Hey, everyone. It's Sally here.
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History this week, December 11th, 1934.
I'm Sally Helm. Bill Wilson leaves his Brooklyn apartment with six cents in his pocket.
He's headed uptown to a five -story Victorian building that's actually familiar to him.
It's a place he's been several times before.
But this visit will prove to be the most important.
Tonight is perhaps the defining night of Bill Wilson's life.
He needs five cents for the subway ride.
That leaves just one penny left.
Not enough to really buy anything.
But nevertheless, Wilson decides to stop in at a nearby grocery store.
He asks the clerk, hey, do me a favor.
Give me four bottles of beer.
I'm good for it. You see, I'm an alcoholic, but I'm on my way right now to be cured.
This is gonna be my last ever drink.
For that clerk, I can't imagine this would have inspired a lot of confidence.
After all, that's part of being an alcoholic.
You're sure that this drink will be the last.
Or, well, maybe this one.
Wilson himself has said this before.
I'm done, it's over, today's the day.
And then it hasn't been.
Tonight doesn't look very promising either.
Wilson opens a bottle of beer on the street outside the grocery store, drinks it.
Opens another on the subway, drinks it.
Offers a third magnanimously to a fellow passenger.
The guy refuses, so Wilson drinks that one too.
And then he walks into that five -story Victorian building, town's hospital, which treats alcoholics.
The doctor who meets him doesn't know it.
That clerk in Brooklyn certainly doesn't know it.
But as of tonight, Bill Wilson really has taken his very last drink.
And before his life is over, he will create a program, Alcoholics Anonymous, that will help millions of other people do the same.
To this day, people in AA still sometimes call themselves a friend of Bill's.
Today, Bill W's last drink.
How was he able to finally get sober this time?
And why did his very personal journey towards sobriety end up helping so many others?
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We heard the story of Bill Wilson's sobriety from a different Bill, Bill Shaberg.
He wrote a book that chronicles the creation of AA's foundational text, AKA the big book.
He's also been involved in AA himself for many years.
So Bill Shaberg had heard the story of Bill Wilson many times, but of course researching that story is something different.
And he came to find out.
Bill Wilson was a horrible, horrible historian.
He was a great storyteller.
He was a brilliant storyteller.
And he was telling stories, they were like parables.
It was just, he was trying to help people stop drinking and live a fruitful, productive life.
Yeah, some of these stories over the years have taken on the role of myths.
Bill Shaberg, when he was writing his book, tried to find his way to solid historical ground while also recognizing that the way Bill Wilson told his story, it has helped a lot of people.
So Wilson always had this grand vision.
He was a tremendous visionary, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous visionary.
In the Big Book, Wilson begins that narrative during the war, World War I.
He remembers being in England and ending up looking at a tombstone in Winchester Cathedral.
It's for a soldier who caught his death drinking cold, small beer.
Ominous warning, Wilson writes, which I failed to heed.
When he goes home after the war, Wilson trains as a lawyer but ends up on Wall Street.
He identifies himself in many places as being a stockbroker, but he was never a stockbroker.
But what he was was a Wall Street entrepreneur.
A little harder to explain, but he's pretty successful.
Fortune threw money in applause my way, he writes.
I had arrived. This is the Roaring Twenties.
And soon enough, Wilson is living it up in New York City.
You know, he's got this huge apartment in New York.
He actually buys two apartments and knocks the wall down between them.
But all is not well.
Wilson writes, there were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment.
He's having problems during those times.
You know, he was a drinker.
Like so many alcoholics, he was a control drinker.
You know, he was the kind of guy who could get through the day and put into good day's work and do very, very intelligent analysis on different companies.
And then he was partying at night.
I mean, we're talking prohibition here, folks.
This is the 1920s. I mean, if you want to be a cool businessman on Wall Street kind of guy in 1925, you're going to the speakeas at night.
And you're, you know, you're partying.
But the party doesn't last.
Like everybody else, he got absolutely demolished with the fall of the stock market in October of 1929.
His trend line had been going up and now all of a sudden his trend line was going down very swiftly.
It's the beginning of the Great Depression and Wilson's wealth gets wiped out.
He and his wife, Lois, are $50 ,000 in debt.
They move up to Montreal, where Wilson finds a job with a friend of his, but he can't stop drinking.
Missing deadlines, causing scenes, he gets fired.
He and Lois move back in with her parents in Brooklyn.
Wilson gets a new job in New York and swears off alcohol.
Then one day he wanders into a cafe to use a telephone and he writes, "'In no time, I was beating on the bar, "'asking myself how it happened.' "'He's back to drinking.' The next morning he wakes up full of guilt and drags himself to a bar, where he drinks 12 more glasses of ale.
Eventually, Wilson is stealing from his wife's purse to fund his benders.
