Illustration · An imagined table today: a typed letter of 1951 giving a post office box in New York, a phone showing a list of meetings, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. Not drawn from a photograph.

Legacy

Al-Anon’s history in its own words, a fellowship of more than 22,000 groups at seventy-five, and the separate fellowship it still works beside.

“It’s always forward that we have to look…”

Lois W., to the World Service Conference in the World Service Office’s twenty-fifth year, 1976 · as printed in Many Voices, One Journey, 2011

Growing up together

One member went to a first Al-Anon meeting in 1984, at 16. Al-Anon was in its young adulthood too, the member wrote, and the two grew up together.

At the tables the talk turned from long complaints about the alcoholic to the members themselves. Now, the member wrote, sometimes nobody at a meeting mentions drinking at all.

That memory is in the epilogue of Many Voices, One Journey, the history Al-Anon published in 2011, its sixtieth year. Most of this piece is drawn from it.

Illustration · An open book laid out like Al-Anon’s history: short pieces to read aloud, and questions for discussion. The page design is imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

The book isn’t one continuous story. It reads more like a daily reader: short pieces drawn from papers, articles and members’ memories, made to be read aloud at a meeting, many followed by questions for discussion.

MoreNot the policies

The book says it can’t answer every historical question or tell the story in every country. The members’ memories in it, like a sharing at a meeting, aren’t to be confused with Al-Anon’s policies, which its service manual sets out.

By then, it said, members met in more than 25,500 Al-Anon groups in more than 130 countries.

It opens with Lois W. speaking to the 1987 World Service Conference, the year before she died.

“Anybody can start something, but carrying it out is the real challenge.”

Lois W., to the World Service Conference, 1987 · Many Voices, One Journey

The rest of them were doing that job, she told the delegates; every one of them was a founder too. In 1968 she had been careful to call herself and Anne B. cofounders of Al-Anon’s office, not of the fellowship, which many anonymous members had made.

The book ends on change. Another member wrote of hearing longtime members say Al-Anon wasn’t what it used to be. It probably wasn’t, the member wrote, but nothing was.

There is “no single ‘true’ Al-Anon, frozen in time on a page in a history book,” the epilogue says. The true one lives in the members who use the program on what they face today.

The last chapter ends at the 2010 Conference, which held sessions on making Al-Anon more welcoming to people of any race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The 2009 membership survey had found the average member a white woman of about 56 (like Lois, circa 1951).

And Al-Anon still stands beside AA. Its Sixth Tradition ends, “Although a separate entity, we should always co-operate with Alcoholics Anonymous.”

When AA met in Vancouver in July 2025 for its International Convention, in its ninetieth year, Al-Anon scheduled daytime sessions of its own there for the Friday and Saturday (a separate entity).

Illustration · Two meeting lists, one for AA and one for Al-Anon, kept separate as AA’s guidelines ask. Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

Listen Legacy About 1 minute

1951

Two pamphlets of their own, One Wife’s Story and Purposes and Suggestions. “Dreaming big,” Lois wrote, they had a thousand copies of the second printed for 15 dollars.

Today

Books and pamphlets approved by its Conference, a monthly magazine, The Forum, and literature in over 40 languages.

One purpose

In 1951 the first purpose on Lois and Anne’s list was the AA member at home. Seventy-five years later Al-Anon names one purpose, and it is the families and friends.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How Al-Anon and AA settled on working side by side, a member’s view of who Al-Anon still reaches, and Lois W. on members who want their program to stay as they found it.

A separate entity

The first draft of Al-Anon’s Traditions, which Lois sent to AA’s trustees in July 1952, put AA in the very first one: “Our common welfare and that of Alcoholics Anonymous should come first.” Its Sixth ended with a wish to conform to the spirit of AA’s Steps and Traditions. In a revision of October 6, 1953, Tradition One said instead, “Although a separate entity, we should cooperate in every way with Alcoholics Anonymous.” Today the sentence closes Tradition Six, with “always” where “in every way” was. “A.A. members have always been of tremendous help to Al-Anon, especially in the beginning,” Lois wrote in 1979; they gave the families meeting rooms at their large gatherings and answered their questions on structure and policy.

AA’s side has its own record. Its policy of “cooperation but not affiliation,” its guidelines say, goes back to the early 1950s. On April 25, 1969, AA’s General Service Conference resolved that AA recognizes “the special relationship which it enjoys with the Al-Anon Family Groups, a separate but similar fellowship,” and the great contribution Al-Anon had made, acknowledging “A.A.’s debt of gratitude.” Its guidelines today ask the two to keep separate groups, offices, phone lines and meeting lists, and say AA should neither give money to Al-Anon nor take it. A convention is “either A.A. or Al-Anon — not both,” and most AA convention committees invite Al-Anon to plan a program of its own.

Like Lois, circa 1951

In Al-Anon’s history, a member wrote that after nearly sixty years the average member still looked “pretty much like our cofounder, Lois, circa 1951,” and called diversity the place where Al-Anon’s aspirations and its accomplishments were furthest apart, though Spanish-speaking membership was growing fast.

The same member’s own group was sometimes 30 to 40 percent men, younger on average, with more members in their forties coming because of their alcoholic children, and the member wondered whether the survey had heard most from longtime members, older, white and female. AA’s own story of whom it made room for, and when, is told in The Only Requirement.

The only real A.A.

The epilogue goes back to Lois W. at the 1962 Conference. AA members, she said then, often took the way their group was run when they came in for the only real AA, and every other group’s for a diluted one. “We Al-Anons can all get the same idea about our own group, and it’s very hard to change.”

She had seen it happen. In the 1940s she wrote her own version of the Steps for the families, and when the groups chose AA’s wording, some held on to theirs (Before the name). Of those groups she said, “We must try to understand these groups and to help them.” Neither the office nor the Conference could tell them what to do, she said; they could only suggest, and show them by example.

Sources

Many Voices, One Journey. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2011. Introduction (how the book is made, the wives’ first purpose, the count of groups, Lois W. in 1968 and 1987); chapter 2, “Unity as a path to progress, 1951–1955” (the drafts of the Traditions in 1952 and 1953); chapter 13, “Planting seeds for new growth, 2006–2010” (the 2009 survey and the 2010 sessions on diversity); Epilogue (Lois W. in 1976, “no single ‘true’ Al-Anon”).
Lois W., Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 1979. Chapter 17 (the letter of May 1951, the 87 and the 48, the first two pamphlets, AA members’ help).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism (magazine), 2026 edition (the one purpose; the membership survey).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, “Celebrating 75 Years of Al‑Anon Recovery: Providing Help and Hope to Families,” news release, February 9, 2026 (al-anon.org).
“Al-Anon’s Time Machine: A Journey Back 75 Years,” The Forum, March 2026 (al-anon.org), and the notice of the 75th anniversary open house, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2026 (posted by Al-Anon’s Colorado Area).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, “Starting an Alateen group” (al-anon.org).
Al-Anon Family Groups UK & Eire, “AA Vancouver 2025 International Convention with Al-Anon participation” (al-anonuk.org.uk).
Alcoholics Anonymous, “Relationship Between A.A. and Al-Anon,” A.A. Guidelines MG-8, revised April 2019 (aa.org), with the resolution of AA’s 1969 Conference.