What happened when
Every dated moment the deep dives tell, in order, from 1840 to today.
The moments are evenly spaced, not drawn to scale; where years pass between them, a note says how many. Under each one are the pieces that tell it, linked to the part where you can read it.
In the deep dives, tap the date at the top of a part to see this timeline around it.
Before AA
to 1934
The Washingtonians, and the early lives of the people who would start AA.
- 1780s
In Philadelphia, Dr. Benjamin Rush publishes a pamphlet on strong drink. Its later, enlarged editions call drunkenness a disease outright.
- 56 years later
- 1840
In Baltimore, six drinking companions start the Washingtonians, whose meetings of reformed drunks sweep the country and then fade.
- 24 years later
- 1864
The New York State Inebriate Asylum at Binghamton takes its first patient, on July 3.
- 1870
Doctors who run inebriate homes and asylums meet in New York and declare that intemperance is a disease.
- 1873
Dr. William D. Silkworth is born on July 22 in Brooklyn, New York.
- 1879
Dr. Bob S. is born on August 8 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the only son of a probate judge.
- 1879
Dr. Leslie Keeley opens his first gold-cure institute at Dwight, Illinois.
- 1881
Anne S. is born Anne Robinson Ripley, in Illinois: in Moline by one account, in Oak Park by another.
- 1881
Rowland H. is born on October 29 in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, the eldest of five children of a woolen-mill family.
- 1889
Sister Ignatia is born Della Mary Gavin in County Mayo, Ireland, in January.
- 1891
Lois W. is born in Brooklyn, the first of six children of Dr. Clark Burnham.
- 1895
Bill W. is born on November 26 in East Dorset, Vermont, in a room behind the bar of the village hotel his grandmother ran.
- 1896
Ebby T. is born on April 29 in Albany, New York, the youngest of five brothers.
- 1896
Dr. Silkworth graduates from Princeton.
- 1896
The family of Della Gavin, the future Sister Ignatia, settles in Cleveland.
- 1898
Dr. Bob graduates from St. Johnsbury Academy, where he has met Anne Ripley at a dance.
- 1898
Dr. Silkworth marries Marie Antoinette Bennett.
- 1898
Father Ed Dowling is born in St. Louis on September 1. He grows up in Baden, on the city’s north side.
- 1899
Dr. Silkworth earns his medical degree at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, finishing the four-year program in three.
- 1902
Dr. Bob graduates from Dartmouth College.
- 1902
William James publishes The Varieties of Religious Experience, his lectures at Edinburgh. Among the people it tells of who were changed are drunkards.
- 1903
Rowland H. graduates from Yale.
- 1904
Marty M. is born on October 15 in Chicago. By the time she is seven, her father is a vice president of Marshall Field.
- 1906
Bill W.’s parents part, and his grandparents Fayette and Ella take him in.
- 1908
At Keswick, in England’s Lake District, Frank Buchman writes six letters of apology.
- 1909
Dr. Silkworth publishes a follow-up study on treating morphine addiction. That winter his and his wife’s only child, a son, dies at six days old.
- 1909
At Penn State, Frank Buchman starts the one-to-one work the Oxford Group will build its method on.
- 1910
Dr. Bob earns his medical degree at Rush Medical College in Chicago, at 31.
- 1911
Ebby T. meets Bill W. in Manchester, Vermont, where Ebby’s family spends its summers.
- 1912
The girl Bill W. loves dies, and he sinks into a depression that lasts three years.
- 1912
Dr. Bob opens an office in Akron, Ohio, after two years as an intern at City Hospital.
- 1913
Lois W. meets Bill W. at Emerald Lake, Vermont, where her family spends its summers.
- 1914
Della Gavin enters the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine on March 25, and in June takes the name Sister Mary Ignatia.
- 1915
Dr. Bob marries Anne Ripley on January 25, and they move into 855 Ardmore Avenue.
- 1915
Ebby T. leaves Albany Academy without graduating and goes to work in the family foundry.