So in the autumn of 1933, when Lois's brother -in -law offers to pay for Wilson to go to a relatively new facility dedicated to this very problem, Wilson accepts.
Historically, there's been a variety of ways that people tried to cure alcoholics.
There were asylums in the mid -1800s, Sigmund Freud recommended cocaine.
And starting in the teens and into the 20s and then into the 30s, in New York City, the most prominent and prestigious place you went if you were drunk looking to get off booze was a hospital on Central Park West called Towns Hospital.
A five -story Victorian building, stone and brick facing Central Park.
The hospital's medical director is a Dr.
William Silkworth. He's become something of an expert in treating alcoholism, and he has a theory.
He doesn't see alcoholism as a failure of willpower.
He describes it as an allergy that manifests as this craving for alcohol.
And he and his staff come up with a variety of ways to treat it.
They did exercise things and they did water things, you would get in a tank and have jacuzzi kind of experiences.
One of the things they offered to Bill Wilson was called the Belladonna treatment.
In an earlier era, Belladonna was known as nightshade.
It's basically a poison.
It was supposed to function as a kind of reset, and it also causes hallucinations.
Bill Wilson leaves Towns Hospital, and in under a month, he's back to drinking.
In July of 1934, he goes to the hospital again, but after he gets out, he starts drinking almost immediately.
One day in November, Wilson goes to a golf course on Staten Island.
He meets a new friend who suggests they grab a drink.
Wilson says he can't drink, but let's get lunch.
And over that lunch at a bar, Wilson explains why he can't drink.
Wilson's told this guy his entire story, how much alcohol has destroyed and ruined his life and his relationships, and how now he doesn't need to drink anymore because he's got this new psychological understanding of what his problems and his issues were, and the guy's just enthralled with the story.
Well, the two of them are sitting at the bar, and it's November 11th, you know?
And they're all celebrating Armistice Day, and Wilson was a veteran, you know?
The bartender comes in with two shots and puts them in front of these two guys and says, drink them up, boys, it's Armistice Day.
We're all celebrating here at the bar.
And Wilson picks up the shackles and drinks it.
And the guy sitting next to me said, what was that all about?
What are you crazy?
I mean, you just spent an hour telling me this whole story about how alcohol has destroyed your life and you never have to drink again, and you just took that shot and dropped it.
And Wilson said, yeah, you're right.
I must be crazy. This one shot of alcohol sends Wilson spiraling.
So he's drunk for the second half of November.
And then Wilson gets a visit from an old friend and drinking buddy, Eby Thatcher.
Bill's drinking. He's drinking gin and pineapple juice.
Good Lord, good Lord.
He's got a pitcher.
And he offers Eby a drink and Eby says, no, I'm not drinking.
Bill says, you're not drinking.
What, what, come on.
What's going on? And Eby says, I got religion.
I got religion. Eby and Bill will later tell the story of this visit somewhat differently.
Like, were they across a table or were they sitting in the living room with Lois?
Was it evening or afternoon?
But they both remember that Eby told Bill what he'd been up to lately, which was he'd recently joined a Christian organization called the Oxford Group, which helped people get sober.
It worked for Eby. And Bill is interested.
After their visit, he keeps thinking about it, though he's not yet ready to stop drinking.
He's still drinking.
You know, he's drinking in late November.
He's drinking in early December, but he eventually he crashes and burns completely.
And he checks himself back into town's hospital.
He leaves a little note for his wife.
That's what I'm going.
I'm going to town's, you know, and his wife was a little teed off that, you know, no consultation rain just decided to go to town's hospital.
Like, that was supposed to work.
It's December 11th, 1934.
What's going to be different this time?
What's different about the December trip to town's hospital from the earlier trips to town's hospital?
Wilson is sure that something is different this time.
He stops off at that grocery store, buys those four bottles of beer, shows up at town's hospital still holding one of them.
Dr. Silkworth meets him there.
Wilson later writes, I waved the bottle and shouted, at last doc, I've found something.
Even through my haze, I could see the good old man's face fall.
Dr. Silkworth begins the typical protocol, takuzi belladonna, and Wilson enters what he later calls a kind of deep depression.
But somehow all this religious talk that Abby had been infiltrating into his drunken brain had made some made some impression.
In the midst of Wilson's depression, something else happens.
It's now known as his white light experience.
Here's how he describes it.
A white light seems to fill his room.
Then he sees himself standing on a mountaintop, a great wind blowing through him.
Quote, then came the blazing thought, you are a free man.
He had this experience of divinity, this experience of oneness, this experience of complete wellness.
Wilson does not believe in God, but he doesn't really have any way to explain what's just happened, besides that it was some kind of religious experience.
He says the Silkworth at the time, right after it, he says, this thing happened, am I crazy?
