Two Alcoholics Meet in Akron — and Alcoholics Anonymous Is Born

On June 10, 1935, in Akron, Ohio, two hopeless alcoholics sat down for a conversation — and millions of people would one day owe their sobriety to it.

Bill Wilson — known in the fellowship as Bill W. — was a New York stockbroker whose drinking had wrecked his career. Newly sober himself after a harrowing hospital detox in December 1934, he was in Akron on business when he felt his own sobriety slipping. Desperate for someone who understood, he reached out through a local contact and was introduced to Dr. Robert Smith — Dr. Bob — an Akron surgeon who, despite everything, could not stop drinking.

The two men talked for hours. Wilson shared a radical idea he had learned from his doctor, William Silkworth: that alcoholism was not a failure of willpower or morals, but an illness — of mind, emotions, and body. Something clicked. On June 10, 1935, Dr. Bob had his last drink. Alcoholics Anonymous marks that day as its beginning.

The insight that made it work was simple: one alcoholic helping another. Wilson had discovered that trying to stay sober by helping fellow alcoholics kept him sober too. The pair began working with drinkers at Akron City Hospital; soon a third man joined them, and the little fellowship began to grow. Its roots ran through the Oxford Group, a spiritual movement whose practices of self-examination, confession, and making amends shaped the program.

In 1939 the fellowship published its basic text, "Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism" — the "Big Book" — and the movement took its name from the title. The Twelve Steps it contained would be adapted for countless other struggles, from narcotics to gambling to overeating.

Today the fellowship counts an estimated two million members in more than 120,000 groups across some 180 countries — and it still costs nothing, runs on voluntary contributions, and asks only one thing of a newcomer: a desire to stop drinking. Its founders are known simply as Bill W. and Dr. Bob, in keeping with the tradition of anonymity.

Before AA, alcoholics were widely dismissed as morally weak; the fellowship helped change addiction from a source of shame into an illness met with compassion — one conversation, one day at a time.

No verified image was available for this story: photographs of the founders from 1935 remain under copyright.