The History and Evolution of Recovery Meetings
The History and Evolution of Recovery Meetings
I’d like to talk a little bit about the history and evolution of recovery meetings to help people find what’s best for them.
There are three main categories of alcohol and addiction recovery meetings. They include:
· 12-step meetings
· Secular recovery meetings (non 12-step)
· Religious recovery meetings
12-step recovery meetings are the world’s most widely known type of addiction recovery support group. The two most popular 12-step groups are Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA).
12-step meetings have no real leader – the group chooses a trusted servant (who has at least a year of recovery) to moderate each group for a few months at a time and then another will rotate in and take his or her place.
12-step programs usually have a main text or book as their reference guide. In AA, it is known as The Big Book and serves as the primary guide for people in the program.
12-step meetings have different formats – depending on the group’s decision – some read the Big Book together, some listen to speakers, some share in small groups.
Attendance is anonymous and meetings often end with this statement of privacy:
What you see here, who you hear here, let it stay here. Hear hear!
And close with the Serenity Prayer:
God – grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
12-step meetings are considered spiritual, not religious. 12-step meetings encourage members to choose a “higher power” greater than themselves. Each person is free to choose their own concept of God. The only requirement for attending 12-step meetings is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees – only voluntary donations.
Many 12-step meetings are group-specific (men only or women only) and some meetings are open to outside attendees, such as friends and loved ones of alcoholics and addicts, while other sessions are “closed” - meaning that only those in recovery can attend. You can find in-person meetings and on-line (virtual) meetings - although only 2% of members want ONLY virtual meetings. Most members prefer to meet with other people in recovery, live and in-person.
Alcoholics Anonymous also has additional programs available for the family and loved ones of alcoholics or drug addicts like Al-Anon and Alateen. They provide resources and support for both adults and teens who have a loved one in their lives with a drinking or drug problem.
Secular non-12-step meetings are another option for addicts and alcoholics who are struggling and they often use online meetings.
The most popular secular non-12-step group is SMART Recovery. SMART Recovery focuses on motivational and cognitive-behavioral principles to help people get and remain sober.
Other popular secular non-12-step groups include:
· Secular Organizations for Sobriety
· LifeRing
Some recovery groups are religion-based. You can find recovery groups in America for every major religion in the world:
The largest and most well-known of the religious-based support groups is Celebrate Recovery, which is a Christian-based organization.
Celebrate Recovery is open to people of any faith background and differs from other 12-Step programs in that it is based on the Bible. Celebrate Recovery meetings are typically found in Protestant Christian churches, recovery houses, rescue missions, universities, and prisons and are often “led” by Pastors and other church leaders - rather than alcoholics and addicts themselves.
Celebrate Recovery members are encouraged not to call themselves alcoholics or addicts - but rather “believers” who have a problem with addiction or co-dependency.
There is extensive material available for Celebrate Recovery along with a Celebrate Recovery bible.
Other popular religious-based addiction recovery groups include:
· Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others (JACS)
I love the program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other 12 step recovery meetings like Celebrate Recovery. I have experienced both. I see benefits to both. The following is my critique of their strengths and weaknesses.
AA reminds us that we have a “Higher Power” – or God - that can save our lives if only we surrender to it. My Higher Power is Jesus Christ. Yours may be different. But, we all need one if we want to stay sober and sane.
The point is that WE humans are NOT God, but there surely is one. 12-step programs remind us that we as humans are powerless over our alcoholism and addictions - but if we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God - as we understand him - we can be restored.
Recovery meetings like AA and Celebrate Recovery have helped over 10 million people around the world get sober and stay sober. But on a planet of 8 BILLION people there are still some 700 million people who are considered addicts or abusers of alcohol or drugs. We have made great progress but these meetings still only reach 1% of those who need our help. There is obviously more work to be done.
Let’s look at how AA & Celebrate Recovery were started and how they have grown over time.
Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, as the outcome of a meeting between Bill W., a New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob S., an Akron surgeon. Both had been hopeless alcoholics.
Before their meeting, Bill W. and Dr. Bob had each been in contact with the Oxford Group, a non-alcoholic Christian revivalist society which promoted spiritual values in daily living. An Episcopal clergyman, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, led the Oxford Groups in the U.S. at that time. Bill W. attended meetings of the Oxford Group.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob took the best of the Oxford Group and made it a program for EVERYONE. That’s why it works.
Bill W. very purposefully wanted AA to be for everyone and he knew that the Oxford Group didn’t fully succeed because it limited its membership to Christians only. Actually, before that time, there had been no real successful recovery program for alcoholics before AA in all of recorded history.
Bill W. believed that it didn’t matter whether your higher power was a tree or nature or Satan or Allah or Jesus Christ - as long as you had a desire to stop drinking - everybody was welcome in AA.
Many people who attend AA meetings call themselves FRIENDS OF BILL W. to protect their privacy.
AA had about 1400 people in 1938 and today has grown to some 2 million members – but it essentially has NOT grown in 35 years - since 1990. Unfortunately, AA’s own data proves that it is now starting to lose membership.
