Not-God (19 page)

Dowling shook his head with a sad smile, and Bill realized with sudden clarity that for all he had confessed in his Fifth Step recital, being demanding had been and would always be his main spiritual problem, the chief threat to his sobriety. Shortly, Dowling left, and Bill Wilson, cherishing this new self-awareness, for the first time in months slept peacefully and soundly.
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As the year 1941 began, Alcoholics Anonymous continued its slow expansion. In more than one sense, its growth was the work of salesmen.
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A good percentage of those newly sober had worked in sales, and as they regained the confidence of their employers, many were again sent on the road. Strange cities and lonely hotel rooms often brought back the old fears, so in new places they sought out alcoholics to whom they could give their program in order to keep themselves sober. From Akron and Cleveland they traveled, finding willing hearers in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis; from New York, the message was carried to Boston, Miami, and points in between. Even with the Big Book available, the pattern of sending “really difficult cases” back to Dr. Bob’s new practice in Akron continued. On the East coast, such were sent to New York and Wilson’s hard core of sober alcoholics, although Bill himself — with less publicity now — continued to travel to larger cities when informed that they contained however small a group of interested and effort-inclined drunks.
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The winter of 1940-41 had brought a second at first misunderstood visitor to the Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse on Twenty-Fourth Street. Jack Alexander was a writer who prided himself on his cynicism and who wore this trademark on his sleeve. Fresh from a major exposé of the New Jersey rackets, he had been summoned by
Saturday Evening Post
owner Judge Curtis Bok. Two of Bok’s good friends, medical doctors, had recently begun singing the praises of something called “Alcoholics Anonymous.” Would Alexander care to do a story for the
Post?
No strings were attached. The curious judge wanted the truth, and Alexander had demonstrated his ability to ferret out that elusive commodity. The reporter at first hesitated, but word that his proposed quarry had connections with both religion and Rockefeller whetted his curiosity and honed his cynicism. The meetings he attended in Philadelphia proved frustrating. At them, he found apparently intelligent men who answered his questions about their activity by explaining only, “The Big Book says …;” and his promise to respect their anonymity unless he could find good reason to do otherwise closed off the obvious routes of inquiry.
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That Bill Wilson, the supposed author of the Big Book, seemed revered by some as a still-living saint especially stimulated the journalist’s curiosity. Alexander traveled to Manhattan to see for himself. In New York, the writer was first taken aback by the fact that despite his reputation for cynical exposé he was greeted with enthusiasm. Then he reflected that if these self-confessed con-artists really had confidence in their con, of course they would welcome the public exposure that he could afford, and he resolved all the more to get to the bottom of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Wilson himself struck Alexander as either incredibly naive or a bit stupid. He not only spoke openly of his alcoholism in the past, but in explaining his concerns about the publicity which he readily acknowledged the group desired, this “co-founder” stressed his recent errors of grandiosity and suggested that he and the reporter bundle off to the hick town of Akron so that Dr. Bob might receive adequate attention. Then, Wilson added, they ought to go on to Cleveland so that Alexander could observe the different ways in which Alcoholics Anonymous had developed.
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For the rest of his life, the journalist remained a close friend of Bill Wilson and of Alcoholics Anonymous, even accepting for his later articles on the fellowship editorial supervision from Wilson, something he never accepted from anyone else on any other topic. Occasionally, in his correspondence with Wilson, Alexander referred to his initial skepticism about A.A. If Bill Wilson’s or Dr. Bob’s conversion marked the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, its nationwide diffusion was due in the first instance to a similar experience on the part of Jack Alexander.
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Under the impact of Alexander’s glowing story in the
Saturday Evening Post
of 1 March 1941, membership in Alcoholics Anonymous began a rapid, nation-wide growth. In the last ten months of 1941, membership quadrupled from 2,000 to 8,000, and one of the visions of the Big Book finally came true. Suddenly it was no longer possible to send sober alcoholics experienced in the program to visit all those expressing interest. In the countless nooks and crannies of an America mobilizing for war, the program would have to be “gotten by the book.” And significantly, an ever-increasing chain of correspondence developed, as many ordering the Big Book from its New York distribution center appended requests for further detailed information.
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The first “mail-order” group had formed in early 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas, deriving initial impetus from the Morris Markey story in
Liberty
. Others had followed the mail-only style of origin through 1940, and the pace had picked up after the Rockefeller dinner publicity, but these groups had still been few enough in number so that eventually some traveling “oldtimer” from New York or Akron-Cleveland had been able to look in on them in response to the initial request for literature. So long as this method of visitation remained usual, Alcoholics Anonymous retained two characteristics which the Alexander-inspired deluge shattered. In the first place, there remained two self-conscious “centers” of Alcoholics Anonymous, and — although word of the difference was not much spread — those who visited both noticed the greater “spiritual” emphasis of the Akronites who retained the Oxford Group “Four Absolutes” even after their 1939 separation from the Buchmanites. In the second place, Akron and New York as self-conscious centers retained a hold on their derived groups. There tended to be but one group in each city, and periodic pilgrimages were made to Akron or New York to “touch base.” Chicago, for example, embraced the practice of at least a pair of members visiting Akron every two months.
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+