- 1916
Ed Dowling tries out as a catcher with the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns.
- 1917
Bill W. takes his first drink, a Bronx cocktail, as a young army officer at New Bedford, Massachusetts.
- 1918
Bill W. and Lois Burnham marry in Brooklyn on January 24. In August he sails for England.
- 1918
Dr. Bob and Anne’s son is born. With Prohibition coming, Dr. Bob starts drinking again.
- 1918
Marty M. has tuberculosis at fourteen, and spends three years getting well, the first at a sanatorium in Los Angeles.
- 1918
Dr. Silkworth serves on the psychiatric staff of the Army hospital at Plattsburgh, New York, during World War I.
- 1919
Ed Dowling enters the Jesuit novitiate at Florissant, outside St. Louis.
- 1920
By Prohibition, nearly all the inebriate asylums and cure institutes have closed.
- 1923
Dr. Bob and Anne adopt a daughter, Sue, aged five.
- 1923
Lois W. has the last of three ectopic pregnancies. She and Bill will have no children of their own.
- 1925
Lois W. sets off with Bill for a year on the road, on a motorcycle with a sidecar.
- 1925
Sam Shoemaker becomes rector of Calvary Church in New York, soon the Oxford Group’s American home.
- 1926
Rowland H. sees Dr. Carl Jung in Zurich, from May to July. AA’s books will put it around 1931.
- 1927
Marty M. elopes from New Orleans with John Blakemore, and leaves him three months later.
- 1927
A breakdown ends Sister Ignatia’s teaching of music.
- 1928
Sister Ignatia goes to St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, by her biographer’s date and AA’s 1980 history. Bill W. put it in 1933.
- 1928
Newspapers in South Africa call Frank Buchman’s team the Oxford Group, and the name sticks. Calvary House opens beside Sam Shoemaker’s church.
- 1928
Rowland H. has a religious awakening in a hospital in East Africa; weeks later he is drinking again in London.
- 1929
Dr. Bob begins to specialize as a rectal surgeon.
- 1929
Ebby T. hires a plane to fly himself and Bill W., both drunk, from Albany to Manchester.
- 1929
The October crash wipes out Bill W.’s paper fortune and Dr. Silkworth’s savings.
- 1929
Rowland H. buys land at La Luz, New Mexico, and starts a tile and pottery works.
- 1930
Marty M. moves to London. Within two years her drinking is out of control.
- 1930
Lois W.’s mother dies on Christmas Day.
- 1930s
Dr. Silkworth becomes chief physician at Charles B. Towns Hospital on Central Park West.
- 1931
After two courses in interior decorating, Lois W. goes to work at Macy’s.
- 1931
The Oxford Group helps Bud Firestone, a rubber magnate’s son, stop drinking.
- 1931
Father Ed Dowling is ordained a priest in St. Louis on June 25.
- 1932
Ebby T. moves to Manchester, Vermont, and keeps drinking.
- 1932
Father Ed Dowling joins the staff of The Queen’s Work, the Sodality’s magazine, in St. Louis.
- 1933
In thanks, Harvey Firestone brings Frank Buchman and a team of sixty to Akron for ten days in January.
- 1933
Dr. Bob and Anne start going to the Oxford Group.
- 1933
A lay therapist from Boston, Courtenay Baylor, begins working with Rowland H.
The founding
1934–1939
From Ebby T. at Bill W.’s kitchen table to the Big Book.
- 1934
Ebby T. is arrested in the summer. On the Saturday before court, he gives away the ale in the cellar.
- 1934
In late November Ebby T., sober about two months, comes to Bill W.’s kitchen table and tells him how he got sober.
You Had to Be Sponsored · My Sponsor, Ebby · Number One Man · What Not to Do
- 1934
In December Bill W. has his last drink, at Towns Hospital, where Dr. Silkworth treats him through the last of four stays. Bill never drinks again.
Number One Man · The Little Doctor · Captain of My Soul · The Educational Variety
- 1935
Bill W. meets Dr. Bob S. in Akron, Ohio, on May 12.
