One Drunk to Another Keep Coming Back
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Illustration · A meeting-hall door standing open on a dark evening, with a hand-lettered sign beside it. Not drawn from a photograph.

Keep Coming Back

Your first meeting

The things a newcomer meets in an hour of AA, and where each one came from.

“Someone greeted me and I muttered my name aloud. Someone brought me a cup of coffee.”

A member, on her first meeting · “Because I’m an Alcoholic,” Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001

Walk into an AA meeting for the first time and most of the hour seems settled already. There’s a prayer and a reading or two. People give only their first names. A basket goes around, someone may be handed a chip, the meeting closes, and there are slogans on the walls.

None of it was planned all at once. A prayer reached AA through a newspaper notice, and a reading was pieced together by a magazine editor, largely from the Big Book. The first draft of the Steps was written in one night, in bed, with a pencil. Anonymity began as fear, and the rule behind the basket goes back to a 1940 dinner where some of New York’s richest men were told AA should pay its own way.

This piece walks through the hour in the order a newcomer meets it, and traces each part to where it came from. It’s built chiefly from the Big Book and Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, with Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers; from AA’s archives, its service material and its magazine, the Grapevine; and from outside researchers and writers. Customs differ from group to group, and these pages describe them; they don’t prescribe them. Where the sources disagree, these pages say so.

Start with 1 · The Serenity Prayer

When each arrived

  1. 1935Dr. Bob’s last drink, on June 10 by AA’s count. AA dates its birth from it.
  2. 1937In Akron, where members still meet within the Oxford Group, a newcomer’s first meeting ends with the Lord’s Prayer.
  3. 1938In December, Bill W. writes the Twelve Steps at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn.
  4. 1939The Big Book comes out. Its Foreword explains why members stay anonymous, and its chapter for families offers three mottoes.
  5. 1940At a Rockefeller dinner in New York, the guests hear that AA should pay its own way.
  6. 1941The Serenity Prayer is printed on wallet cards.
  7. 1942A group in Indianapolis may have begun giving out chips.
  8. 1947The Preamble first appears, in the June Grapevine.
  9. 1950AA adopts the Twelve Traditions, on anonymity and self-support among much else. Dr. Bob tells Bill to keep it simple.
  10. 1958The Preamble drops “honest” from “an honest desire to stop drinking.”
  11. 1962At AA’s General Service Conference, an answer to a question from the floor calls joining in the Lord’s Prayer a matter of personal conscience.
  12. 1965The Responsibility Declaration is written for the Toronto convention.
  13. 2021The Preamble’s “men and women” becomes “people.”

Seven parts and Legacy

Walk through the hour

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.

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