Am I crazy? And Silkworth, genius American pragmatist, he said, listen, dude, I don't know.
I don't know about this mystical stuff, but if this change is working for you and gonna keep you away from alcohol, then I'm all for it.
Just embrace it, don't question it.
And that's what Wilson did.
Other people later do question it.
There are people who claim that the white light experience that Bill Wilson had on his very last trip to Townes Hospital in December of 1934 was really just the hallucinatory kind of effect of this Belladonna treatment.
But I really don't believe that.
I mean, I think that's just people trying to be dismissive of the mystical experience that he really, really did have when he was there.
Obviously, no one can say for sure what Wilson experienced, except for Wilson, or maybe not even him, but he is a changed man.
When he leaves the hospital, Wilson and his wife, Lois, start attending those Oxford group meetings together.
The Oxford group has these six tenets.
They include men are sinners, men can be changed.
Those who have been changed must change others.
And at these meetings, even after the meetings, Wilson talks to other alcoholics.
He tells them his story and tries to encourage them.
He was really pushing kind of a singular religious, you need to get yourself a white light experience kind of solution.
Wilson is finding meaning in these meetings, but he needs something else to keep him busy.
And frankly, he needs to make some money.
And then he hears about a business opportunity in Akron, Ohio, a distressed machining company that was ripe for a takeover.
And remember, this is Bill Wilson, one -time Wall Street power player.
So he goes to Akron and he can see a new life in front of him, the life of a successful sober businessman.
But then his first real test, the deal falls apart.
Wilson finds himself at the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, pacing back and forth in the lobby, and he really wants a drink.
In December of 1934, Bill Wilson had his white light experience in town's hospital off of Central Park.
Four months later, he finds himself out in Akron, Ohio, and he's dying to have a drink.
He's the thirstiest guy in Akron, Ohio.
There's a bar adjacent to the lobby, and Wilson goes inside.
He actually does go in the bar and orders a ginger ale.
He realizes, no, this is bad, I don't know why he likes it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, get the hell outta here.
He walks back into the lobby without taking a drink.
And in this moment, he realizes something.
And he ends up thinking to himself, you know, I haven't had a drink in four months, and the reason the actual operative thing that kept me from picking up a drink wasn't so much that white light experience was the fact that I was trying to get other people sober.
So what I need to do if I'm not gonna drink today is I need to find a drunk I can talk to.
His time helping other people in the Oxford group, that is what is really keeping him on track.
So he contacts a local priest in Akron, and very soon gets put in touch with a Dr.
Bob Smith, an Oxford group member with a terrible drinking problem.
Wilson throws himself into helping Bob Smith, tells him his own story, honestly and openly, how he'd been tempted to drink just the day before at the Mayflower Hotel.
The change is not immediate, but pretty soon Bob Smith is also sober, and it seems to be sticking.
And then they say, you know, what the hell are we doing here to stay sober?
We need to go find another drunk to talk to.
So the two of them go off to a hospital, and you know, they walk in and Smith's a doctor, he knows it's the Akron hospital, and he'll be alone, you got any drunks?
Oh yeah, we got one here.
He just beat up a nurse, you know?
I mean, we got a great one for you, you know?
So they go talk to him, it's Bill Dodson, and you know, they make a couple of visits to him, and Bill Dodson gets sober, and he doesn't drink.
The ball is now rolling, you know, and it starts rolling slowly, but suddenly it starts picking up steam.
Wilson returns to New York City energized.
He and Lois start hosting meetings every Tuesday night, open to the public.
Wilson would begin the meetings.
My name is Bill, I'm an alcoholic.
This group he's founded in New York, they're starting to figure things out.
Wilson called that the flying blind period.
They were just trying whatever works, and if Harry tried that and he drank, that didn't work.
So we need to go, whoa, Charlie's doing this, that's working for him.
We should probably all be doing something like what Charlie's doing.
They're developing their vision of this program, that there should be no hierarchy and no paid membership, that they should try to maintain anonymity.
This flying blind period lasts a couple of years, and meanwhile, Dr.
Bob Smith is working independently back in Akron.
At one point, they try to add up how many people they've helped.
They got 40 people sober, we got 40 people sober.
It's been two and a half years here, you know?
I mean, we have found a cure, a cure for alcohol, isn't it?
This program, however simple, is working.
When all else fails, work with another alcoholic.
That's the deal. In late 1937, Wilson and Smith hold a summit in Akron, the two of them and 18 other alcoholics.
And Bill Wilson comes into this summit with big ideas for the fledgling organization.
He's got these huge plans for how they're gonna spread it.
Hospitals, paid missionaries, write a book.
He's like, how can you guys go to sleep at night knowing there's people dying in California today?
And we're gonna wait until the word -of -mouth program gets to California?
We need to be doing something now.