Number One Man · I Just Work Here · The Little Doctor · Call Me Anne · What Not to Do
- 1935
Within a few weeks Anne asks Bill W. to come and live with her and Dr. Bob at 855 Ardmore Avenue.
- 1935
Dr. Bob has his last drink, on June 10 by AA’s count. AA dates its birth from it.
- 1935
In June Bill W. and Dr. Bob call on Bill D. in Akron’s City Hospital. Bill W. has been sober about six months, Dr. Bob about two weeks.
- 1935
That summer Anne takes in Eddie R. and his family. One day at lunch he chases her upstairs with a butcher knife.
- 1935
Rowland H. gives his testimony in Frederick, Maryland, and in September goes to Geneva with the Oxford Group’s international team.
- 1936
Marty M. sails home to New York on the Queen Mary, and is carried off on a stretcher.
- 1936
Anne starts a group for the wives of alcoholics, as Henrietta D. remembered it.
- 1936
The Oxford Group holds its national assembly at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In August Frank Buchman gives an interview about Hitler that he never lives down.
- 1936
Rowland H. joins the Episcopal Church, and drinks again that summer in New Mexico.
- 1937
Ebby T. drinks again in late April, after two years and seven months sober.
- 1937–53
Ebby T. is in and out of sobriety in Albany, Philadelphia and New York.
- 1937
In Akron, where members still meet within the Oxford Group, a newcomer’s first meeting ends with the Lord’s Prayer.
- 1937
Dr. Silkworth publishes his “allergy” theory of alcoholism in the Medical Record.
- 1937
In Akron, Bill W. and Dr. Bob count about forty alcoholics staying sober, and the members vote, barely, for a book.
- 1937
New York’s alcoholics part company with the Oxford Group.
- 1938
A mother writes to a doctor, and AA mails two chapters of its unfinished book for her son, far from any member.
- 1938
Marty M. spends about six months on a ward at Bellevue, then goes to Blythewood, a sanitarium in Greenwich, Connecticut.
- 1938
Bill W. starts dictating the book in Newark. Works Publishing offers shares at $25.
- 1938
In New York, a salesman the Twelve and Twelve calls Ed rails against God, and the members let him stay.
- 1938
In December Bill W. writes the Twelve Steps at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn.
- 1938
Archie T., from Detroit, lives with Dr. Bob and Anne for ten months, then goes home sober and starts AA there.
- 1938
At East Ham Town Hall in London, Frank Buchman launches Moral Re-Armament.
- 1938
In New York, AA’s trust, the Alcoholic Foundation, is set up with its nonalcoholic friends in the majority.
- 1939
Four hundred loan copies of the Big Book go out early in the year.
- 1939
In April the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, comes out at $3.50, with Dr. Bob’s story in it, and sits in the warehouse.
By the Carload · Number One Man · I Just Work Here · What Not to Do · Court of Last Resort · The Educational Variety
- 1939
Dr. Silkworth’s letter, “The Doctor’s Opinion,” opens the Big Book.
- 1939
The Big Book prints the Twelve Steps in its fifth chapter, “How It Works.”
- 1939
The Big Book’s Foreword asks members to stay anonymous, and names one requirement for membership: “an honest desire to stop drinking.”
- 1939
The Big Book’s chapter for families offers three mottoes.
- 1939
The Big Book’s chapter “Working with Others” tells how to carry the message to another alcoholic, without the word “sponsor.”
- 1939
The Big Book prints the far-off son’s letter at the back, and AA’s office answers every inquiry from Box 658.
- 1939
Bill W. and Lois leave 182 Clinton Street in April. For two years they have no home of their own.
- 1939
In May Cleveland’s alcoholics stop going to the Akron meeting at T. Henry Williams’s house, held within the Oxford Group, and start their own.
- 1939
Marty M. goes to her first AA meeting, in Brooklyn, on April 11.
