Making a Difference: Bill Wilson

A young Bill Wilson
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Bill Wilson’s story is one of failure followed by triumph. Bill W. (as he liked to be called) was born in East Dorset, Vermont on November 26, 1895. His parents both left him by 1905 when he was merely ten years old: his father for Canada and his mother for Boston. He lived, after they left, with his maternal grandparents in Vermont. He maintained in school and eventually became the captain of his high school baseball team. However, after the sudden death of his girlfriend Bertha Bamford, he dropped out of high school. In 1914, after spending time in Boston, MA and finding his father in Canada, he enrolled at Norwich University, a military school in Vermont. He became engaged to his future wife Lois and married her in 1918. After the United States entered World War I Bill began training for the war in New Bedford, MA. It was there, at age 22, that Bill W. first tasted what he would later call “the elixir of life”. Some sources claim it was a glass of beer, others a Bronx cocktail, but that doesn’t matter, what matters is that his life had changed forever and there was no going back.

Lois Wilson
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The drinking wasn’t a problem for Bill at first. His life became very exciting and prosperous after the war. He returned to his wife Lois and things for them went well. He tried at first to gain his law degree but found that working on Wall Street required far less effort and would allow him to drink to his liking. He said in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that “fortune threw money and applause my way. I had arrived” (Anonymous 3). He and his wife took a motorcycle trip across the country during which he investigated new industries and reported back to people on Wall Street. His was a profitable business and he continued to drink excessively.

Dr. Silkworth
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The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression that lasted through the 1930s were unkind to all of America. This nation that, during the roaring twenties had grown so accustomed to big spending was unprepared for the economic hardship it faced. Bill W. became a casualty of this crisis. He went from being a successful man on Wall Street to a homeless panhandler who could not even provide for his wife. “Liquor ceased to be a luxury;” he said, “it became a necessity” he was certainly an alcoholic (Anonymous 5). During this time Bill’s alcoholism progressed and between 1933 and 1934 he was admitted to Towns Hospital in New York four times. It was at Towns hospital that Dr. William Silkworth told Bill that he had a disease, contradicting the common classification of alcoholism as a failure of will power. Ebby Thatcher, an old friend of Wilsons who was also an alcoholic, visited Bill in the hospital and talked with him about how he was able to sober up. Bill then began to understand what would become the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, that only alcoholics can help alcoholics, that the common suffering is what unites them. One day, “in his hospital room, as he later described it, he cried out in desperation, ‘if there is a God, let Him show Himself’ and ‘the room lit up with a great white light’” (William Griffith Wilson). And that was that, Bill was cured. He never drank a sip of alcohol again. The intensity of alcoholism must not be lost in this. William Alexander, a recovered alcoholic, notes that “in [his] worst moments, drunk or sober, that man is the ghost who haunts [him], who activates and personifies [his] deepest fears” (Alexander 35). That man was an alcoholic whom he met one day on a sales call. The man “smelled of urine and smoke” and Budweiser cans were strewn across his house (Alexander 35). Alexander never forgot him and used him as motivation to recover. Stories like this one are essential in conveying what alcoholism truly is. There are “17.6 million adults in the United States” who are alcoholics or have alcohol problems, but that number means nothing if no one understands what the disease really means for the suffering individuals (Alcoholism).

Bill Wilson and Ebby Thatcher
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After five sober months Bill made it to Akron, Ohio and helped his first alcoholic, Dr. Robert Smith. They met and talked for hours and “a month later, Dr. Bob had his last drink, and that date, June 10th, 1935, is the official birth date of AA” (Cheever). The wheels were in motion. The group drafted a book titled Alcoholics Anonymous. After a few years of little growth the group was endorsed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. who gained an interest after holding the group a dinner. His 30 dollars per week were nice but it wasn’t what AA really needed to get off the ground. It would get that from The Saturday Evening Post in March of 1941 when an article about the group was published. Even as the group grew the principles remained the same and those principles were very important to Bill. He valued the anonymity above all else.

Dr. Bob Smith
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Once AA took off Bill W. turned it loose. He was happy to create a board of trustees to oversee the group rather than himself. He published Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939, and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in 1953. These books have helped millions win in their fights against alcoholism and the twelve step program has been applied to other situations as well including “eating disorders, gambling, narcotics, debting, sex addiction, and people affected by others’ addictions” (Cheever).

Bill smoked his entire life and died in 1971 of emphysema complicated by pneumonia in Miami, Florida. At the time of his death “[his] organization had grown to nearly half a million members, with groups in the United States and eighty-eight other countries” (William Griffith Wilson). Currently Alcoholics Anonymous has over 2 million members residing in over 150 different countries. One of these members, A.J. Adams writes that “AA started working so fast and so well for me that I found myself unable to resist the temptation to dispense the odd bit of advice or expert opinion now and then” (Adams 23). Bill Wilson, in saving his own life, was able to rescue millions from a terrible disease that affects so many.

Making a Difference: Bill Wilson

Sunday, May 10, 2009

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