50 Fun Facts About Alcoholics Anonymous

Which Ohio city, nicknamed the Rubber Capital of the World, is where Bill W. and Dr. Bob began AA?

Akron surgeon Dr. Bob became Bill W.'s first success in 1935, and the city still hosts Founders' Day each June, when thousands of AA members tour its historic sites.

Which coded phrase do cruise ship schedules use to announce AA meetings without naming the fellowship?

Friends of Bill W. lets members spot a meeting on a public schedule, and asking a stranger 'Are you a friend of Bill W.?' is a discreet way to find a fellow member.

Which drug did Bill W. take in medically supervised experiments from 1956, believing it might help alcoholics?

LSD let Bill W. relive, he said, the 1934 spiritual experience that had ended his drinking. Most AA members strongly opposed the experiments, and he never publicly urged others to try it.

AA co-founders Bill W. and Dr. Bob first met in Ohio, but both men were born in which New England state?

Vermont was home to both men: Bill W. was born in East Dorset in 1895 and Dr. Bob in St. Johnsbury in 1879, yet they did not meet until both had long since moved away.

Which short verse, adopted by AA in the early 1940s, asks for the 'courage to change the things I can'?

The Serenity Prayer is credited to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who composed a version in the early 1930s. It spread through the YWCA before AA took it up.

Which Swiss psychiatrist told alcoholic Rowland Hazard his only chance might be a spiritual conversion, inspiring AA?

Carl Jung treated Hazard in Zurich from 1926 and doubted that medicine alone could help. Hazard later got sober through a religious fellowship, and the idea was passed along to Bill W.

Which word completes the first of AA's Twelve Steps: 'We admitted we were ___ over alcohol'?

Powerless is the admission every later step builds on, and other fellowships kept the sentence: Overeaters Anonymous simply swaps alcohol for 'food'.

Which fellowship for the families of alcoholics did Lois W., the wife of AA's Bill W., co-found in 1951?

Al-Anon was founded by Lois W. and her friend Anne B. at Stepping Stones, the Wilsons' home in New York State, 16 years after AA itself began.

AA's 1939 basic text was nicknamed the Big Book because its first edition was printed using what?

Unusually thick paper made the 1939 first edition bulky, and the nickname outlived it: the book had sold about 30 million copies by 2009.

In the recovery acronym HALT, three letters stand for hungry, angry and lonely; what does the T stand for?

Tired completes HALT, a self-check taught in rehab programmes and twelve-step meetings: each of the four states is a stressor that can threaten a person's recovery.

What is the AA term for an experienced member who helps a newcomer understand and follow the Twelve Steps?

Sponsor is AA's word for this guide, who should ideally have worked all twelve steps and, AA's own pamphlet suggests, be the same sex as the newcomer.

Which principle does AA's Twelfth Tradition call 'the spiritual foundation of all our traditions'?

Anonymity shaped even Bill W.'s public life: he turned down an honorary degree and a Time magazine cover, and obituaries gave his full name only with his prior written consent.

According to AA's Third Tradition, what is the only requirement for membership of the fellowship?

A desire to stop drinking is all it takes: the tradition's long form adds that any two or three alcoholics gathered for sobriety may call themselves an AA group.

AA's Step Four asks members to make a 'searching and fearless' what of themselves?

Moral inventory is not a one-off: Step Ten asks members to keep taking personal inventory and, when they are wrong, to admit it promptly.

AA's Step Two says members came to believe a power greater than themselves could restore them to what?

Sanity is what Step Two holds out, and the 'power' is left for each member to define: the very next step speaks of 'God as we understood Him'.

In AA's Step Nine, what do members make directly to people they have harmed, wherever that is possible?

Amends are prepared in Step Eight, where members list everyone they have harmed. Step Nine carries one exception: not when doing so 'would injure them or others'.

AA's Step Eleven seeks to improve 'conscious contact with God' through prayer and which other practice?

