"Counting the Noses of Our Recoveries" in November 1937

By Dick B.

© 2011 Anonymous. All rights reserved

DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers also comments on the November 1937 meeting between Bill W. and Dr. Bob which led to the decision that a book about their cure for alcoholism would be needed.

In November of that year [i.e., 1937], Bill Wilson went on a business trip that enabled him to make a stopover in Akron. . . .

            Bill's writings record the day he sat in the living room with Doc, counting recoveries. "A hard core of very grim, last-gasp cases had by then been sober a couple of years," he said. "All told, we figured that upwards of 40 alcoholics were staying bone dry.

. . .

            Up to then, prospects had come to the founders from other cities. Now, the question was whether every alcoholic had to come to Akron or New York to get sober. Was it possible to reach distant alcoholics? Was it possible for the Fellowship to grow "rapidly and soundly"?

            This was when Bill began to think . . . of writing a book of experiences that would carry the message of recovery to other cities and other countries.[1]

Let us now look at this vitally-significant, November 1937 meeting in more detail.

In an October 1945 article in the A.A. Grapevine titled "The Book Is Born," Bill referred to his meeting with Dr. Bob in Akron in November 1937 as follows:

By the fall of 1937 we could count what looked like forty recovered members. One of us had been sober three years, another two and a half, and a fair number had a year or more behind them. As all of us had been hopeless cases, this amount of time elapsed began to be significant. The realization that we had "found something" began to take hold of us. No longer were we a dubious experiment. Alcoholics could stay sober. Great numbers, perhaps! While some of us had always clung to this possibility, the dream now had real substance. If forty alcoholics could recover, why not four hundred, four thousand — even forty thousand?[2]

In the quote above, Bill spoke of having counted "what looked like forty recovered members." He also speculated about possible, much larger numbers of alcoholics—"even forty thousand"—recovering.

Bill W. spoke more clearly and at greater length about his November 1937 meeting with Dr. Bob in Akron in his tribute to Dr. Bob in the special memorial issue of The A.A. Grapevine in January 1951 titled "RHS":

Meanwhile a small group had taken shape in New York. The Akron meeting at T. Henry's home began to have a few Cleveland visitors. At this juncture I spent a week visiting Dr. Bob. We commenced to count noses. Out of hundreds of alcoholics, how many had stuck? How many were sober? And for how long? In that fall of 1937 Bob and I counted forty cases who had significant dry time — maybe sixty years for the whole lot of them! Our eyes glistened. Enough time had elapsed on enough cases to spell out something quite new, perhaps something great indeed. . . . A beacon had been lighted. God had shown alcoholics how it might be passed from hand to hand. Never shall I forget that great and humbling hour of realization, shared with Dr. Bob.

            But the new realization faced us with a great problem, a momentous decision. It had taken nearly three years to effect forty recoveries. The United States alone probably had a million alcoholics. How were we to get the story to them?[3]

Here again, Bill declares that he and Dr. Bob "counted forty cases who had significant dry time" and refers to "forty recoveries." And note that Bill credited God with having shown them "how it might be passed from hand to hand."

Bill wrote about his November 1937 meeting with Dr. Bob in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:

. . . [T]his trip [in the fall of 1937] gave me a much needed chance to visit Dr. Bob in Akron. It was on a November day in that year [of 1937] when Dr. Bob and I sat in his living room, counting the noses of our recoveries. There had been failures galore, but now we could see some startling successes too. A hard core of very grim, last-gasp cases had by then been sober a couple of years, an unheard-of development. There were twenty or more such people. All told we figured that upwards of forty alcoholics were staying bone dry.

            As we carefully rechecked this score, it suddenly burst upon us that a new light was shining into the dark world of the alcoholic. . . . [A] benign chain reaction, one alcoholic carrying the good news to the next, had started outward from Dr. Bob and me. Conceivably it could one day circle the whole world. What a tremendous thing that realization was! At last we were sure. . . . We actually wept for joy, and Bob and Anne and I bowed our heads in silent prayer.[4]

Here again, we see Bill commenting about the "upwards of forty alcoholics" who "were staying bone dry," while speaking almost in the same breath about how "it could one day circle the whole world."

The A.A. General Service Conference-approved book "Pass It On" also discusses this November 1937 meeting.