The membership flood that came as a response to the 1941
Post
story changed all this. The Big Book rather than travelers became the main means of spreading the message, and since New York was its publishing and distribution center, Bill Wilson and the people around him became the nerve center of Alcoholics Anonymous. From the letters that poured in, and from Wilson’s generally pragmatic and largely off-the-cuff responses to them, began to emerge the “Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Thus, New York rather than Akron or Cleveland became “the center” of Alcoholics Anonymous in the minds of most members.
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In turning this corner, Bill Wilson and A.A. relied on principles drawn from self-awareness of their own history: the primacy of experience; anonymity as a two-sided protection; an emerging sense of “limited control;” and wariness of the possible dangers inherent in the exercise of authority, and even in the fact of organization itself.

The very name of the Alcoholics Anonymous publishing venture was a reminder of the program’s first principle and sole claim: “It works.” Their personal backgrounds had tended to ensure that the early newly sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous had attempted other forms of treatment for their alcoholism. The most striking feature of Alcoholics Anonymous, to them, was that “it worked”: this became the basic theme of the message that they carried to still-suffering alcoholics. Superficially the message was one of deflation, bottom, and the hopelessness of the active drinker’s present condition. More profoundly, a saving hope was extended by their very presence.
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Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, with their own histories of treatment, early found that even drinking alcoholics tended to be fascinated with their sobriety, that an invariable question inevitably came: “How does it work?” Aptly, then, Wilson chose to title the fifth chapter of the Big Book, the one setting forth the steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, “How It Works.” But this chapter, reflecting all that Bill and Dr. Bob had learned, offered not analysis but witness — the witness of their experience. The structure and style of this whole chapter in no way examined origin or causation — of alcoholism or of its cure. The simple format was “This is what we did,” a sharing of experience, drinking and sober.
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From the beginning, Wilson and Smith openly showed willingness to accept in their program changes based on successful experience equal to or greater than their own. As for listening to arguments — no matter how cogent — not based on experience, Bill and Bob knew well that legendarily alcoholics were reputed to be the greatest of rationalizers, a tendency Wilson in time castigated as “this odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one.…” Smith’s chief contribution to Alcoholics Anonymous, his frequent reminder and cherished last words to Bill, embodied the same wariness of argument, analysis, and explanation: “Keep It Simple.”
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Alcoholics Anonymous had found only grief in attempts at argument over or explanation of its simple, basic message. The first and lasting testimony of its own experience was to the primacy of experience. Thus, as Bill Wilson embarked in 1941 on his long career of writing letters in answer to questions about the fellowship and its program, a certain style readily and naturally emerged. Rarely were answers offered on principle. The deductive mind and approach were foreign to him. Rather, Wilson shared experiences — his own and, as time went on, what he knew of the experience of others. Each letter followed a well-defined if largely unconscious pattern: (1) if I understand correctly, your problem/concern is similar to …; (2) this is what was done on that occasion; (3) this is how it worked out; (4) a statement to the effect: “But of course you need not follow my understanding; all I can do is tell you what has seemed to work in the past, and I hope that your own continuing experience will help all of us to understand both this problem and A.A. itself still better.”
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Experience
, then, was the first principle. It is doubtful that the world has ever seen a more consistent living-out of the pragmatism that so many have thought characterizes American culture.

