
realizes how sick you can be
when you have emphysema and when
your lungs aren't working, when
you're not getting any air.
It's torture.
He was so suffering from lack
of oxygen to his brain that he
was actually hallucinating.
The story came up that, on
his deathbed, bill asks for
alcohol.
There's nothing to be surprised
at.
This is the most natural thing
in the world for an alcoholic
who's under the influence of
drugs, obviously.
Some of the brain cells and
chemicals are not acting
normally, and I find nothing
unusual and nothing to be
scandalized in it.
This is the nature of
alcoholism.
This is the nature of
alcoholism.
Alcoholism is... bill referred
to alcohol in the book
"alcoholics anonymous" as
"cunning, baffling, and
powerful."
They saw this extraordinary
man who had given this
extraordinary gift to the world
doing battle with his personal
demons who came to haunt him, to
attack him at the end...
Fighting for his life,
fighting for his breath,
fighting to stay conscious,
fighting to keep eye contact, to
hold one's hand, to say, "I'm
still here."
The co-founder of the most
successful effort ever to help
alcoholics stay dry died late
Sunday, and, as he had provided,
then gave up his anonymity.
He was William 9. Wilson, "bill"
to the thousands of drunks who
found help in his example, and
when he died at 76, he had not
had a drink in 36 years.
And he once explained why a.A.S
stay anonymous... "Not to avoid"
a stigma, " he said, " but to keep
our fool egos from running hog
wild after money and fame at
"a.a.'s expense."
It's not anything I'm
inclined to spill over about,
but I am eternally grateful the
man lived and did what he did.
You said, "well, somebody else
might have done it."
Yeah, but he's the one who did
it for me, you see?
He piloted this course out of
the very deep woods that
alcoholism is.
I think his contribution to the
human race is of an order that
has not yet been fully realized.
[ Bach's "unaccompanied cello"
suite no. 5 in c minor, bwv
"1011-prelude" [playing ]
I've not told this whole
story a lot, but I got to be
editor of the grapevine.
And, uh, not very long sober...
I think I was editor from '63 to
'68, and I was sober only four
years when I got the job.
So, I got into it and went along
fine, all of five years.
I think I was something of a
fair-haired boy because I was
the first editor in some years
who hadn't cut up and carried on.
And so we put an issue out that
had on the cover "winds of change."
Well, that's not a great word to
use around a.A. Circuits.
If I had it to do over, I think
I'd have thought that one
through again.
[ Chuckles ]
You talk about issues that
didn't make the grade.
I realize within a few days of
the emergence of this on the
scene that I had created a
storm.
But the thing I got from it was
a lasting, permanent memory of
bill Wilson operating in a
crisis.
The crisis was me.
And they had to... they had to
muzzle this bird who was about
to run away with their magazine.
I thought I was in a for a
drubbing, you know, but none at all.
He suggested that I had perhaps
been a tad imprudent.
And then we wandered off,
talking about the Oxford group
and its difficulties and this
and that, just a lovely
conversation.
That's all there was to it.
It was my exit interview.
But at this point, all I'm doing
is recording that he was a very
great guy to get fired by.
[ Bach's "unaccompanied cello"
suite no. 6 in d major, bwv
"1012: Gavotte I/ii" [plays ]
Bill Wilson was, first and
foremost, an alcoholic in
recovery.
He was a stinking, rotten drunk
who, by some divine grace, was
granted sobriety, was empowered
to bring to the world this
fellowship, this message.
But I think, like any gift of
this magnitude, simply to
protect him, he was not granted
the full knowledge of what the
price would be.
He was spellbinding on his
own story anytime I ever heard
him.
And I think everybody else had
that same sense because I think
what people realized they were
listening to was the founding
myth, I guess would be... it was
not myth.
It's reality, simply a story of
a founding, and that's what this
was.
And it was endlessly wanted and
effective.
One day I was sitting in a
brokerage shop, and I fell into
a conversation with a man who
proved to be an heir to a great
fortune.
And I began my sales talk on how
cheap securities work, how a
syndicate ought to be put
together to gather these things
up.
And he fell in with the idea.
And I was to be the manager.
Moreover, I was to have 1/3
interest.
Well, by the time we got that
far in the conversations, they
discovered about my drinking.
So, they came to me, and they
said, "look, bill, we know you"
got a real liquor problem.
Would you be willing, during the
life of this thing, to sign an
agreement that you will not
drink, that if you do drink,
your interest in it will be
"ended?"
You know, the curious thing is,
I really believed that I could
stay sober when the incentive
was so great.
The work began.
Money came in.
We began to buy securities.
But now see what happened.
[ Telephone rings ]
One day some old business
acquaintances called me up.
They said, "bill, we hear you're
sober."
They said, "well, won't you go
over in Jersey and do a piece of
work for us?"
I said, "sure."
That evening we put up at a
small hotel, and one of the boys
brings out a jug.
And I said, "well, what you got
there?"
[ Laughter ]
"Why," they say, "that's
applejack, Jersey lightning."
"No. No, thanks.
No, I'm not drinking.
I can't handle it."
They fall to playing cards.
Every now and then, the jug
comes my way.
With ease, I say, "no, thanks,"
because I can see my name on
that contract.
So, quite easily I say no...
I'm happy
my cares have flown away
a new day with nothing...
Until about 10:30,
perhaps.
[ Laughter ]
Something occurred within me.
And if that could be ever fully
explained, we would completely
comprehend the mystery of this
obsession of drinking.
"Why, bill Wilson, in all your
drinking, in Europe and the
states, never in all your life
have you had any applejack, not
one single drink of Jersey
"lightning."
[ Laughter ]
And that idea began to take hold
and possess me so that when that
jug was passed to me, a curtain
had fallen between me and
reality.
So, I said, "thanks very much.
I will have one little shot this time.
It couldn't hurt me at all."
You know, at the end of the
last century, they were talking
about the most important people
in the century.
From my personal perspective,
there's not a more important
person in the 20th century than
bill Wilson.
I'd be a dead man without him.
He had probably 30,000
wonderful opportunities not to
go forward with a.A.,
discouragements that an ordinary
man would have taken as
sufficient.
But he was not that sort.
He was not an ordinary man.
He looked like one and... well,
he was tall, he was rather
good-looking, in a dignified
sort of way, but by and large he
didn't seem someone you would
say, "well, here's a Beethoven
or here's a whatever."
But he was an absolutely unusual man.
There's no question about that,
in my opinion.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite" by
[bach plays ]
His father left immediately,
and his mother would soon
follow.
She left bill and his sister,
Dorothy, with her parents to
become a doctor, never to be
fully a part of his life again.
[ Birds chirping ]
[ Water splashes ]
Well, back in those days,
there was as much or more stigma
bon divorce in a small yankee
town as there was on being the
town drunk... almost.
So, at 10 years of age, I heard
the gossip of the neighbors.
I began to feel different.
I began to feel that I didn't
belong.
Then, too, I was awkward,
physically awkward, pretty
homely, just like I am now,
except then I cared much, and
now I don't care a damn.
