Voices of Women in AA. Группа авторов
He quickly saw it as a means of carrying the message. And since he couldn’t connect personally with all groups and areas of AA on a regular basis, he used it as a primary source of sharing and explaining the important issues that he wanted accepted by the Fellowship. Now, it took several years, as we know, before there was a steady and enthusiastic growth of Grapevine readers. But Bill thought that sharing his ideas in print this way was important. It was there—you could read it, you could think about it, you could refer to it later.
That was one of the reasons for writing the Big Book—so the program wouldn’t get “garbled” in transmission.
Exactly. If it’s in print, it’s a matter of record. And the fact is, Bill was perhaps his own worst enemy in trying to get his ideas across. He could pound you into a corner, so to speak, because of his frustration when his ideas were not understood and accepted by the trustees and the membership at large. So Grapevine was an effective way for him to reach people—without the pounding!
Grapevine is now 50 years old, and we’re considering what our role for the future will be. Do you have any thoughts about where the Grapevine fits in?
Preserving the experience—to my mind that’s what you do in the Grapevine. Grapevine’s purpose is similar to the purpose of archives in general: to preserve the past, understand the present, and discuss and predict the future. So many young people are coming in today and they need to know about the history of AA.
What was your first acquaintance with alcoholics or AA?
My dad was a teacher and a justice of the peace in our small town. I learned about alcoholics very early on because the state police would often drag guys over at three in the morning, rapping on our door. And many of these drunks were professional people in our town or nearby towns, and perhaps good friends of my dad’s. Occasionally he’d pay their fines for them—when you’ve been out drinking until 3:00, who has any money left to pay fines with?
I read about AA in the September Liberty magazine—sitting in my college dorm—in 1939. So when I first came to work at AA, I knew about it, and I also knew that a drunk was not always a “Bowery bum.”
CHAPTER TWO
Pioneers
Early women alcoholics get sober and help open doors for more women
The women who came to Alcoholics Anonymous in the early days often wondered if the program would work for them. After all, the alcoholic women who came to AA for help encountered a Fellowship comprised of men.
Marty M., an alcoholic in New York City, who could have been included in the previous chapter, reflects on her life after 29 years of sobriety in the article “After 29 Years.” And in the story “For Men Only?” she describes attending her first meeting in 1939. “I was the only woman alcoholic there,” Marty writes. When she saw the book Alcoholics Anonymous, her first thoughts were, This was a man's book, entirely about men, obviously written by and for men ... I'd have to find my own way out after all. But bravely, she claims her seat. With a year’s sobriety, she travels with Bill W. and Lois to Akron, where she makes her first Twelfth Step call, a woman she finds “drunk in bed.”
In “Learning to Fly,” Sybil C. of Los Angeles writes how she initially thought AA was a clinic or hospital in New York. Ruth Hock, Bill W.’s stenographer, sets her straight and suggests that she attend the one AA meeting in Los Angeles. She warns Sybil that the group is struggling and “they have no women alcoholics in California.” Fortunately, Sybil goes anyway and her journey in AA begins.
In “Still Active After All These Years,” Mary W. comes to her first meeting in 1960, one of the few women on the San Francisco peninsula. Her first sponsor, who had but six months of sobriety, was the only other woman there. Mary also had to contend with her husband who “didn’t want me to quit, didn’t want me to go, but I went anyway.”
These and other stories in this chapter recount the lengths that early women in AA went to get and stay sober.
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