The Big Book was written in 1939, revised in 1955 and 1976 (after Bill W.’s death) and again in 2001.
Now they are planning more revisions to make the Big Book easier to read and more “inclusive.” A “Plain Language” Big Book was approved by the 74th General Service Conference in April 2024 and is scheduled for release on November 1, 2024.
Some people say all these revisions to AA are not helping grow the membership. The numbers appear to support that theory. As you’ll note - all the changes made to AA out of New York since 1990 have NOT grown the fellowship. Perhaps AA needs a study to find out why!
AA has a website and an excellent meeting finder and offers annual gatherings in most large cities to promote fellowship and provide speakers to those in the program.
Why do I think it’s losing membership? In my personal opinion, I’ve seen so many cultural changes in AA coming out of woke New York that it has driven away people of faith. Many Christian conservatives I know are leaving the AA fellowship because they are being told - by word and deed - that they don’t belong anymore.
There’s even talk of AA removing the words men and women from the Big Book, the word God from the Big Book, the Serenity Prayer from the walls and banning the Lord’s Prayer being spoken in the rooms. Also, major treatment centers often refer patients to AA but at the same time use their platforms to promote their own political and social issues. This creates a glaring conflict of interest. I think that’s wrong and will drive more people away from the rooms and is totally against what Bill W. wanted and what AA stands for.
IMHO, AA works best when it’s practiced as it was meant to be practiced and not influenced or changed due to cancel culture, social influences or politics. I think AA members would be well served by going back to the roots of AA and following the original guidelines developed by Bill W. and Dr. Bob and the early founders of AA. It’s a wonderful way to honor their gift to us.
I’d like to read to you the FIRST introduction to the Big Book of AA written in 1938.
I have a copy of the original text - before it was changed over the years. I think everybody should read what the first 100 people, who got sober with AA, wrote:
Pretty powerful and simple words that still hold true - and I don’t think need to be changed.
Secondly, because my career was in advertising - and I understand the power of promotion - I have a personal interest in how AA created awareness for itself without compromising its privacy principles.
I know that personal anonymity for the individual is important - but I think few people know that AA first got off the ground because of articles written in major newspapers across the country in the 1940s and 1950s. In other words, MILLIONS of people learned about AA back then and were saved by AA because the media made them aware of AA and educated them about AA.
Today, AA research shows that only 2% of members heard about AA from the media or online. Why has that stopped?
On AA’s own website, they tout the first article EVER written about Alcoholics Anonymous, in 1941. That single article alone sold more AA books and created more positive awareness of AA than anything since.
On March 1, 1941, The Saturday Evening Post published an article, written by journalist Jack Alexander, entitled: “Alcoholics Anonymous: Freed Slaves of Drink, Now They Free Others."
The Saturday Evening Post was the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the United States at that time. It’s reach was unparalleled.
Following the release of the article, inquiries began to flood in to AA Headquarters. On March 12, 1941, Ruth Hock, the first secretary of AA, wrote to Dr. Bob, AA co-founder, and said that the AA headquarters had received 918 inquiries in 12 days as a direct response to the article. HUGE for that time!
The Saturday Evening Post also received lots of mail from readers asking how they could contact local AA groups in various cities.
It was so successful that Bill W. wrote to Jack Alexander and asked him to write a SECOND article.
“If you can spare me a little time, I’d like to come down to Philadelphia and see you. Eight years ago the Saturday Evening Post took A.A. out of the pioneering stage and made it a movement. Uncounted thousands owe their great good fortune, yes their very lives, to what the Post did then. We still ship reprints of your article by the carload.
Nowadays A.A. rarely asks for publicity. I suppose we still get it in enormous quantities partly for that reason. Yet the time is here when an exception should be made. The point of this letter is what I would definitely like to ask you folks a favor. Will you print another piece about us?
The general public has only the vaguest idea what our society really looks like. I think they would be interested in an inside view.
From our standpoint, a vital job has to be done. Now that the recovery formula is above ground and working at a prodigious rate, our main problem is that of maintaining our unity as a movement until every drunk in the world has had a good look at the idea.
So then, if John Q. Public could get an inside view of what our fellowship is really like, and it could become quite clear to him what good A.A.’s do and what they don’t do in their relationships with each other and with the outside world, the Saturday Evening Post would have written an insurance policy on our future, the value of which no men could ever reckon.”
— Bill W. to Jack Alexander
Finally, eight months after Bill W. proposed the idea to Jack Alexander for a follow-up, the second article was released.
“The Drunkard’s Best Friend” was published in the April 1, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
“The Drunkard’s Best Friend” was a success, just as the first article was. On April 22, 1950, Bill W. wrote to The Saturday Evening Post and thanked them for promoting AA:
“Jack Alexander, in his recent Saturday Evening Post story ‘The Drunkard’s Friend,’ has done it again.