Meditation is paired with a narrow kind of prayer: the step has members pray 'only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out'.

AA's Step Twelve opens 'Having had a spiritual ___ as the result of these steps'; which word fills the gap?

Awakening rarely means a sudden flash: in twelve-step fellowships it usually comes slowly over time, though some members, like Bill W. in 1934, report a sudden one.

In AA's Step Five, members admit the exact nature of their wrongs to God, to themselves and to whom?

Another human being is usually the member's guide in the programme, and US courts have not given these talks the legal privilege that protects a confession to clergy.

Which word completes the AA phrase for what members share at meetings: 'experience, strength and ___'?

Hope completes the phrase, which AA also used as the title of a 2003 book collecting personal stories that had been dropped from earlier editions of the Big Book.

Which Christian movement, founded by Frank Buchman, did both Bill W. and Dr. Bob join before starting AA?

Oxford Group ideas such as public 'sharing', restitution and rigorous honesty fed straight into AA's steps. Dr. Bob had attended its meetings for two years without getting sober.

Which philanthropist hosted a 1940 dinner for AA but refused it large donations, warning that money would spoil things?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. dashed Bill W.'s dream of millions for paid missionaries and treatment centres. Bill W. later credited him with the idea of keeping AA non-professional.

Which magazine's 1941 feature by Jack Alexander helped quadruple AA's membership by the end of that year?

Saturday Evening Post readers deluged AA with pleas for help after the article appeared: membership went from about 2,000 in March 1941 to 8,000 by the close of the year.

The Big Book traces AA to a 1935 talk between an Ohio physician and a New York man of which profession?

Stockbroker Bill W. was in Ohio on a business venture that had collapsed, leaving him afraid he would drink again, so he went looking for another alcoholic to help.

Before co-founding AA, Dr. Bob ran his own Ohio medical practice, specialising in which field?

Colorectal surgery was Dr. Bob's speciality, but another caseload dwarfed it: with the help of a nun, Sister Ignatia, he guided some 5,000 fellow alcoholics to recovery.

What did Bill W. give Dr. Bob on the morning of 10 June 1935, the last alcohol Dr. Bob ever drank?

A bottle of beer steadied Dr. Bob for an operation he had to perform that day. AA counts the date as its founding, since neither man drank again.

At which Ivy League college, where he graduated in 1902, did AA co-founder Dr. Bob begin drinking?

Dartmouth is where, in AA's own account, drinking 'became a major activity' for Dr. Bob. As a premed student in Michigan, he later left university for a time because of it.

In AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which numbered maxim reads 'Don't take yourself too damn seriously'?

Rule 62 was the punchline of a group that drew up 61 rules for an over-ambitious recovery centre, watched the project collapse, then printed one more rule on a small card.

Which chapter of AA's Big Book lists the Twelve Steps and opens 'Rarely have we seen a person fail'?

How It Works is the fifth chapter, and it admits the authors first looked for a shortcut: 'We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not.'

Lois W. was left angry and hurt when Bill W. insisted on writing which Big Book chapter himself?

To Wives is chapter eight, and despite its voice it was written by Bill W. The only chapter he did not write was the one for employers, by his colleague Hank Parkhurst.

Which national institution named AA's Big Book in 2012 as one of 88 'Books That Shaped America'?

Library of Congress recognition came a year after Time magazine listed the 1939 text among the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.

Which US president received the one-millionth copy of AA's Big Book, a title first printed in 1939?

Richard Nixon was handed the millionth copy; later milestones went further afield, with the 30-millionth presented to the American Medical Association in 2010.

Which Towns Hospital physician, who treated Bill W., wrote 'The Doctor's Opinion' at the front of AA's Big Book?

William Silkworth risked his professional reputation in 1937 by publishing the view that alcoholism was a physical illness, and Bill W. was one of his five case studies.

In the Big Book's 'The Doctor's Opinion', the action of alcohol on chronic alcoholics is called a manifestation of what?