But Bob Smith, he's like, not so fast.
There's an old cliche that if it was up to Dr.
Bob, Alcoholics Anonymous never would have gotten out of Oakland.
And if it was completely left up to Bill Wilson, he would have been selling franchises.
Now, neither of those things is true, but it does encapsulate some semblance of truth.
The rest of the group basically tells Bill Wilson, we know you believe in this program.
We do too. But you should keep it simple.
Take it slow. No hospitals, this program has to feel organic, not institutional.
No paid missionaries, you just can't have people making real money off this thing.
Wilson doesn't agree with their arguments, but he comes out of this meeting with two actionable tasks, fundraise and write a book.
If he can do that, maybe this group can take off in the way that he hopes it will.
When he gets back to New York, Wilson starts writing.
The book includes his own story, and eventually, it includes the famous 12 steps.
The first one being we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.
These 12 steps would become a hallmark of the program, which at this point still doesn't have a name.
The New York group votes and they want to call the book The Way Out, and the second choice is Alcoholics Anonymous.
So they got a guy who's sober down near Washington DC, they say, I need you to go to Library of Congress and see how many books there are called The Way Out, and how many books there are called Alcoholics Anonymous.
He sends a telegram back, says, you know, there's a couple of dozen The Way Out's, but there's no Alcoholics Anonymous.
Funnily enough, no one in the group ends up really using that carefully chosen title.
Almost immediately, the people in AA start referring to it, not so much by its name, Alcoholics Anonymous, that's who we are.
They just call it the big book.
The first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous is priced at $3 .50, which is actually steep for the time.
Wilson supposedly asked the printer to put it on the thickest paper possible, so that it looks like something that's worth $3 .50.
It's not some sort of little pamphlet kind of thing that we're gonna steal some money out of your pocket for it to get because you're desperate to stay sober.
But they do need this book to sell.
We need an office. We need a secretary.
We gotta pay somebody rent.
We gotta have employees that they, you know, if we got a thousand letters in a week, who the hell is gonna answer all those letters?
The book is released in 1939.
It's published anonymously.
Sales are slow at first, but then Alcoholics Anonymous gets a favorable write -up in the Saturday Evening Post, the second most popular magazine in the country.
And boom, the book starts selling.
Within two years of the big book's publication, AA grows to 8 ,000 members.
Within the decade, it goes international.
Under Bill Wilson's guidance, it is continuing to evolve.
The idea of sponsors emerges, a person who's already sober helping a newbie go through the steps.
And that model, one alcoholic helping another, it's what saved Bill Wilson that day in Akron.
And it becomes the foundation of AA.
The organization is built on Wilson's vision, based on the solutions he stumbled into as he got sober.
But he is never officially in charge of the group.
AA has no one leader.
And in fact, throughout his life, Wilson tries to keep his identity hidden.
Most members know him as just Bill W.
He later explained it this way, anonymity isn't just something to save us from alcoholic shame and stigma.
Its deeper purpose is to keep those full egos of ours from running hog wild after money and fame at AA's expense.
Wilson breaks his anonymity only upon his death in 1971.
At that point, there are nearly half a million alcoholics in 15 ,000 AA groups across the country and around the world.
Today, there are many more.
They have a hard time counting members because it's alcoholics anonymous, but I mean, they claim it like 2 .2 million members.
2 .2 million members on the ground.
The program certainly has its critics that it's not backed by rigorous science, that it's one size fits all approach doesn't work for everyone and doesn't leave enough room for other options.
But it has been statistically shown to help alcoholics gets over.
According to a study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases, AA members maintain rates of abstinence from alcohol that are twice as high compared to those that don't attend AA or a similar program.
And because of all this success, many people have looked at Bill Wilson as an almost messianic figure.
Bill Shaberg says, that's of course an exaggeration of the truth, but it is staggering how many people Wilson was able to help.
A man with clay feet, like all of us, you know?
I mean, he didn't walk on water, but he saved millions and millions and millions of people's lives in the last 80, 85 years.
I mean, how many people can you point to that have had that kind of a positive impact on humankind worldwide?
Bill Wilson. I'm not much of a believer, but I would casually say thank God for Bill Wilson.
Bill Wilson would probably be glad to know that he's helped Bill Shaberg, though he might also have insisted, as he did throughout his life.
I'm just another guy named Bill, another alcoholic, an ordinary man.
Thanks for listening to History This Week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel.
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Special thanks to Bill Shaberg, author of Writing the Big Book, The Creation of AA.
This episode was produced by Bill Wilson, by David Weisbord, produced and sound designed by Ben Dixitin, and produced and story edited by me, Sally Helm.
For Back Pocket Studios, our executive producers are Ben Dixitin and David Weisbord.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler.
Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.
And we'll see you next week.
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