Later in 1937, Bill . . . did visit Bob and Anne in Akron. It was on this visit that the two men conducted a "formal" review of their work of the past two years.

            What they came to realize as a result of that review was astounding: Bill may have been stretching things when he declared that at least 20 cases had been sober a couple of years; but by counting everybody who seemed to have found sobriety in New York and Akron, they concluded that more than 40 alcoholics were staying dry as a result of the program![5]

Bill W.'s wife Lois remarked on the 40 in her memoirs:

The business depression returned in 1937, and toward the end of the year Quaw and Foley had to let Bill go. He went to Detroit and Cleveland looking for new job ideas and, of course, stopped off at Akron on the way

            He and Bob assessed the current status of the movement. They were surprised to find that, although many of those they had worked with had fallen by the way, forty members enjoyed an average of two years' solid sobriety. This was flabbergasting, awe-inspiring. They really had hit on a program for helping alcoholics. Now they saw it could develop into something tremendous—if it was not diluted or garbled by word of mouth   [6]

Here are some key comments about this important tally of successes by other writers:

In November [of 1937] Bill had to make a trip to the Midwest in connection with the brokerage job he was trying to nail down. Although nothing came of his efforts concerning the job—another depression had hit the country in the fall of '37—the trip gave him an opportunity to visit Dr. Bob in Akron. Bill had been sober almost three years, Bob two and a half, and this, they figured, should be ample time for them to see where they were and even make some sort of informal progress report.

            There had been failures galore. Literally hundreds of drunks had been approached by their two groups and some had sobered up for a brief period but then slipped away. They were both conscious of their failures as they settled down in Bob's living room and began comparing notes. But as the afternoon wore on and they continued going over lists, counting noses, they found themselves facing a staggering fact. In all, in Ohio and in New York, they knew forty alcoholics who were sober and were staying sober, and of this number at least twenty had been completely dry for more than a year. Moreover, every single one of them had been diagnosed a hopeless case.

            As they sat, each with a paper in hand, checking and rechecking the score, a strange thing happened; they both fell silent. This was more than a game they were playing, more than a little casual bookkeeping to be used for a report. There were forty names representing forty men whose lives had been changed, who actually were alive tonight because of what had started in this very room. The chain reaction they had dreamed about—one alcoholic carrying the word to another—was a reality. It had moved onward, outward from them.[7]

Although Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith had communicated through dozens of letters, sitting down together again after almost two years turned out to be an astonishing experience. Whey they compared notes in person, they realized that they had actually found something that doctors and laymen had been searching for as long as anyone could remember: a way to help alcoholics get sober that actually worked. Between them they counted forty men who hadn't had a drink in more than a year.[8]

In November [of 1937], Bill . . . was able to spend some time in Akron. . . .

            . . . He and the Smiths decided to take an inventory. Among those they had tried to help, the failures were endless, and many of those who seemed sincerely willing to try their approach were struggling. When they were done counting, though, they realized that between Akron and New York there were now forty alcoholics staying sober, and half of them had not had a drink for more than a year.[9]

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[1]     DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 123.

[2]     The Language of the Heart: Bill W.'s Grapevine Writings (New York: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 10.

[3]     RHS: Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous: Our Beloved DR. BOB (NY: A.A. Grapevine, Inc., 1951), 8. The article from which this quote is taken also occurs in The Language of the Heart and is titled "Dr. Bob: A Tribute." This quote appears on page 359 of that article.

[4]     Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 76. See also: Debra Jay, No More Letting Go: The Spirituality of Taking Action Against Alcoholism and Drug Addiction (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2006), 287-88.

[5]     "Pass It On": The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984), 177-78.

      Bill W. also spoke briefly about this meeting with Dr. Bob—without mentioning numbers of recoveries—in his May 1955 article in the A.A. Grapevine titled "How AA's World Services Grew, Part 1," in The Language of the Heart, 142.

      See also: Dick B., The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, 224-25.

[6]     Lois Remembers: Memoirs of the Co-founder of Al-Anon and Wife of the Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1987), 107.

[7]     Robert Thomsen, Bill W. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 266-67.

[8]     Susan Cheever, My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 147.

[9]     Francis Hartigan, Bill W.: A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 101.