Illustration · An imagined kitchen late at night, for the families who waited up: a cup of coffee gone cold, a dinner kept under a plate, the clock at ten to two, rain on the window, and a chair turned toward the back door. Not drawn from a photograph.

A Family Disease

The family’s side

Al-Anon’s story, told from the side of the families: how the wives at AA’s first meetings came to want a program of their own, and what they built with it.

“We believe alcoholism is a family illness and that changed attitudes can aid recovery.”

Al-Anon’s Suggested Preamble to the Twelve Steps · as printed in Many Voices, One Journey, 2011

The families came to AA’s first meetings too. They came to help the drinker, and some of them, Lois W. among them, found that they needed the program for themselves. By 1951 AA’s office had heard from family groups and members’ relatives in five countries, and that year Lois W. and Anne B. opened an office for them, the Clearing House. Within a year the groups had a name of their own, Al-Anon Family Groups, and had taken AA’s Twelve Steps for their own.

This piece follows Al-Anon from the families at the first meetings to today: a fellowship of its own in the 1950s, with Alateen for teenagers; the first World Service Conference, in 1961; a guest speaker’s play about denial and a daily reader whose first printing sold out by Christmas; grown children of alcoholics and the long argument over where they belonged; the move from New York to Virginia Beach; and meetings online, with rules to keep Alateen safe. What Captain of My Soul, Call Me Anne and By the Carload already tell is linked, not retold.

It’s built mostly from Al-Anon’s own history, Many Voices, One Journey (2011), with its yearly Conference summaries, its pamphlets and magazine, and Lois Remembers. Members are named as that history names them. Where the accounts disagree, or members did, these pages say so and take no side.

Start with 1 · Before the name

Al-Anon, year by year

1939About now, as AA members begin holding closed meetings, family members begin meeting by themselves.
1945On March 1, AA’s office registers its first group of non-alcoholics, in Long Beach, California.
1951Lois W. and Anne B. write to the 87 family groups and relatives of AA members on a list from AA’s office, and open a post office box in New York, the Clearing House.
1952The groups choose a name, Al-Anon Family Groups, and take AA’s Twelve Steps for their own.
1955Al-Anon’s first book, The Al-Anon Family Groups, goes on sale at AA’s convention in St. Louis.
1957Teenagers’ groups take the name Alateen.
1961Al-Anon’s first World Service Conference meets in New York, with twelve delegates.
1968A guest speaker, Rev. Joseph L. Kellermann, describes alcoholism in a family as a play in three acts. The first printing of Al-Anon’s first daily reader is sold out by mid-December.
1972In December The Forum asks members whose parents were alcoholics to send in their experiences.
1985By the end of the year nearly a thousand groups for adult children have been proposed and registered.
1994The Conference votes to move the World Service Office to the Norfolk area of Virginia, and to buy property on a fifteen-year trial.
1996The office opens in Virginia Beach on June 1, and puts up a public website that October.
2003On December 3 Al-Anon’s Board makes requirements for the adults who serve Alateen mandatory in every Area.
2011Al-Anon publishes its own history, Many Voices, One Journey, and the Conference votes to keep the building.
2026In its seventy-fifth year Al-Anon counts more than 22,000 groups and 1,100 Alateen groups, with meetings in over 140 countries.

Walk through the families’ story

Each part has a short story, a one-minute audio stop, and a closer look for anyone who wants to go deeper. Read them in order, or start anywhere.

New to the story? The Kitchen Table tells how AA began, from one drunk talking to another to millions around the world.

Watch The Kitchen Table