Alcoholics Anonymous

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a physician, Dr. Bob had not known alcoholism to be a disease. Due to Bill’s convincing ideas, he soon got sober, never to drink again. The founding spark of A.A. had been struck (Wekesser 26).
Both men immediately set to work with alcoholics at Akron’s City Hospital, where one patient quickly achieved complete sobriety (Pitman 69). In the fall of 1935, a second group of alcoholics slowly took shape in New York. A third appeared at Cleveland in 1939. It had taken over four years to produce 100 sober alcoholics in the three founding groups. That same year, the Fellowship published it’s basic textbook, . The text, written by Bill, explained A.A.’s philosophy and methods, the core of which was the now well-known Twelve Steps to Recovery (Pitman 75 & 76). The book was reinforced by case histories of around thirty recovered members. From this point on, A.A’s development was rapidly growing (Wekesser 36).
One milestone in A.A’s history was in 1939. The Cleveland Plain Dealer ...

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live and work together in groups? This was the unsolved problem. By 1946, however, it had already become possible to draw sound conclusions about the kind of attitude, practice and function that would best suit A.A.’s purpose (Fingarette 40). Bill codified those principles, which had emerged from the strenuous group experience, in what are today the Twelve Traditions of (Pitman 96). By 1950, the earlier chaos had largely disappeared. A successful formula for A.A. unity and functioning had been achieved and put into practice (Pitman 97).
Dr. Bob had devoted himself during this ten-year period to the question of hospital care for alcoholics, and to their indoctrination with A.A. ...

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