Akron and Indianapolis · 1939–1942
A nun gave departing patients a medal to return before they drank, and a few years later an Indianapolis group may have begun handing out chips.
“We don’t know precisely who started this system, or when and how it spread to other groups.”
In August 1939, St. Thomas Hospital in Akron began taking Dr. Bob’s alcoholic patients. Sister Ignatia, a nun in the hospital’s admitting office, found the first one a bed in the room where the flowers were kept. Over the next eleven years, thousands passed through.
When a patient left, she gave him a small Sacred Heart medallion and asked him to bring it back to her before he took a drink. A magazine profile written in 1956, while she was running a ward for alcoholics in Cleveland, calls it a “Sacred Heart Badge.” It was something to carry, and a reason to stop and think.
The chips, as far as AA’s archives can tell, began elsewhere. Doherty S., who had brought AA to Indianapolis, told Bill W. in a letter that the practice started in his city. AA’s archives think it began there in 1942.
From there it spread group by group, by no plan anyone wrote down. Chips and coins came to mark stretches of time without a drink. AA’s own office doesn’t make them.
It’s 1939, at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron. Sister Ignatia, a nun in the admitting office, has found beds for Dr. Bob’s drunks.
When a patient goes home, she gives him a small medal of the Sacred Heart. If he ever decides to drink again, she asks him to bring it back to her first.
Later, a member named Doherty writes to Bill W. that giving out chips and tokens began in his city, Indianapolis. Bill remembers it that way too.
Today many meetings hand out chips and coins for time sober, and each group buys its own. Nobody is sure who started it, and AA itself doesn’t make them.
But the idea is an old one. Something small to carry, and a reason to think twice.
In order
Nobody planned the chips. Here is what AA’s own records can say about where they came from, and how AA came to stay out of making them.
Nell Wing, Bill W.’s secretary and later AA’s first archivist, wrote the 1962 note. It is quoted in the archives’ newsletter, Markings, Spring 2008.
Akron, from 1939
“Sister Ignatia gave each of her newly released patients a Sacred Heart medallion, which she asked them to return before they took the first drink.” Now and then she gave out St. Christopher medals too.
AA’s archives, Markings, 2008
Indianapolis, 1942
Doherty S., who had brought AA to Indianapolis, wrote to Bill that the practice began there. In Nell Wing’s words, “reference was made in a letter from Doherty to the start of giving out ‘chips’ and ‘tokens.’”
Nell Wing, 1962, in Markings, 2008
New York, 1962
In 1962 Nell Wing, then Bill’s secretary, looked into the question and asked Bill himself. “I asked Bill about this and his memory is that the system started in Indianapolis.”
Nell Wing, 1962, in Markings, 2008
1993
AA’s General Service Conference decided that “it is not appropriate for AA World Services or the Grapevine to produce or license the production of sobriety chips/medallions.”
Groups buy their own
As reported in the AA Grapevine, 1993
Local custom
Chips were never AA policy. They spread group by group, and customs still differ. AA’s office says that neither it nor AA “produces, distributes or sells” them.
For a closer look
The ward where the medals were given, the symbol AA gave up, and the sobriety date AA counts its own birthday from.
Another hospital had told Dr. Bob to take his patients elsewhere. Sister Ignatia, who had known him for years, said, as Bill remembered it, “Doctor, we do not have any beds, much less private rooms, but I will do what I can.” Then she slipped the patient into the flower room.
The count of those who followed depends on whose book you read. Bill wrote that “over 5,000” were treated at St. Thomas from 1939 until Dr. Bob’s death in 1950. AA’s later history of Akron gives about 4,800.
The whole story is in 7 · The flower room, in I Just Work Here.
Many coins carry a triangle inside a circle. AA adopted that symbol at its 1955 convention in St. Louis: the circle for the whole world of AA, the triangle for its three legacies of Recovery, Unity and Service.
By the mid-1980s outside companies, from novelty makers to publishers, were using it. In 1993 AA stopped protecting it as a registered mark.
The symbol still turns up on coins, but AA began phasing out its own official use of it that year.
Chips count a member’s time from a last drink. AA counts its own age the same way. The Big Book says, “The birth of our Society dates from his first day of permanent sobriety, June 10, 1935,” meaning Dr. Bob’s.
Even that date is argued over. The convention Dr. Bob went to that month suggests his last drink came about a week later. The evidence is in 5 · The last drink, in I Just Work Here.