An allergy of the body, paired with an obsession of the mind: that two-part picture let early members see alcoholism as an illness rather than a failure of willpower.

Which old drinking companion visited Bill W. in November 1934, newly sober, and told him he had 'got religion'?

Ebby Thacher had been dry for only a few weeks, and Bill W.'s heart sank at the news. Within weeks, though, Bill W. was back in hospital and had quit drinking for good.

Which American philosopher wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience, a book that helped shape AA's Twelve Steps?

William James held that spiritual change grows out of calamity and surrender. Bill W. said the phrase 'deflation at depth' leapt out at him from the book, yet it never appears there.

Henrietta Seiberling, who introduced Bill W. to Dr. Bob, was the daughter-in-law of which tire company's co-founder?

Goodyear co-founder Frank Seiberling's daughter-in-law took Bill W.'s phone call, invited him to lunch, heard his story and declared, 'I have just the man for you.'

In which hotel's lobby did Bill W. pace in May 1935, tempted to buy gin, before phoning a clergyman for help instead?

The Mayflower had a lobby bulletin board bearing a local minister's name, and that call began the chain that led to Dr. Bob.

Which AA magazine, launched in June 1944 by six members in New York, became the fellowship's international journal?

Grapevine left a lasting mark on meetings: one of its early editors wrote the AA Preamble, and the Twelve Traditions first appeared in its pages in April 1946.

Which fellowship did Jimmy Kinnon and others found in 1953, drawing directly on AA's programme?

Narcotics Anonymous started as a small American movement and has grown into the world's largest twelve-step recovery programme for drug addiction.

AA's Seventh Tradition says every group ought to be fully what, 'declining outside contributions'?

Self-supporting groups pay their own way after some hard lessons: one group given five thousand dollars found that the hassle over the money 'played havoc for years'.

AA's Second Tradition says 'Our leaders are but ___; they do not govern.' Which two words fill the gap?

Trusted servants who lose office, AA's own book jokes, become either 'elder statesmen', who accept the group's decision, or 'bleeding deacons', who cannot let go.

Which Baltimore-born society of reformed drinkers lost its way in politics, a lesson behind AA's Tenth Tradition?

Washingtonians passed 100,000 members a century before AA, then took public sides on abolition and temperance reform and soon lost their power to help drinkers.

Which poisonous plant gave its name to the 'cure' Bill W. was given at Towns Hospital when he saw a white light?

Belladonna, which can cause hallucinations, was mixed with henbane in a treatment devised by the hospital's founder, Charles B. Towns. Bill W. never drank again after that stay.

During which war did future AA co-founder Bill W. become an Army officer and start to drink?

World War I cut short Bill W.'s engineering course at a military college. Commissioned a second lieutenant, he began drinking 'with disastrous results almost at once'.

In which Midwestern city did Bill W. hand stewardship of AA to its General Service Conference in 1955?

St. Louis saw Bill W. step down from active leadership once the Conference had proved workable after a trial period. The Big Book's second edition came out the same year.

Which actor won an Emmy for playing an AA co-founder in the 1989 television film My Name Is Bill W.?

James Woods took the lead-actor Emmy for the Hallmark Hall of Fame drama, while his co-star James Garner was nominated as supporting actor but did not win.

Which actress played Bill W.'s wife in the 2010 TV film When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story?

Winona Ryder's film premiered on CBS and was based on a book by William G. Borchert, who had written the screenplay for an earlier TV drama about Bill W. himself.

AA's Eleventh Tradition bases the fellowship's public relations policy on what 'rather than promotion'?

Attraction comes with a second instruction in the same tradition: members keep their own names and faces out of 'press, radio, and films'.

Which English novelist, a friend of Bill W., called him 'the greatest social architect of our century'?

Aldous Huxley's praise was later echoed by Time magazine, which in 1999 listed Bill W. as 'The Healer' among the 100 most important people of the century.