[ Laughter ]
And then this fierce desire to
win out over these handicaps
took possession of me.
My grandfather, seeing this
trait in me, wanted to encourage
it, so he was always proposing
the impossible.
One day he said, "uncle."
Clarence's fiddle is up there in
the trunk, but, Willy, I don't
think you got any ear for
"music."
Right up to that trunk, out with
the fiddle, put a chip on it for
a bridge, get some wire strings
at the grocery store, and I
fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, until I
drove him just nuts, a desire so
fierce that it turned into what
the medics call a neurosis, an
obsession... to be what?
The first violin of the high
school orchestra.
And bill would often tell
this story.
And he always did instants,
something that became
very characteristic of his life
from that day forward... maybe
it already had been... but what
he called power drives.
He would set his eye on
something, and he would work
like a fiend to get it done.
He got to be president of the
class, captain of the baseball
team, first violinist in the
orchestra.
But there was still one thing
missing from his life.
I'd had a terrible
inferiority about gals until
finally the minister's daughter
took me up.
I say "took me up" because
that's the way women do it, you know.
[ Laughter ]
He had become enamored of...
And apparently it was
reciprocated... a girl named
Bertha bamford.
So, now I'm in love for the
first time.
I'm deliriously happy.
I'm a success.
I'm the number-one fella all
over the place.
And this has never been very
well explained, but apparently
the parents and Bertha went off
to New York, and the next thing
known back in Manchester is
Bertha has died in an operation
in New York City.
It was so sudden and shattering
that it simply took years for
him to get over it.
And would that be true or a
normal boy?
How abnormal was bill, to have
that happen to him?
I don't know.
Maybe my experience can have
some value to somebody else.
The most powerful thing I will
ever have... and a lot of it is
what I want to keep in mind.
The most powerful gift that I
can give anybody is where I was
broken and healed.
When I can share with somebody
where my life was broken and
healed will be the greatest gift
I can give any alcoholic and a
lot of other people, too.
[ Bell chiming ]
[ Up-tempo piano music playing ]
Bill's love for Lois had a
hitch, though.
He was a country boy and felt he
could never rise up to the level
of her family's sophistication.
But he was determined to do
right by her.
Even before they were
married, they seemed to have a
whole bunch of, you know, ideals
that they were planning on
living up to and theories about
the way to live and be healthy
and smart and well-read and
educated and they had all of
those plans and one of them was
that they didn't believe in
drinking.
And he writes to her in the
summer of 1917, and she puts a
note on the side of the letter
that says "first drink."
And she stars it.
So, it says, "darling one, I"
went to a most peculiar party
Sunday night.
A lady and three daughters
"entertained us."
He has this experience of
finding out that this stuff
they're talking about is the
elixir of the gods, for heaven's sakes.
I mean, it does perfectly
marvelous things for you.
You talk. The women listen.
Even the men listen.
Bill started drinking, and
being alcoholic from the start,
he got drunk every time he
drank.
Although I worried some about
this, I was not deeply concerned
because, like most young wives,
I thought I could change him...
[ Laughter ]
And that our life together
would be so happy and complete
that he would not need an
artificial stimulus.
But all went fairly well, you
know?
Everybody was very jolly.
It's wartime, and a few drinks
here and there... as bill
himself said, writing about it,
everybody was drinking and
having a grand time, and he was,
too.
The first time I drank, it
was a magical experience for me.
It was... it was like I had been
holding my breath my whole life
and I finally exhaled.
And I just... I felt like I fit
in with everyone else, and I
finally found my place in life.
It felt grown-up, mature, and I
even was able to interact with
guys that night on a level that
I had never been able to do so.
And so it was a solution for me
from the very first night.
I remember that there were three
of us girls and we had four
drinks and we each got one and
then there was one left over.
And I guarded that drink from
the very first night.
I had to have more from the very
first time.
[ Fireworks exploding ]
[ Crowd cheering ]
When bill came back from the
war, it apparently never
occurred to bill to go back to
Vermont.
From the beginning... and he
doesn't even say very much about
this... but we are in New York.
He connects with some people in
the world of finance and had a
knack for it.
[ Bell ringing ]
Bill Wilson is sometimes
referred to as a wall street
broker, and he never really was
a broker.
He got the idea in the 1920s,
when people were invested sort
of wildly on rumors, of going
around and investigating these
firms and finding out what was
really going on. G out what was
so, bill convinced Lois to
quit her job, hop on her
motorcycle, and risk everything
for a chance at success.
He bought shares of stock so he
could look at the books of
companies that interested him
and then wrote very detailed
reports to send to his friends
on wall street.
And one way to find out what
was going on in the plant is
headed for the nearest bar at
quitting time and, you know,
sort of hoisted a few with the
workers who were out, to find
out what was going on in the factory.
And he did this in a lot
of places.
And I think that his skill was
being able to take lots of
discrete pieces of information
and see what the whole picture
was that they made up.
What Wilson brought back to the
people who hired him was stuff
that really allowed them to get rich.
These were ordinary Joes that
were making a lot of money fast,
and bill was one of them.
You know, he had rented an
apartment in Brooklyn, and it's
not being enough, so he rents
the one next door and knocks
down the wall between and has a
big living room.
And so I don't think they ever
had a terrible time personally
with each other, except over the
booze.
And she was forever forgiving of
him.
I mean, I don't know why.
I wouldn't.
[ Soft jazz music playing ]
Lois said that she didn't
know whether she or bill wanted
to have children more.
Lois had had three miscarriages
in their early marriage, and at
one point they finally tried to
adopt.
And they waited for this baby to
come, and the baby never came,
but it was later on in life that
her childhood friend fessed up
to her that the adoption agency
had contacted them for a
reference and that she was
unable to give a good reference
because of bill's drinking.
Alcoholism is a treacherous
disease.
[ Horn honks ]
It is very difficult to admit to
being an alcoholic because
there's a real barrier to
recognizing this.
[ Soft jazz music playing ]
Addiction is this belief that
something outside of me can fix
something that's wrong within
me.
I can find a new medicine.
I can find a new women.
I can find a new car.
I can find a new boat.
I can find a new job.
I can find a new...
No.
The emptiness is still there.
[ Dog barking ]
[ Siren wails ]
Around the same time that
bill is starting to really
realize that he's powerless over
his drinking, she writes a
letter to him explaining how
awful she's feeling, and she
says, "it seems each night as if"
I couldn't go through another,
and yet another comes and yet
another till my heart is like a
stone within me.
It is so heavy, and a great
dullness spreads over me till
all things good or bad taste
"alike."
She said she had a terrible time
staying mad at him because he
was so pathetic and so sincere
about wanting to quit.
Bill had really hit bottom
when he met a man who would help
turn his life around.
Like bill, Dr. Silkworth lost
everything in the crash of '29,
but he found a home in a
drying-out place called
towns hospital.
He had a knack for working with
drunks, and though he couldn't
offer a cure for alcoholism, he
treated it as a disease.
No formal introductions today.
