The Life of Bill Wilson
Bill Wilson wasn’t expecting a phone call that day. In fact, he was deep into his chronic depression and wasn’t expecting much more from life at all. His alcoholism had hospitalized him three times over the last two years and his trusted physician Dr. William Silkworth had counseled both Bill and Lois to prepare for the inevitable end within a year. He was readying himself for the promised death or insanity from a wet brain that awaited him; but instead came that phone call that changed everything.
At the other end he heard the voice of his old school friend and former drinking companion Ebby Thatcher. With the sound of the familiar voice, a little light had broken into Wilson’s dark world. “My spirits rose,” Wilson recalled, “for my gin supply happened to be good just then. Dear old Ebby, I’d soon see him. We’d sit at the kitchen table…we’d talk about the good old days.”
The basic formula for a good A.A. talk calls for the telling of three separate parts of an alcoholic’s story: how it was, what happened, and what it’s like now. For Bill Wilson, this was the start of “what happened.” A chain of events was beginning that would soon be repeated in the lives of millions of alcoholics and addicts. An alcoholic had found his way out addiction’s maze and was now helping another to do the same. Hopelessness was soon to be replaced with hope on a scale the world had never seen.
When Ebby arrived at the door, Bill knew instantly that something about his friend had changed. When he offered him some gin and pineapple juice, Ebby declined. Wilson had never known his friend to turn down a drink and so he asked him point blank, “Ebby, what on earth’s gotten into you? What’s this all about?” Bill was floored with his friend’s reply, “I’ve got religion.” Wilson recalls that, “He might as well have hit me with a wet mop!”
After recoiling from the shock, Bill’s next thought was that while he might have to endure some evangelizing right there in his own kitchen, at least now there’d be more gin for him to drink! Wilson hadn’t quite counted on what came next. Ebby neither evangelized nor moralized to his old friend. He simply told his story. Wilson said, “He recounted the simple principles upon which he was trying to work, especially emphasizing the idea that he’d been hopeless. He told how he had gotten honest about himself and his defects, how he’d been making restitution where it was owed, how he’d tried to practice a brand of giving that demanded no return for himself – and then he (briefly) touched on the subject of prayer and God…. Not only had he been released from his desire to drink… he’d found peace of mind and happiness, the like of which he hadn’t known for years.”
Over the next few weeks, Ebby’s visit started having its intended effect on Bill. Bill wanted to know more. He wanted to know if Ebby’s path might lead to the answer he’d all but given up hope of finding. There were more visits from Ebby and more discussions. Bill even attended a church service at Calvary Mission that was the center of the Oxford Group in New York. Bill was drunk when he arrived at the mission and he’d almost been barred from going in. Bill recalls, “There were hymns and prayers. Tex the leader, exhorted us. ‘Only Jesus could save,’ he said. Certain men got up and made testimonials. Numb as I was, I felt interest and excitement rising. Then came the call. Penitents started marching forward to the rail. Unaccountably impelled, I started too…. Ebby reached for my coattails, but it was too late. Soon I knelt among the sweating, stinking penitents. Maybe then and there for the first time, I was penitent too. Something touched me. I guess it was more than that. I was hit. I felt a wild impulse to talk. Jumping to my feet, I began.”
Bill Wilson couldn’t remember what he said that night. His friends told him he had “given his life to God” and he recalled that it was followed by his first goodnight’s sleep.
Bill’s newfound spiritual growth continued over the next few weeks although so did his drinking. Eventually he recognized the need to detox one last time if he was going to follow Ebby on his path. And so, with the courage of four, final bottles of beer, he staggered onto the subway and checked into Town’s Hospital.
Two days into his detox was when it happened. Bill’s depression returned and deepened when his scientific mind reasserted itself, leading him question his newfound faith. After a night of wrestling with his demons, Bill called out, “If there be a God, let him show himself.” Bill continues the story saying, “The effect was instant, electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an incredibly white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. I have no words for this. Every joy I gad known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy. I was conscious of nothing else for a time.
“Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought, ‘You are a free man.’ I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the light and the ecstasy subsided… As I became more quiet a great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’”
Following what he later referred to as this “white light” experience, Bill endured one final moment of doubt. Was he losing his mind? Frantic, he called Dr. Silkworth to his room and asked him point blank, “Doctor, is this real? Am I perfectly sane?” We can all be grateful for the good doctor’s humble and sincere answer. He told Bill that whatever it was that had happened to him, he hadn’t lost his mind. He attributed it to what he termed, “…some great psychic occurrence, something that I don’t understand. I’ve read of these things in books, but I’ve never seen one before. You have had some kind of conversion experience… You are already a different individual. So, my boy, whatever you’ve got now you’d better hold on to. It’s so much better than what you had only a couple of hours ago.”
What Bill had was better. It was so very much better. Number One man had finally been humbled – and the strange thing was, he liked how it felt. He liked it so much he wanted to share it with every alcoholic he could possibly find.