One Drunk to Another Jittery and Alone
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Illustration · A rural mailbox at night with its flag up, by a road that runs past telephone poles toward a single lit window. Not drawn from a photograph.

Jittery and Alone

Far from a meeting

How AA reached the alcoholic who couldn’t get to a meeting, from a book in the mail in 1938 to meetings on a screen in 2020.

“I’m jittery and alone. I couldn’t do that.”

The reader AA’s book imagines, in its last chapter, “A Vision for You” · Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939

AA began with one drunk talking to another, and the meeting is still at its center. But from the start some alcoholics couldn’t get to one: a man in a town with no group, a sailor at sea, a soldier overseas, a prisoner, someone at home who couldn’t go out. AA’s word for such a member is a loner.

They were reached by a book in the mail and letters answered one by one; by a warden who asked for a group inside his prison; by a monthly paper mailed free to members at war; and by a captain’s letters from a tanker, which became a meeting by mail. Then came the telephone, the radio and the modem, and in 2020, when the doors closed for everyone, meetings on a screen.

The piece takes its name from that line in the Big Book’s last chapter. It’s built from the Big Book’s first and fourth editions and a loan copy of 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Pass It On, Lois Remembers, The Language of the Heart and Experience, Strength and Hope; from Warden Clinton T. Duffy’s The San Quentin Story; from articles in the Grapevine from 1944 to 2021; and, for the later years, from the General Service Conference’s reports and the Online Intergroup’s history. Where the sources disagree, these pages say so.

Start with 1 · Lone Endeavor

When each route opened

  1. 1938A mother writes to a doctor, and AA mails two chapters of its unfinished book to her son, far from any member.
  2. 1939The Big Book is published with his letter at the back, and the office answers every inquiry from Box 658.
  3. 1940In Little Rock, three men form the first AA group “solely by mail.”
  4. 1942San Quentin’s warden starts the first AA group inside a prison.
  5. 1944Six New Yorkers start the Grapevine and mail it free to members in uniform.
  6. 1946A tanker captain begins writing to AA’s office from sea.
  7. 1949The office begins mailing the Internationalists Round Robin to members at sea.
  8. 1966Five groups hold the first AA meeting by telephone conference call.
  9. 1970AA-of-the-Air, in Tucson, puts AA on the radio for members at home.
  10. 1976The Loners and the Internationalists merge into one meeting by mail.
  11. 1986A group begins meeting online, on Q-Link.
  12. 1996Online groups form the Online Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous.
  13. 2020The meeting rooms close, and the meetings move to telephones and screens.
  14. 2021AA’s Conference recognizes online groups as groups.

From the mailbox to the screen

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.

    New to the story? The Kitchen Table tells how AA began, from one drunk talking to another to millions around the world.

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