I agreed to abide by the rules
of alcoholics anonymous.
Bill, do you want to just start
right out by telling us how and
when you founded a.A.?
Yes.
If you don't mind, I'll start a
little bit in the middle.
All right.
In the summer of 1934, I lay
in a drying-out hospital on
central park west.
My wife was downstairs talking
to the doctor, and she was
asking the doctor why I couldn't
stop drinking.
And the good man was obliged to
tell her that I had an obsession
of the mind that condemned me to
drink against my will so that if
the drinking was continued, I
would be destined to go mad or
to die.
In fact, he told her, frankly,
that she would soon have to lock
me up if my life was to be
saved.
When the psychiatric asylums
became almost the only resource
that alcoholics had outside of
jails in the opening decades of
the 20th century, there was a
sense... there was a kind of
belief that there was no such
thing as alcoholism as a primary
disorder.
There was only untreated
underlying psychiatric illness.
So, what that meant was
alcoholics were subjected to
mandatory sterilization laws,
along with the mentally ill.
It meant they were subjected to
the heydays of electro and chemo
convulsive therapies.
It means they were subjected to
psycho surgery, particularly
pre-frontal lobotomies...
On the theory that there was
an alcoholic personality and if
they altered that personality by
brain surgery, that it would
cure their alcoholism.
I well remember leaving the
hospital.
And I suppose it was mainly fair
and constant vigilance that kept
me sober for the next few
months.
Then came that day when you had
to work in the department store.
It was November 11, 1934,
armistice day.
And I proposed to go to
staten island to play some golf
all by myself.
So, bill gets out to
staten island, where this public
golf course is, and he's riding
on a bus.
And the guy sitting next to him
has got a rifle, a target rifle
of some sort, and they get into
a conversation about this
wonderful rifle the guy's got.
And they're having a
conversation, and all of a
sudden... accident.
So, we sat at a table.
I ordered a ginger ale.
"What?" he said.
"Don't you drink?"
"No," I said, "I am an
alcoholic.
I am a guy who has an obsession.
This obsession drives me to drink.
According to the doctors, I've
got a physical sensitivity that
can damage me to go mad or die
if I keep it up.
That's how bad I am.
That's why I'm drinking ginger
"ale."
"Well, okay," the fella said.
"Please go right on."
[ Laughter ]
So, here he's telling this
guy this story and drinking his
ginger ale.
The new bus arrives.
They get on the bus.
They go to wherever they were
gonna go, the end of the line,
and now it's lunchtime.
The guy says, "why don't we go
in and have some lunch?"
We got into that barroom.
That buzz that we all know in
bars was rising.
My mind again began to wander
back to the days when I could
drink.
The obsession was descending
upon me.
Suddenly, the bartender comes
along, beaming, and he has one
in each hand, and he planked the
drinks down in front of us and
said, "boys, have one on the
house.
It's armistice day."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
My new friend looked at me in
astonishment.
And he said, "my god, man."
After what you've just been
telling me an hour ago, you can
do this?
"Are you crazy?"
And I said, "yes, that's just
it.
I am crazy."
I think he was at a point
where he really, really thought
that self-knowledge was gonna
keep him sober.
Understanding the problem,
understanding how it worked in
him was gonna keep him sober.
I mean, it wasn't even that his
nose was rubbed in it.
It was like he was smacked up
the side of the head with a bat,
you know?
It was just... it was so clear
that he believed, in the depths
of his soul, the last thing he
should be doing... the last
thing he should be doing is
picking up a drink.
Picks up a drink.
My name is Phil, and I'm an
alcoholic.
I had a brief period in.
New York City where I got good
jobs and lost them, which is
sort of the story of my life.
I would get very good jobs.
People would have a lot of
confidence in me.
I was able to not drink.
I knew that I had to watch my
drinking... not really stop, but
watch my drinking.
But I would always pick up a
drink and destroy everything.
[ Guitar playing jazz music ]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And I would always say,
"never, never, never again."
Somewhere along the way, I
picked up the drink, and the
whole thing happened all over
again, except worse.
I hustled 42nd street.
I did just about anything with
anybody, as long as a drink was
involved, and finally wound up
at the bowery, at the men's
shelter at third street.
And by the time I got there, I
had pretty much determined that
I couldn't function, that this
world was not a place for me.
And I think I had just about
bottomed out.
I didn't know what was wrong
with me.
I didn't know from alcoholism.
But I was ready to listen and
maybe not debate so much inside
my head because I was a great
debater, especially if anybody
said anything about my drinking.
I could always justify it, you
know?
He came in.
I looked across the kitchen
table.
I pushed him a tumbler of gin,
and he said, "no, thanks."
I said, "what?"
"No, thanks," he said.
"I'm not drinking."
And he looked across the table
at me, and with a half-smile, he
said, "well, I've got religion."
Gee, might as well have hit me
in the face with a wet mop.
[ Laughter ]
Oh, boy. What a disappointment.
"Well," I said at last, rather
weakly, "what brand is it?"
"Well," he said, "I wouldn't
call it 'brand.'"
it's just common-sense ideas
that I've picked up from a group
over here.
They call them the Oxford group.
Six months ago, I got released
from my desire to drink by
practicing very simple
principles.
Now we see nations free
on the march for god
What ebby brought to bill was
the whole Oxford group message,
which was, "you become part of"
our group and you acknowledge
the existence of a higher power
"and clean house," meaning clean
up your life and so on...
Something like that, which
ultimately, of course, is
expressed exquisitely in the
a.a. Program in the 12 steps.
Lois comes home one day and
finds this letter on her coffee
table from bill, and it says,
"dear Lois, I think I said that
if matters approached a crisis,
the inevitable result of the
first drink, I should go to towns.
I am going there.
I shall not delay a moment.
Yours you do not know how
"dearly... bill."
And then, with no
particularly hope or faith, I
cried out as a child in the
dark, "if there is a god, will
he show himself?"
And then it seemed that that
room lit up in a great glare.
I was transported into an
ecstasy.
It seemed that I stood on the
top of a mountain and a great
clean wind was blowing, not of
air, but of spirit.
And I was free.
At length, of course, I realized
I'm still on the bed, but I am
in a different world.
A great peace has settled down.
Well, for me, that was the
beginning of feeling that
everything was completely all
right, that indeed now I was a
part of life at last, that I had
touched the ultimate reality of
a loving god.
The kind of thing that bill
had is a thing that absolutely
takes the entire human persona
or the complex of mind, body,
soul, psychology, the whole
thing, and shakes it up and sets
it down again, and it's all new.
It's different.
It is life change.
And bill said, "I knew I was a
free man."
Oh, boy, it would be fun to have
such an experience, wouldn't it,
that whatever is wrong, it's all
right?
God is in his heaven.
All is well with the world.
That is the bottom line of this
kind of experience.
And you go forth as bill Wilson
did, and you do what you can to
make things better.
And he spends months
wandering around, in and out of
bars, grabbing hold of drunks,
telling them they got to get
this.