Yet “experience” as first principle could lead to other principles, and even to inflexible norms. This possibility posed a special problem for Alcoholics Anonymous with its inherent sense of being not-God, its sense of limitation. Thus the qualified degree of rigidity with which A.A. internalized three further principles derived from experience sheds light both on the fellowship itself and on its embodiment and expression of “American pragmatism.”

If there was one absolute rigidity in the
program
of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was the admonition to its adherents, “Don’t drink.” This absolute statement sprang from the concept of what it meant to be an alcoholic. If there was one absolute rigidity in the
fellowship
, it was contained in the second word of its name — Anonymous.
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This principle was founded upon two-faceted experience. The first was of the need for protection, both of the individual alcoholic himself from economic sanction and of the fellowship from the possible failings of its members. When later experience revealed that these concerns need not always be relevant or even that, in certain circumstances, they might yield to other considerations for the good of A.A. or of the individual alcoholic, still further experience revealed a second and deeper reason for anonymity. As “grandiosity” came to be understood as the greatest danger to all alcoholics, drunk or sober, willing acceptance of the limitations imposed by anonymity came by experience to be seen as the surest witness, especially to self, of “true sobriety.”
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The same experience was displayed on a larger scale. Early on, Alcoholics Anonymous had eagerly sought and even abjectly craved publicity. Then came the
Saturday Evening Post
article. This public notice had been welcomed, but what first turned Jack Alexander’s cynicism into an impressed admiration which he transmitted to his readers was understood by Wilson and by Alcoholics Anonymous to be the perception that “these men were not out to get publicity for themselves.” That they had finally allowed photographs only reluctantly, under
Post
pressure, and on the condition that faces not be recognizable, this was understandable for the majority of the membership, but in Wilson’s and Smith’s application of the same stricture to themselves, Alexander found impressive testimony to their altruistic dedication. These men were primarily interested in others, something unusual in the journalist’s experience. Thus Alcoholics Anonymous, the fellowship itself, was set on the productive path of shunning organizational and institutional as well as personal grandiosity — an attitude that Wilson would attempt to hone and to sharpen as continuing experience unfolded.
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This awareness that experience did continue to unfold lay at the root of yet another principle, one destined to become a key to the “A. A. Way of Life.” This key was the concept of
limited control
. Openness to continuing experience implied the avoidance of any closing off that might exclude new experience. Thus any control by even past experiences was limited. The wariness of “absolutes” that Alcoholics Anonymous revealed in its separation from the Oxford Group led with paradoxical inevitability to a philosophy of no absolutes but one — that there are no absolutes.
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“Limited control.” One of the first pragmatic discoveries of Wilson and Smith, and one clearly inspired by the “primitive Christianity” approach of the Oxford Group, had been that — even using Silkworth’s understanding of alcoholism — to require “don’t drink ever again” was unrealistic. It was unrealistic because it was too difficult, and therefore, it frightened away some who needed the program. Or it was unrealistic because it was too facile for others whose paths to alcoholic bottom were strewn with broken pledges. In either case, it didn’t work. So Bill and Dr. Bob began to present their idea as the “Twenty-Four Hour Program,” the “Day at a Time Program.”
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