1939 and after
The words on the walls turn up in a chapter for families, at a doorway in Akron and in members’ stories, and the last ones you’ll hear were the last to reach AA’s books.
“The slogans on the walls, which at first made me shudder, began to impress me as truths I could live by.”
The oldest slogans on the walls first appear in print at the end of a story about coffee and smoking. In the 1939 Big Book’s chapter for families, a sober member still smokes heavily and drinks too much coffee. His wife, meaning to help, nags him about it until he loses his temper and gets drunk. The book says he was “dead wrong,” and that she was wrong too, to make so much of it. Then: “We have three little mottoes which are apropos.” They are First Things First, Live and Let Live, and Easy Does It. They were older than the book. Ruth Hock, who wrote that she began working with Bill W. in January 1936, remembered all three as “part of the daily conversation” then, and wrote that Bill brought them into AA “although not original with him.”
Keep It Simple is remembered as Dr. Bob’s. In 1950 he was very ill, and he had just agreed to the General Service Conference that Bill had been urging on him. As Bill left, Dr. Bob stood in the doorway and said, as Bill remembered it, “Remember, Bill, let’s not louse this thing up. Let’s keep it simple!” Bill never saw him again.
Others came up from the rooms. Stories added to the Big Book in 1955 already speak of living “one day at a time.” A member who got sober in the 1970s remembered the slogans on her meeting-room walls, from “One Day at a Time” to “Let Go and Let God.”
Then there are the words this piece is named for, the ones many meetings end on. “I keep coming back because it works,” another member wrote in 2001.
It’s 1939, and the Big Book has a chapter for families. In it, a sober member still smokes too much and drinks too much coffee. His wife nags him about it until he gets so angry that he gets drunk. The book’s advice comes down to three little mottoes. First things first. Live and let live. Easy does it.
Eleven years later, in Akron, Dr. Bob is very ill. He stands in his doorway in a light gray suit and says goodbye to Bill W. Let’s not louse this thing up, he says. Let’s keep it simple.
Those words ended up on meeting room walls, next to others the members passed along. One day at a time. Let go and let God.
And at the end of the hour, someone says the words this story is named for. To the person who walked in scared. To the one who isn’t sure about any of it.
Keep coming back.
Where the words came from
Six slogans on four signs, and the earliest place the Big Book and Bill’s 1957 history show each one.
These are the earliest appearances in those two books. They show when the words were in use, not who said them first.
1939 · The Big Book
Three mottoes for families, after the story of a member, his wife, his coffee and his smoking. The chapter for wives says it too: “Live and let live is the rule.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939, “The Family Afterward” and “To Wives”
1946–1950
Members were already saying “Let’s keep A.A. simple” when the Traditions came out in 1946, as Bill told it. AA remembers the words best as Dr. Bob’s, said to Bill in 1950. Bill’s history puts that visit a few weeks after the July convention; Dr. Bob’s biography puts it in early November.
Bill W., 1957; Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, 1980
1955 · The Big Book
In the stories added for the second edition. A woman who had hidden her bottles in the laundry hampers wrote, “That life for me is lived one day at a time.” Where it began is unclear: in 1989 AA’s archivist, Frank M., wrote that it was “difficult to pin-point the exact ‘moment.’”
“The Housewife Who Drank at Home,” Alcoholics Anonymous, 1955; Frank M., 1989
2001 · The Big Book
In the stories added for the fourth edition. A member remembered her first meeting, a small women’s group: “They were warm and friendly. They said keep coming back.”
“Because I’m an Alcoholic,” Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001
The newest words
Bill’s 1957 history of AA never uses “keep coming back.” In the Big Book it turns up only in the stories added in 2001. In print, the last words a newcomer hears are among the newest in the room, though the woman who wrote them down had heard them at her first meeting decades before.
For a closer look
How “keep it simple” was used on both sides of an argument, where meetings have been held, and the one-time atheist with a favorite slogan.
Dr. Bob said it on the day he agreed to more organization, not less. Others had used the same words against it.
When AA argued about money, the cautious members said, as Bill told it, “One alcoholic carries the message to another. Let’s keep it that simple and stay out of money trouble.” When the Traditions were first published, some answered, “Let’s keep A.A. simple.” And the old-timers who set up the first city service offices did it, Bill wrote, “Ignoring the cries of ‘Let us keep it simple.’”
At the 1955 convention in St. Louis, a meeting on money decided that keeping AA “simple” and “spiritual” by cutting vital services that cost a little time and money was “risky and absurd.”
The first meetings were in homes: the Williams house in Akron, and Bill and Lois’s parlor at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn. “As A.A. grew,” Bill wrote, “homes were no longer big enough for meetings.” Groups moved to hotel parlors and halls, and since landlords wanted rent, a collection had to be taken. In Cleveland in 1939, the meetings “fanned out into small halls and church basements.” In February 1940 New York opened AA’s first clubhouse, in a former stable at 334½ West 24th Street.
Online meetings began on computer bulletin boards around 1986, according to the Online Intergroup of AA. An email group called Lamp-lighters started in 1990, and the intergroup dates itself from February 1, 1996.
In 2020 the pandemic closed meeting rooms, and many groups moved online. That November, delegates at AA’s World Service Meeting, itself held by video, sensed that virtual meetings were “probably here to stay.”
Jim B. called himself the New York members’ “first self-proclaimed atheist.” He came in January 1938, and while the Big Book was being written he at first wanted God left out of it altogether. That argument is in 3 · How It Works.
He went on to start AA in Philadelphia. His own story, “The Vicious Cycle,” went into the Big Book in 1955. Near the end, writing of himself and his wife, he said “our one desire is to stay in A.A. and not on it. Our pet slogan is ‘Easy Does It.’”