The Life of Bill Wilson
Bill Wilson was a promoter. He sold stocks and he sold ideas for a living; and when he was sober, he was very good at both. It’s been said that if Dr. Bob alone had founded A.A., the program would probably never have made it past the city limits of Akron, Ohio. If it were to spread, A.A. would need both a visionary and a salesman. Bill Wilson was that man.
The day following his spiritual experience at Town’s Hospital in New York City, Bill was already thinking of how he could communicate what he had found to the world. “A chain reaction could be set in motion, forming an ever growing fellowship of alcoholics, whose mission it would be to visit the caves of still other sufferers and set them free. As each dedicated himself to carrying the message to still another, and those released to still another, such a society could pyramid to tremendous proportions. Why it could reach every single alcoholic in the world…. There must be millions of them….”
But Wilson was more than a simple salesman - he was also an experienced analyst. He had looked into companies up and down the east coast searching for the secret formula that might turn one of them into a highly successful and profitable business. Now he turned those same powers of analysis toward his own life and he began to search for the hidden formula that produced his recovery. Why had he finally gotten sober and suddenly found hope, when just a few days before his illness had taken him to the very brink of despair? He had to know the answer.
While still in the hospital, his friend Ebby brought him a book that provided the next clue he needed to unlock the mystery. The book was The Varieties of Religious Experiences by Harvard professor William James. Ebby hadn’t read it himself but he knew many Oxford Group members had found it tremendously helpful for their own spiritual development. Bill said he “devoured the book” reading it cover to cover within a day or so. James was called the Father of Modern Psychology and his book contained analyses of a large number of spiritual experiences, many similar to the one from which Bill had just emerged. Searching through them case by case, Bill began to see the common denominators necessary to prepare someone for the kind of awakening he had experienced just a day before.
Wilson noted that almost every case was preceded by a “calamity” of some sort. He later said that, “Nearly every recipient described had met utter defeat in some controlling area of his life. Every resource of courage, understanding, and will had failed. Each had beat in despair upon a wall and had seen no way over, under, or around. This was an essential condition of the experience to follow.”
The next condition required, “was the admission from the very depths of being that defeat was utter and absolute. Each individual had to concede that he simply couldn’t go on living upon his own steam.” The third necessary condition was, “a call for help.” Bill noted that, as with his own case, a belief in God and a genuine faith were not necessarily required at this point in the process. The transformation only required a willingness to take action and a turning away from the shattered self and toward whatever external or “higher power” one believed might exist.
Bill also saw that not all transformations recorded in the book were as dramatic or as sudden as the one he had experienced. Some were what James called, “the educational variety” gradually taking place over time and through repeated appeals for help. When he compared himself with his friend Ebby, he saw that such was his friend’s case. Ebby had felt neither a “hot flash” nor seen any “white light;” and yet he too had changed and had been transformed through the same process Wilson had undergone.
Critical to his analysis, was what Wilson saw as the role played by his friend Ebby. One alcoholic carrying the message of spiritual recovery to the next. Wilson likened his alcohol addiction to being chained deep within the recesses of a cave. Outside his cave stood his family motioning to him and encouraging him to come out into the sunlight.
But Bill said he could not move – he was trapped in his addiction - he simply did not know how to break free from his chains and escape. And then one day Ebby had come into his life and into his cave. He knew Ebby had been as bad or worse an alcoholic than himself and yet there he stood – a free man who had escaped the confines of his own cave and had now walked deep into Bill’s. Ebby extended his hand and was ready to show him the way out. “That” Wilson said, “made all the difference in the world.”
Bill spent the better part of the next six months refining his formula for recovery. He attended meetings of the Oxford Group and worked the program as it was taught to him by Sam Shoemaker, an Episcopal priest and the recognized leader of the group in America. Speaking of Shoemaker in 1955, Wilson said,
It was from Sam Shoemaker that we absorbed most of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous….Shoemaker had given us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about it, he passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated. The early AA got its ideas of self- examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker…and from nowhere else.
Bill worked the Oxford Group’s spiritual program, practicing Absolute Honesty, Absolute Purity, Absolute Unselfishness and Absolute Love – all to the best of his ability. The Oxford Group called on its members to “help without thought of reward” and Bill did exactly that. But more and more he found himself drawn to helping alcoholics exclusively. He spent long hours working with them at Shoemaker’s mission and Dr. Silkworth even allowed him special privileges to come and visit the alcoholics undergoing detox at his hospital. At the end of nearly six months Bill could count only one alcoholic who had stayed sober as a result of all his efforts – and that was himself.
The last part of the puzzle had finally come into place and Wilson began to write the opening lines of Chapter 7 in his mind: “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. … It works when other activities fail.” The formula was now complete – Bill was ready to meet Dr. Bob.