The Oxford Group · 1933–1935
For two and a half years he prayed, read and went to meetings every week, and got drunk every night.
“I am a secret drinker, and I can’t stop.”
Early in 1933 Anne persuaded him to try the Oxford Group, a Christian movement led by Frank Buchman that had arrived in Akron with a ten-day “house party.” Its members aimed at absolute honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, and practiced confession, restitution and quiet times listening for God’s guidance.
He didn’t expect much; he had sworn off churches as a boy. What drew him was the members themselves, “their seeming poise, health, and happiness,” he wrote. “I was self conscious and ill at ease most of the time, my health was at the breaking point, and I was thoroughly miserable.” It helped that they met at the Mayflower Hotel and in private homes, not in a church.
For two and a half years he went to meetings every week, joined a church, read the Bible and the lives of the saints, and prayed. “But I got tight every night,” he said later. “I couldn’t understand what was wrong.”
In the spring of 1935 Henrietta Seiberling, a fellow member, decided to hold a meeting for him at the home of T. Henry and Clarace Williams. One by one, the others shared costly things about themselves. Then, in his deep, serious voice, Dr. Bob said he would tell them something that might cost him his profession: “I am a secret drinker, and I can’t stop.” They got on their knees and prayed with him. That was the beginning of the Wednesday-night meeting at the Williams home.
Still he drank. A few weeks later, a stranger from New York telephoned Henrietta.
It’s 1933, in Akron. Anne has talked her husband into trying the Oxford Group, a Christian movement that has come to town. He’s wary. As a boy, he swore off church. But these people meet in a hotel and in living rooms, and they seem happy, at ease, healthy: everything he isn’t.
So he goes, every week, for two and a half years. He reads the Bible and the lives of the saints. He prays. He joins a church.
And he gets drunk every night.
In the spring of 1935, a friend, Henrietta Seiberling, arranges a meeting with him in mind. The others share painful things about themselves. Then he tells them something that could cost him his career: he is a secret drinker, and he can’t stop.
They kneel and pray with him. He still can’t stop. Help is coming, but not from anyone in that room.
Before and after
The Oxford Group gave him a program, a church and friends who knew his secret. It couldn’t give him the one thing he needed.
Both quotations in the second card are Dr. Bob’s own: from the Big Book (1939), and from his talk in Detroit (1948) as printed in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers.
1933 to spring 1935
The four absolutes. Confession, restitution and prayer. Meetings every week, a church, and in the end, friends who knew his secret and prayed with him.
Two and a half years: drunk every night.
Alcoholics Anonymous; Good Oldtimers, pp. 49–55
May 1935
Someone who knew drinking from the inside. Bill W. was “the first living human” he had talked with who knew alcoholism “from actual experience.” And the habit of helping others: “Bill had acquired their idea of service. I had not.”
About a month later: his last drink.
Continue to 4 · The gate lodgeAlcoholics Anonymous, p. 180; Good Oldtimers, p. 64
What AA kept
AA grew up inside the Oxford Group and kept much of what it taught. What it added was one drunk talking to another, and the discovery that helping the next one keeps you sober.
For a closer look
The Oxford Group’s ideas, and the friend who wouldn’t give up on him.
Honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, each one absolute. In 1948 Dr. Bob called them “the only yardsticks” AA had in its early days, before the Twelve Steps. He still measured hard decisions against them, he said, and if a decision checked out with all four, “then my answer can’t be very far out of the way.”
The Groupers had slogans, too: “Study men, not books” and “Win your argument, lose your man.” Members greeted each other with a cheerful question: “Are you maximum?”
In 1948 he remembered asking Henrietta whether she thought he really wanted to stop. “I can’t conceive of any living human who really wanted to do something as badly as I think I do, who could be such a total failure,” he told her. “Henri, I think I’m just one of those want-to-want-to guys.” She told him he did want to. He just hadn’t found a way to work it yet.
The morning after his confession, Henrietta felt guided that “Bob must not touch one drop of alcohol,” and asked him over to tell him so. He was disappointed. He had thought guidance would mean seeing somebody or going someplace.
A Vassar graduate with three teenage children, she was the daughter-in-law of Frank A. Seiberling, founder of Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and lived in the gate lodge of the family estate. She was not an alcoholic. “I’m no alcoholic, but I’ve had my difficulties,” she told Bill W. when he called.
Of Dr. Bob she said, “He was absolutely honest and never gossiped.” And in his AA years: “He never spoke as a ‘founder.’ He always said, ‘I just work here.’” That line gave this story its name.