Well, very nice if they can, but
of course none of them could.
He didn't get a single soul to
sober up...
And that's when silkworth
dragged him in and said, "you're"
going at this wrong.
This isn't gonna work.
You can't get people to sit down
and have your kind of spiritual
experience.
"It isn't gonna happen."
Tell them how bad it is.
Go back to the pre-condition.
Tell them they're hopeless.
At this point, bill was
offered the chance to go to
akron, Ohio, to take control of
a rubber machine corporation there.
If he could win the confidence
of its shareholders, he would
become president and, more
importantly, start making money
again.
We get to akron.
The deal blows up in my face.
My friends depart in disgust.
I am in the mayflower hotel with
$10 in my pocket... not enough
for a fare home.
For the first time since that
experience in towns hospital,
I began to be afraid.
It was Saturday afternoon.
The barroom was filling up.
I found myself walking up and
down in the mayflower lobby.
And there stood a church
director.
And absently, I kept looking at
him.
Then suddenly I was seized with
a real panic.
I said to myself, "look, my
friend, you're in a fair way to
get drunk."
And then it occurred to me that
even though the effort I had
made with other alcoholics had
apparently brought nothing to
them, it had brought a great
deal to me.
I need another alcoholic to so
that I can forget my troubles by
talking to him.
I need him as much as he needs
me.
Bill was famous in telling
his stories, for making them
sound good and not fussing too
much with precise detail.
And so the version of the story
that comes down to us is that he
called reverend tunks.
[ Laughter ]
Henrietta's been praying for
her good friend Dr. Bob, who's a
chronic alcoholic and can't stop
drinking.
They're ready to foreclose on
his home.
His life is a mess.
His practice was about defunct.
He was out of friends at the
time he had gone into the
Oxford group.
He was reading the Bible.
He was praying.
He was doing everything the
Oxford group said to do, and yet
he was facing failure every
time.
So, I think it was really
difficult for Bob to have the
hope that the prayers would be
answered.
[ Laughter ]
And all we know is that
apparently bill told Bob what he
knew about alcoholism and what
his experience had been.
You stop and think of it.
Back at that famous meeting in
akron, bill is sitting there,
talking to an older man... 15
years older... who is a doctor.
But where is Dr. Bob?
He's lost in the alcoholic
labyrinth, can't get out of it,
trapped.
And so bill Wilson, little old
stockbroker from New York, sits
down and starts telling him how
bad it is.
Well, Bob stopped drinking.
So, for a few weeks, things were
looking up.
Then Bob went off to a yearly
medical convention in
Atlantic city.
He was blind from the start, as
an occasion for drinking.
And he continued to drink on the
train home, had sense enough and
wit enough to get home.
At this point, bill thought he
had bombed, that his new friend,
Bob Smith, was not gonna make
it.
And Anne pleaded with him to
stay and give Bob one more
chance.
And now the job was to get
Bob ready for this operation.
They had these cures they went in for.
I don't know what stage of the
game... they involved Sauerkraut
and karo syrup and kind of wild
stuff, you know?
But they were doing their best.
Well, he was still in rugged shape.
Anne and I drove him to the
hospital.
Just outside, he had a final
bottle of beer and one goofball,
went inside, and performed that
operation.
Bill and Anne waited back
home for word.
Hours passed. No call.
Dinnertime passed. Not a word.
And Bob's track record could
only mean one thing.
And what he's doing... and
they don't find this out for
some hours... is going around
akron, talking to everybody he's
been skulking away from, telling
them he's a drunk who has quit
drinking and intends to change
his life.
Bill's success with Bob
invigorated both of them.
They decided to work together to
help as many others as they
could.
This partnership would only be
broken by Bob's death 15 years
later.
Well, certainly, bill spent
the summer in 1935 in akron
with... he was staying with
Dr. Bob, and certainly they were
working with drunks.
They were doing that.
But I don't think that was
really the reason that bill
spent as much time as he did in
akron.
Bill didn't give up the dream of
being successful with this proxy
fight he had going.
And I think one of the things
that was driving that was that
bill felt his failure in the
past had been caused by the fact
that he had always given up and
given in too easily.
So, there's some great letters
between bill and Lois during
that time frame, where she
clearly wants him to come home.
She misses him.
And he says, "I really have to
stay here."
He hung in there and he fought
and he fought and he fought
until finally it was absolutely
clear that there was no
possibility of him being
successful in this.
And once he'd done that, it was
okay for him to pack up and go
back home to New York.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite" by
[bach playing ]
Bill goes back to New York
with a great deal of enthusiasm,
starts carrying this message in
a new way, and very quickly
picks up two new recruits...
Hank p. And Fitz m.
And Henry 9. Parkhurst was the
first drunk bill sobered up
towns hospital after he returned
from akron in September of 1935.
So, he had a special bond with
Hank.
The next few years were a
great experiment.
Bill was willing to try anything
to help people get sober.
By this point, Hank parkhurst
had become bill's right-hand man
in New York, and together they
fought through the failure's to
find out what worked.
I had got back into business
briefly, but again wall street
collapse and took me with it,
as usual.
Failure, failure, failure was
our constant companion.
What bill Wilson
fundamentally understood was the
issue with alcoholism, in terms
of recovery, is not stopping
drinking.
It's not starting drinking.
So, this is the first society
that made a significant
distinction between the act of
stopping drinking and building a
life that allowed you not to
return to drinking.
I had found out about this
meeting.
Of all things, they had a woman
speaker.
And I kept thinking, "these
people drink like I do, and yet
they're staying sober.
How do they do it?"
And she said, "the way we do"
it, " she said, " is we turn our
life and our will over to the
care of god, as we understand
"him, for 24 hours at a time."
She said, "just one day at a
time."
And I looked at the clock.
And it was about 10:00.
Tomorrow night, it's Thursday
night.
At 10:00, mcguire's will still
be open.
I don't know how I might feel,
but I'm gonna turn my life and
my will over to him.
Up to this time, a.A. Was
utterly simple.
We didn't even have a name.
We just called ourselves a bunch
of drunks trying to get sober.
But it wasn't until one late
fall afternoon we began to put
down the names of those people
in akron, in New York, and the
little sprinkling in Cleveland
who had been dry awhile.
And despite the large numbers of
failures, it finally burst in on
us that 40 people had really
significant dry time behind
them.
I shall never forget that great
and humbling hour of
realization, that new life had
begun to shine upon the children
of the night.
Bill rushed back to New York
to raise money so they could
spread the word about their new
answer for alcoholism.
But he couldn't find anyone
willing to help.
He complains to his
brother-in-law.
His brother-in-law is a very
successful doctor.
And his brother-in-law says,
"you know, I know this guy who
works for the rockefellers."
Could there be a better
connection for a guy who's in.
New York City and he's looking
for funding for a project that's
gonna get people sober?
The rockefellers had been
pouring a lot of money into this
temperance movement for years
and years and years.
They want your sweet,
innocent girls to take your
booze so they can be enticed
into honky-Tonks by slick-haired
vultures who prey on the flower
of American womanhood!