We of Alcoholics Anonymous wish to tell how immensely grateful every man-jack of us is for this happy circumstance. It is not the least exaggeration to say that Jack’s ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ article of nine years ago brought recovery within the reach of 10,000 alcoholics and great happiness to as many homes. Since the public impression of this last piece of Jack’s is tops, we make no doubt that it will accomplish a fine result.
We know that the whole world will one day agree that these two articles of Jack’s about A.A. are to be regarded the greatest public service the Saturday Evening Post has ever done. And that’s saying a great deal, indeed.”
— Bill W. to Ben Bibbs, editor of The Saturday Evening Post
I am extremely grateful to AA for all that it does and all it has done for me and countless others. My only wish is that I would have known about it earlier. I didn’t even know that AA existed until I was 31 years old and I attribute that partly to the media and AA headquarters.
I know many people who have heard of AA but have no idea what it really is - or they have a distorted and twisted view. As I said earlier - the numbers prove it.
AA has about 2 million members around the world - which is fabulous - but there are still some 700 million other alcoholics and addicts out there who are still suffering. How can we reach the 99% who are NOT reaching out to AA for whatever reason?
Personal anonymity is one thing but carrying the message of our good cause is quite another. The program of AA was once featured on the cover of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the country. I think it should be again.
Many people bring up Tradition Eleven, which was written by Bill W. in 1946, as a reason NOT to promote AA.
“Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.”
I believe that Tradition Eleven has been misunderstood and misconstrued since the death of Bill W. & sadly has hampered the growth of AA.
Bill W. himself encouraged major newspapers to publish articles about the AA program - even AFTER he wrote Tradition Eleven. What Bill W. didn’t want was for people to use AA to promote themselves or their individual businesses or political parties - he didn’t want them to use their full names, their business names and their pictures to campaign through AA. That’s much different than promoting the good of the AA program using anonymous testimony like the many stories contained in the AA Big Book and given by speakers at open AA meetings.
In fact, Bill W. considered journalists who understood the purpose of AA to be “friends of AA” and he encouraged their reporting:
“Obviously, A.A. has to be publicized somehow, so we resorted to the idea that it would be far better to let our friends [in the media] do this for us. Precisely that has happened, to an unbelievable extent.
Veteran journalists have gone all out to carry A.A.’s message. To them, we are something more than the source of good stories. On almost every news front, the men and women of the press have attached themselves to us as friends. These friends agreed to publicize AA’s principles and its work, but not its individual members by name. The editors and journalists that we call friends agree to remove pictures and full names from all AA testimonies before they publish them.”
That’s why I am reporting this to you!
I recommend that those who wish to restore AA to its roots think about starting meetings called “Original Recipe AA” - using the very first AA book as a guide - before it was changed with the times.
Celebrate Recovery began in 1991 as a ministry at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. John Baker, a member of the church staff and Alcoholics Anonymous, approached Pastor Rick Warren with the idea for a Christian addiction recovery group. The first meeting had 43 people in attendance.
Baker based the program's principles on the Beatitudes, a series of statements from Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Within 10 weeks, the program had more than 1,500 members.
Celebrate Recovery has since spread to some 35,000 churches, recovery houses, prisons, universities, and rescue missions around the world. Celebrate Recovery estimates they have some 5 million members.
Celebrate Recovery is a Christ-centered, Biblically-based ministry that's open to people of any faith background. It's designed to help people find freedom from “hurts, habits, and hang-ups” – which is how they refer to addiction or compulsions - and to build stronger relationships with God and others.
Celebrate Recovery has a website and a meeting finder and a YouTube channel where you’ll find testimonies.
I think Celebrate Recovery (CR) would also benefit from more promotion, a more up-to-date and accurate meeting finder and I also recommend that Celebrate Recovery try to incorporate more “leaders” into recovery meetings who have personally struggled with addiction and alcoholism - and are willing to share their recovery stories with others - so that newcomers will feel welcome.
My hope is that people will use the information I’ve shared here to find the right recovery meeting for themselves and their loved ones, will analyze how their meetings are run and promoted to make sure they are as effective as possible and reach as many people as possible - yet still remain anonymous for individual members - and will seek to help others do the same.
In the last chapter of my sober life, I’m going to start a website called “Sober by God’s Grace” where people can share their testimony anonymously (regardless of how or where they got sober) to help others. It will look something like this:
My name and photo will NOT be connected to this site and there will be NO money involved. EVERYONE is welcome to share. It will just be a free and easy way for any person in recovery to share their experience, strength and hope to help others.
I’ll share our anonymous stories (first name, gender, sober date & birthplace only) to the media for publication - coupled with how a Higher Power has changed our lives. I think that’s what Bill W. would do if he were still alive today.
That’s what I plan to do.
I heard a prayer recently that stuck with me and I will use it to guide my path:
"Heavenly Father - pour forth a ray of Your brightness into the darkened places of my mind. Refine my speech and pour forth upon my lips the goodness of Your blessing. Grant to me keenness of mind, capacity to remember, skill in learning, subtlety to interpret, and eloquence in speech. May You guide the beginning of my work, direct its progress, and bring it to completion, You who live and reign, world without end. Amen."