I say alcohol must go!
[ Cheers and applause ]
Even though prohibition
eventually failed, rockefeller
was still interested in the
problem.
And bill was able to meet with
some of his closest advisors,
who took a real interest in
helping bill find a way to
spread the word.
For the better part of a year,
bill and Bob, along with Hank in.
New York, tried to solve this problem.
Finally, the answer came in
writing a book to show others
how they learned to stay sober.
But writing a book wouldn't put
food on the table.
So, the story goes that Hank
went down to the stationery
store and got a blank
stock-certificate pad and
started making out stock
certificates for works
publishing.
We write across the top of
them, "works publishing company,
par value $25."
[ Laughter ]
So, we take the pad of these
stock certificates to the next
a.a. Meeting, where you
shouldn't mix money with
spirituality, you know?
And the drunks all gave us this
stony look.
[ Laughter ]
And I said, "what the hell?"
[ Laughter ]
"You mean to say you're asking
us to buy stock in a book that
you ain't written yet?"
[ Laughter ]
They didn't have anybody in.
New York City that could fork
over $25, so they come up with a
time payment plan... $5 a month
for five months to pay for your
$25... and they started selling
shares of stock.
[ Keys clacking ]
Now, there's these legendary
stories that there were huge,
huge, huge fights over the words
and the verbiage used.
Well, the fact of the matter is,
in the beginning, that was not
the case.
The earlier chapters talk about
alcoholism as they understand
the problem.
And I don't think think there
was a lot of argument over how
they understood the problem.
The arguments come up on "how do
we understand the solution?"
So then came that night when
we were up around chapter five,
where we really had to say what
the book was all about and how
this deal worked.
On this particular evening, the
idea came to me, "well, we need
a definite statement, a concrete
principle that these drunks
can't wiggle out from."
It was a 6-step program then.
So, I started to write, trying
to bust it up into little
pieces.
And when I've got the pieces set
down on that piece of yellow
paper, I put numbers on and was
rather agreeably surprised when
it came out at 12.
I said, "well, that's a good",
significant figure in
christianity and mystic lore.
Then I noticed that, instead of
leaving the god idea to the
last, I'd got it up front, but I
didn't pay much attention to
that.
And, well, next meeting comes
along... boy, pandemonium broke loose.
"What do you mean by changing
the program?
This thing is overloaded with god.
We don't like this.
You got these guys on their knees.
"Stand them up."
[ Laughter ]
Bill was really interested in
what worked, you know?
I think... one of the things I
love about alcoholics anonymous
is the fact that it's without
dogma, it's without theology.
There's no requirement to
have any religion at all.
The phrase "god as we understood"
"him" was included in the steps
to make the program available to
everyone.
Bill was looking for more of
an open-ended thing, opening up
the solution to more and more
possibilities, so that it's a
bigger tent, a bigger umbrella
for people to get under.
One of the things that intrigues
me, historically, about the
steps is how well those steps
have held up in time.
Part of that is they're broad
enough to be able to be
re-interpreted over time... and
I'm talking historically now...
But they're also broad enough to
be re-interpreted over the life
of long-term recovery.
In other words, the same 12
steps that people can understand
hours and days into their
recovery are re-interpreted for
people in 5 years and
re-interpreted for people who
are 10 and 15 and 20 and 30 and
40 and 50 years into recovery...
So that what began as a program
of "how do I stop drinking?" Are
the same steps that will be used
by other people for profound
spiritual growth long after the
point of any appetite for
alcohol has long ago
disappeared.
I was in prison.
And I went to a meeting one day,
and a fella came in from
outside.
And he spent the entire meeting.
He's talking about that process
of inventory.
The fourth step in our program
is the inventory step... fourth
and fifth, having to do about
identifying what we call causes
and conditions, sort of
examining my life... you know,
what is it that drives me in
such a strange kind of way?
And so I listened to that fellow
and went back, and I said, "all
right, I'm gonna do that."
And I sat down on the bunk
myself.
And I intended to write a little
story about what a victim of
circumstances I was, and I
really wasn't this kind of guy,
you know?
That's what I had in mind.
But literally, what happened...
I wrote two lines about that.
And then it wasn't a clap of
thunder or anything, but all at
once I think that delusion came
to an end, and I saw with
clarity who I was.
That day I surrendered.
And I acknowledged deep, deep
down that I can't drink.
That war is over.
It is over.
And 50 years later, I have never
doubted for one second.
I understood from the
beginning that I was listening
to uncommon wisdom.
I had that very word.
These people know something that
I didn't know, I mean, even such
idiotically simple things is
it's the first drink that does
it.
I didn't know that.
One of the last two or three
drunks I went on, I made a
formal resolve that I would have
but two drinks.
Well, you have the first one,
and the fellow making the next
decision is a different fellow.
He's chemically changed from the
first... the guy who bought the
first drink, you see?
And I didn't understand that.
I didn't know.
I thought you were the same
fellow all along.
No, no, you're different.
It was a rough haul to get
these, but the book was finally
finished.
Nearly 5,000 copies sat in a
warehouse, held hostage for lack
of payment.
Then a huge radio star agreed to
have an a.A. Friend of his on
his show and promote the book.
Bill and Hank saw a golden
opportunity in this and sent
postcards to 20,000 doctors.
In akron, New York,
Cleveland, the areas within the
radio, we vision the books going
out in carloads.
Little ruthie hock,
Hank parkhurst, and I just
couldn't wait to get over to see
what was coming into that box.
We stuck it out for four days.
And finally we went and looked
in the box, and you could see a
few of these cards.
And I had a terrible sinking
sensation.
But Hank was an incorrigible
optimist.
He said, "well, they couldn't
put them all in the box."
He said, "they got several
mailbags full out there."
[ Laughter ]
So, the clerk came with the
cards.
Hank said, "ain't there any
more?"
"No."
We took them over to the desk
and we counted them and there
were 12.
And 10 of them were from
doctors... obviously stewed,
themselves...
[ Laughter ]
Who lambasted the hell out of
us.
And we had exactly two
orders for the book
"alcoholics anonymous."
And at that very opportune
moment, the house in which Lois
and I lived was foreclosed, and
we and our furniture were set
out in the street.
And that was the state of the
book "alcoholics anonymous" in
the summer of 1939 and the state
of grace that the Wilsons were
in.
As Lois put it, she and the
drunks and bill all had to go.
They lost the only home she had
ever known, the home she had
been born in.
They lived, as bill put it,
entirely at the goodwill of a.A.
Members for two years.
What would we do?
An a.A. Lent us a summer camp.
Another a.A. Lent us a car.
The folks around New York began
to pass the hat for groceries
for the Wilsons.
It was really a very
confusing and difficult time.
I remember going through
grand central, wondering where
we'd light next.
We were very tired that day, and
we walked off the main floor and
sat on one of those gorgeous
marble stairways leading up to
the balcony.
And we both began to cry and
say, "well, will we ever have a
home?"
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Piano playing "amazing grace ]"
Bill had a couple of job offers.
One was from towns, and then he
had another one, as well.
And he was, you know,
ecstatic... "God, I'm finally"
getting back to work, and, you
know, I can support my wife and
buy food and put, you know, food
"on the table."
And he went into the group and
explained this, and they all
just were frowning back at him.
And they were like, "bill, don't
do this.
You can't do this."
And so, you know, he was put in
the place of having no money, no
job, and then being asked to
continue to have no money and no
job and a wife to feed and
himself to feed.
But bill thought it would
only be for a few more years,
expecting that he could then
move on because the fellowship
would be strong enough to
survive on its own.
Well, I think one of the
biggest shocks to early
alcoholics anonymous... and, I
think, to bill Wilson... was the
fact that five months after the
book comes out, Hank parkhurst
is drinking.
[ Keys clacking ]
That must have been a crushing
and painful thing for
bill Wilson.
I mean, they'd been business
partners together.
They're in the same office together.
They put this book project
together.
They talked to the rockefeller
people together.
I mean, Hank was a really
critical, critical factor in the
success of alcoholics anonymous.
And bill Wilson can't do
anything to get him sober.
I was full of fear, and I
didn't know how to live life on
life's terms.
I didn't know how to face the
world.
I didn't know how to work.
And so I did what anybody's
gonna do when they're that
completely miserable, is I
started drinking again.
And I was off and running
immediately, but it wasn't the same.
It was more physical, like I
just absolutely... you know, it
was... I mean, sure, I don't
think like to think to much or I
don't like to be present, but it
was really, really like I
couldn't physically stop
drinking.
And I went to the detox round
and I would be out and I would
call a.A. People and they would
come pick me up and take me to a
meeting and I would get to the
meeting and I would walk out the
back door.
I wouldn't even stay for the meeting.
I was just trying to get a ride
across town.
And I'd try to get money off of
them, or they'd come pick me up
and take me and make me take a
shower 'cause apparently I stunk
too bad to go to the meetings.
So they'd make me take a shower
and then take me, you know, to
the meeting.
And every day they'd pick me up.
[ Voice breaking ] They would
act... they would act like
that's the first time I was
gonna get sober.
You know, like they never got
sick of me, they never, um...
They never got sick of me, you know?
They never acted like I was
wearing them out or I was whatever.
It was always new.
[ "Unaccompanied cello suite"
[by bach plays ]
Meanwhile, Lois and I had
moved to the club at old 24th
street, taking a room upstairs,
next to Tom mulhall, the
caretaker.
And in one way or another, we
slid through the year 1940 on
this basis.
It's very interesting, the
change, I think, that took place
in bill Wilson's understanding
of what alcoholism was.
And where this change began was
that story again going back
that's retold so often... bill's
at the 24th street clubhouse.
He's told there's another drunk
who wants to see him.
Father dowling... by the way, a
non-alcoholic... was a chronic
arthritic who really spent the
whole of his life in great pain.
And so to find a situation where
there can be shared honesty,
where two people let each other
know how much they hurt... it's
only in that setting, it seems,
that healing came take place,
this healing of the spirit, of
the soul, of whatever part is
being torn apart inside of us.
And part of bill's working with
alcoholics was he had this
thirst for more always, and he
tells dowling how this thirst is
just something that... [ sighs ]
"Will it ever be quenched?"
And dowling's answer is, "no,
never, bill, because we are
meant to thirst."
The question is, "where do we"
"aim what we thirst for?" And
that his thirst to help
alcoholics was surely an
expression of his seeking of
god.
So, what happened... when
a.a. Began to be successful, it
was electrifying.
I kid you not.
It was electrifying to the
people in the program and to
anybody who came up and looked
at it... for example, like
Jack Alexander, who in '41 did
the article for
Saturday evening post.
He came to scoff.
He came to deride.
He was sent to blow up this
crazy notion that this spiritual
program was gonna work.
He stayed to honor it.
[ Up-tempo classical music
[playing ]
In fact, the post at that
time said no pictures, no
article.
So, if you will look up the
march 1, 1941 issue of
the Saturday post, you will see
a picture of the interior of the
club and a plaque of us sitting
before the fire.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
And with the advent of that
piece, there was a prodigious
rush of inquiry.
[ Music continues ]
During this year, something very
good happened to Lois and me.
A Mrs. Helen Griffin appeared at
our clubhouse meeting at 24th
street.
She began to talk of her house
in Westchester.
She said we couldn't live
forever in the club, we'd need a
place like that.
The women was 48 years old
when she became homeless.
When they finally did make it to
stepping stones, bill writes a
letter to Dr. Bob where he says,
"thank god that girl's finally
being taken care of at last.
[ Laughter ]
And I'm a gemini.
[ Laughter ]
I just want to tell you, I
started doing bill's work in
'50, and then in '54 I started
going up to bedford hills.
On Friday afternoon, bill would
pick me up in the station.
Then we'd go home, and bill
would say, "let's sit down and
do some of the old chestnuts."
Lois and bill had marvelous
sessions with the violin and the
cello.
And Saturday morning... that was
the work day.
And bill would be dictating,
which he liked to do.
That's why he'd get up... 'Cause
he liked to dictate at home.
He didn't like to come down to
the office and do all that
dictating.
And however, I was to learn
later on what was going on in
this era of the '40s that was
supposed to be an era of unity,
and most of the time it was an
era of dis-unity.
Groups began to spring up
everywhere, like mushrooms.
We began to be bombarded by
group problems.
Bill was the lightning rod.
People were always sending him
letters... "Oh, you know, our
group's fighting about this,"
and, "what are we gonna do about that?"
And he would send back some sort
of solution.
And then somebody would be
charging for
alcoholics anonymous admission,
and somebody else would complain
and send him a letter.
So, he'd write about that.
We had an a.A. Group in
Richmond, Virginia, that drinks
beer at their meeting.
We have women coming into the
fellowship.
Dr. Bob thought that if there
were women around, the men
wouldn't get sober.
And one of Dr. Bob's famous
sayings was, "under every skirt,
there's a slip."
We have the first attempts
to racially integrate groups.
Bill had gone out to the
Rockland state hospital and met
a couple of black alcoholics
there.
And he invited them to come to
the meeting in New York when
they got out of the hospital.
Well, when they showed up,
members objected.
So, they took a vote on whether
these two members could belong
to the group.
Now, these were a.A. Members,
people who had the 12 steps and
the spiritual program and
everything else.
And they voted to exclude these
two black men that bill had
invited to the meeting.
Well, instead of having a
knockdown, drag-out fight about
it, bill asked them to take
another vote, and this vote was
whether black people should have
the program, whether they were
entitled to have the a.A
program.
And so they did vote and agreed
that they should have the
program.
Well, then bill got them to let
the two men come to the meeting
as observers.
And bill began to think
about, "what are we gonna do?"
Because he had... if you will,
if I may put it this way, he had
solved the problem of the
individual drunk getting sober.
Now, how do these individual
drunks hang together long enough
to stay sober?
And that's where the traditions
come in.
Bill saw that a.A., as a
movement, would cease to exist
if there weren't some set of
practices to guide it.
But he also knew how loud the
objections would be to the
thought of any kind of
structure.
So he made great use of a.A.'S
national newsletter,
the grapevine, to explain the
concepts behind the 12
traditions.
Now, it wasn't all going
forward with great guns.
There was a lot of dissension, a
lot of second thought, a lot of
disagreement and anger.
And bill was not one to give in.
As I say, he could do a little
arm-twisting when it was
necessary.
Bill knew he needed to have
the fellowship's approval to
move forward with the 12
traditions, and with Bob's
blessing he set out on a
cross-country trip to get it.
You know, odd he went to
three years of night school and
law, and he never picked up his degree.
He was drunk the time he was
supposed to do it, but I always
thought it paid off because a.A.
Is a brilliant instance, in my
opinion, of the design of
structure of an organization for
survival.
A genius.
"Genius" is not a word I use lightly.
I think the man is a genius for
what he did with the 12
traditions of
alcoholics anonymous.
We just would not be here
without the 12 traditions.
We would not be here.
And he shared so much.
Bill just didn't talk about
alcoholism all the time to people.
He talked about depressions.
I've heard people come up to him
and say, "thank you for saving
my life twice."
With the passing of Dr. Bob,
in 1950, bill lost the only
person who really understood his
position and could help him
carry the weight of a.A.'S
success.
Bill Wilson was really
worried about how alcoholics
anonymous was gonna continue to
run and to work.
He was writing pieces, saying,
"I need a real life."
I just can't be doing this
anymore.
This thing should be
"self-sustaining."
So, in 1955, bill was
preparing for St. Louis, where
he formally turned over
leadership of a.A. To the
members themselves.
Back in 1948, Dr. Bob and I
wrote a joint piece in
the grapevine.
And we said, "why can't we join
a.a., too?"
Well, this is the day we join
a.a.
This is the day you'll come of
age.
Bill formally handed over the
leadership of a.A. To the
fellowship.
He had wanted this for 10 years,
and finally the time had come.
But the constant demands of a.A.
Had drained bill and placed a
strain on his marriage to Lois.
The rental house became not just
a haven for bill and Lois, but
also a refuge from the
unrelenting adoration of the
fellowship.
Bill would always have trouble
letting go of a.A., but a.A.
Refused to let go of him.
He had become number-one man in
the one place he didn't want
it... a society where everyone
was equal but him.
Here's the man who founded
alcoholics anonymous, but he
couldn't be a player in a.A.
'Cause he was just turned into
some sort of icon, some sort of
god.
[ Applause ]
It came home to be strongly when
my sponsor went to Mexico
several years ago, and he
mentions the fact that he had
met bill Wilson and shook his
hand.
And everybody in the meeting
lined up and shook my sponsor's
hand because that was the hand
that shook bill Wilson's hand.
I mean, I just... I don't know
how bill Wilson dealt with that.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
There's a renegade quality to
bill Wilson that, at the time,
everybody else is ready to
celebrate the achievements of a .a.
Bill's obsessed with the people
who still aren't making it in a .a.
And that obsession is going to
lead him into sound boundary
areas that could bring great
controversy to a.A...
Bill Wilson's experiments with LSD.
LSD... those three letters
conjure up some decadent
injury... Timothy leary in the
heyday of haight-ashbury.
But this was before then, when
it was still a drug of promise,
not a drug of abuse.
One sure way to prove that
value of a medical product is by
hospital testing under doctors'
supervision, and that's why I'm
proud to recommend surin.
Take comeback.
Comeback eases...
This was the 1950s, a time
when the wonders of modern
medicine seemed able to fix
anything that was wrong with us.
We have early reports coming
from two psychiatrists, hoffer
and osmond, really proclaiming
this as a potential breakthrough
in the treatment of alcoholism.
And in the context, they're
describing some alcoholics
beginning to have a spiritual
breakthrough under the influence
of these LSD-guided experiences
that are really contributing to
their development of sustained
sobriety, in individuals where
many other methods had failed.
My name is norm.
I'm an alcoholic.
Well, I went to a.A. In an
effort to quit.
I wanted to quit.
And a.A. Just didn't work for
me.
I heard about LSD, a drug that
some doctors in western Canada
had found out about and felt
that it might help.
I took it several times in
hospital settings, in doctors'
offices.
Each experience lasted for
several hours and did cause me
to do a lot of thinking about
myself.
And then the doctor asked me if
I would like to take LSD again.
And my experience was instant.
It changed my life.
It changed my thinking.
It changed the way I look at
things.
And that happened in seconds.
And it was over.
The whole experience was over.
I never wanted LSD again.
I went back to a.A. And worked
very hard at it for a long time.
And he really did go through
a period of deep infatuation
with this drug in the thought
that this might both
revolutionize the treatment of
alcoholism and also be a tool
for great spiritual
enlightenment.
It's unimaginably difficult
to be that person whom so many
recovering alcoholics are
looking up to with such
expectancy, with such unspoken
demands.
And this was an extraordinary
burden to carry.
And I think, as his life went
on, his spirituality was being
drained by the thing he created.
And more importantly, as the
years went on, he felt himself
to be farther and farther
removed from that experience,
that enlightenment that gave him
the gift that he gave to us.
Bill used LSD on and off for
over five years as a way to
explore his own spirituality, to
recharge himself.
But when LSD became a drug of
abuse, bill, like the doctors
who had helped him, had to back
away from using it.
So, bill's search for what he
called emotional sobriety
continued.
He wanted to be free of the
depression and anxiety that
plagued him.
Then Dr. Abram hoffer introduced
him to niacin, also called
vitamin b3, as a possible
solution.
After about two weeks, he was
well.
He lost his tension, anxiety,
depression, his insomnia.
He was able to sleep.
And of course he was, therefore,
very much happier than he had
been.
He saw niacin as some kind of
a cure or an aid in dealing with
depression.
And he started handing it out to
people.
He wrote the equivalent of three
small books about vitamin b3.
And I think this is part of the
entrepreneur in him.
He needed something new to work
on.
So, he became very
enthusiastic, and he became so
enthusiastic he made the
international headquarters
pretty angry at him.
Bill develops a professional
relationship with a woman,
Helen wynn, who's occupied with
bill in the vitamin b3 therapy
and in bill's experimentation
with LSD.
Joe was a...
[ Laughs ]
Nell didn't necessary want to
talk that much about Helen's
relationship, but what did did
say was that in most of bill's
darkest moments, Helen pretty
much comforted him and brought
him back to life, you know,
possibly even bill's wanting to
commit suicide, bill's wanting
to just, you know, crawl
underneath the bed and never
come out.
And Helen wynn just helped him
through that and helped him
through his darkest days.
My mother... bless her
soul... was Helen wynn.
She was a very inspiring human
being.
She was very joyful.
She was very life-giving.
He was very intelligent.
She was very gracious.
She was very good at what she
did, and she had had some
publicity when she was an
actress... probably for some of
her drinking escapades, too,
I think.
He and you and jed think I'm
a bum, while you're just a
perfect woman, just a Lily-white
angel.
Stop.
How dare you talk like that?
Guess whose father's right.
Helen wynn was a very
competent editor of
the grapevine and she wrote to
me in the mid-'50s and asked me
to write an article and we
seemed to get along real well.
And I met her in 1958.
And she was just moving up to
pleasantville.
She had a young son.
But it was her relationship with
bill that apparently terminated
her employment.
I think from the very start,
they were extremely aware that
their attraction to each other
was fraught with difficulty
because both of them...
Particularly bill... was
extremely concerned about the
future of a.A.
I do know that cost them a great
deal.
The very essence of a.A. Is
about this spirituality of
imperfection and the idea that,
within that, you would elevate
one of the co-founders as sort
of the perfect person.
I don't think there's any
illusion to that.
I think, if anything, it sort of
adds testament that this
recovery thing is complex, that
people can stay sober and have
other flaws that they're still
gonna continue to wrestle with
and work on.
That's the nature of recovery.
And in this particular
instance, my mother also
suffered from depression and
doubt and fear.
So, it was a blessing and a
revelation to bill to be able to
be so open and trusting and
fearless with another human
being who loved him him for whom
he was for sure.
He recognized who and what my
mother was and took enormous
pleasure in her company.
And I...
God bless them.
[ Sighs ]
It's hard for me to believe
that she couldn't have known
about it.
But Lois was a very practical
woman, and I think she could
have understood this about bill
and accepted it in her way.
You know, bill and Lois had had
53 years together when he died.
And she was really devoted to him.
He was the man in her life.
It would have been very hard for
them to separate, I think.
Some sugar, lady.
You know, bill adopted the.
St. Francis prayer in his later
years, got it from
father dowling, his spiritual
advisor.
And it's almost a formula.
I've often said I don't know
that bill was being at all pious
in taking this prayer up.
If you present me with hate,
what's my response?
My normal, natural human
response is to hate you,
good and solid.
But what old Francis said was,
"when you confront that..."
And bill Wilson confronted a lot
of this in his life later on.
People who didn't like him and
were jealous of him... you turn
around, and you spill back over
them benignity, kindness,
compassion, love, you know?
That's absolutely marvelous, a
marvelous thing, and bill did
it.
Bill's visibility as the
leader of a.A. Began to reach
society at large.
He was offered an honorary
degree from Yale university, but
bill turned it down because he
felt he needed to set the best
possible example for anonymity,
concerned that ego-driven
members might follow and
threaten a.A.'S very survival.
Likewise, he turned down time
magazine's offer for a cover
story.
Bill's concerns for a.A.'S
future were tied to the state of
his own health.
He was a lifelong smoker and had
developed emphysema.
In retrospect, he never
really recovered from that fall.
From ever afterwards, he was a
little more hesitant and a
little slower and so on,
progressively so.
But I must tell you about his
last appearance.
It was at one of these
international conventions down
in Miami, Florida.
And he came Sunday, and there's
a closing part of the program.
And as we were all in this great
big room, by god, up on the
stage, the curtains part, and of
course the place just went wild
with applause and cheers and
what have you.
And he, with effort, got himself
to his feet and just made a
very, very short talk.
Dear folks, there's always
something new in one's a.A.
Life.
And what do you think it is with
me this morning?
It is that I am absolutely
speechless.
[ Laughter ]
So, I can only say may god
bless and keep you and
alcoholics anonymous forever.
[ Cheers and applause ]
He had an oxygen mask on.
He could hardly breathe.
And I held his hand for a few
minutes.
My mother was there, some other
people.
And I think everyone stood at
the brink of powerlessness and
bewilderment and just stood
there watching.
And thinking about how sick
bill was before he died, I don't
think the average person
realizes how sick you can be
when you have emphysema and when
your lungs aren't working, when
you're not getting any air.
It's torture.
He was so suffering from lack
of oxygen to his brain that he
was actually hallucinating.
The story came up that, on
his deathbed, bill asks for
alcohol.
There's nothing to be surprised
at.
This is the most natural thing
in the world for an alcoholic
who's under the influence of
drugs, obviously.
Some of the brain cells and
chemicals are not acting
normally, and I find nothing
unusual and nothing to be
scandalized in it.
This is the nature of
alcoholism.
This is the nature of
alcoholism.
Alcoholism is... bill referred
to alcohol in the book
"alcoholics anonymous" as
"cunning, baffling, and
powerful."
They saw this extraordinary
man who had given this
extraordinary gift to the world
doing battle with his personal
demons who came to haunt him, to
attack him at the end...
Fighting for his life,
fighting for his breath,
fighting to stay conscious,
fighting to keep eye contact, to
hold one's hand, to say, "I'm
still here."
The co-founder of the most
successful effort ever to help
alcoholics stay dry died late
Sunday, and, as he had provided,
then gave up his anonymity.
He was William 9. Wilson, "bill"
to the thousands of drunks who
found help in his example, and
when he died at 76, he had not
had a drink in 36 years.
And he once explained why a.A.S
stay anonymous... "Not to avoid"
a stigma, " he said, " but to keep
our fool egos from running hog
wild after money and fame at
"a.a.'s expense."
It's not anything I'm
inclined to spill over about,
but I am eternally grateful the
man lived and did what he did.
You said, "well, somebody else
might have done it."
Yeah, but he's the one who did
it for me, you see?
He piloted this course out of
the very deep woods that
alcoholism is.
I think his contribution to the
human race is of an order that
has not yet been fully realized.
[ Bach's "unaccompanied cello"
suite no. 5 in c minor, bwv
"1011-prelude" [playing ]
I've not told this whole
story a lot, but I got to be
editor of the grapevine.
And, uh, not very long sober...
I think I was editor from '63 to
'68, and I was sober only four
years when I got the job.
So, I got into it and went along
fine, all of five years.
I think I was something of a
fair-haired boy because I was
the first editor in some years
who hadn't cut up and carried on.
And so we put an issue out that
had on the cover "winds of change."
Well, that's not a great word to
use around a.A. Circuits.
If I had it to do over, I think
I'd have thought that one
through again.
[ Chuckles ]
You talk about issues that
didn't make the grade.
I realize within a few days of
the emergence of this on the
scene that I had created a
storm.
But the thing I got from it was
a lasting, permanent memory of
bill Wilson operating in a
crisis.
The crisis was me.
And they had to... they had to
muzzle this bird who was about
to run away with their magazine.
I thought I was in a for a
drubbing, you know, but none at all.
He suggested that I had perhaps
been a tad imprudent.
And then we wandered off,
talking about the Oxford group
and its difficulties and this
and that, just a lovely
conversation.
That's all there was to it.
It was my exit interview.
But at this point, all I'm doing
is recording that he was a very
great guy to get fired by.
[ Bach's "unaccompanied cello"
suite no. 6 in d major, bwv
"1012: Gavotte I/ii" [plays ]