- 1939
In August Sister Ignatia admits Dr. Bob’s first alcoholic patient at St. Thomas Hospital.
- 1939
Late in the year Akron’s alcoholics leave the Oxford Group and meet at Dr. Bob and Anne’s house.
- 1939
In September a Liberty article brings 800 letters.
- 1939
Hospitals in Cleveland and Akron start taking alcoholics if a sober member will sponsor them. That fall a newspaper series floods Cleveland’s small group with calls, and members sober a week go out to sponsor the newcomers.
- 1939
In Cleveland, AA members set up a committee of seven to run the groups’ common business, and take turns at it.
- 1939
In London on April 5, Dr. Carl Jung tells of an Oxford Group alcoholic he sent back to the Group. Cora Finch thinks it was Rowland H.
- 1939
The Big Book calls alcoholism an illness and a malady. Its chapters use the word disease once, for a spiritual one.
- 1939
About now, as AA members begin holding closed meetings, family members begin meeting by themselves.
Spreading out
1939–1955
Groups by mail and in prisons, the Grapevine, the Traditions, and the founders’ last years.
- 1940
In January the Akron group moves to King School, where Anne looks out for the newcomers.
- 1940
At a Rockefeller dinner in New York, the guests hear that AA should pay its own way.
- 1940
In Little Rock, three men form the first AA group “solely by mail.”
- 1940
AA’s first clubhouse opens in New York, and an old fireman asks whether its caretaker will be paid.
- 1940
Akron’s members print a manual for newcomers with “A Word to the Sponsor.” Histories date it 1940 or 1941.
- 1940
AA’s trustees buy back every Works Publishing share, the last of them for a desk and a chair.
- 1940
Marty M. has the last of three slips, at Christmas.
- 1940
AA’s office moves to 30 Vesey Street in lower Manhattan.
- 1940
In St. Louis, Father Ed Dowling, a Jesuit, reads the Big Book and helps start the city’s first AA group.
- 1940
Late in the year Father Ed Dowling climbs the stairs of AA’s clubhouse in New York on a night of sleet to meet Bill W., who counts their talk as his Fifth Step.
- 1940
Rowland H. becomes executive vice-president of The Bristol Company, instrument makers in Waterbury, Connecticut.
- 1940
Larry J., a newspaperman off the train in Houston, boils the Big Book down to six articles for the Houston Press, and AA starts in Texas.
- 1941
A Saturday Evening Post article makes a second printing of the Big Book necessary.
By the Carload · Jittery and Alone · A Bunch of Actors · The Educational Variety
- 1941
Bill W. and Lois move into a house of their own at Bedford Hills, New York, later named Stepping Stones.
- 1941
The Serenity Prayer is printed on wallet cards.
- 1941
In a new printing of the Big Book, Step Twelve’s “spiritual experience” becomes “spiritual awakening.”
Keep Coming Back · Suggestions Only · The Educational Variety
- 1941
Lavelle K. comes to Dr. Bob for help. His wife, Emma, a nurse, will look after Anne as her sight fails.
- 1941
Sam Shoemaker breaks with Frank Buchman, and the Oxford Group loses its American home at Calvary.
- 1941
AA’s office first asks the groups for money: a dollar a member a year.
- 1941
NBC begins a 13-part syndicated radio series, Is Alcohol a Problem in Your Home?
- 1942
San Quentin’s warden, Clinton T. Duffy, starts the first AA group inside a prison.
- 1942
A group in Indianapolis may have begun giving out chips.
- 1942
Late in the year AA’s first letters from Australia reach New York, from a psychiatrist and a priest in Sydney.
- 1942
When Ruth Hock leaves, an alcoholic, Bobbie B., takes over AA’s office and its mail.
- 1942
Father Ed Dowling starts the Cana Conferences for married couples, by AA’s newsletter’s account, and takes the Twelve Steps to them.
- 1943
Marty M. and Priscilla P. are in love. They will be together nearly forty years.
- 1943
AA’s office in New York begins collecting the groups’ membership rules.
- 1944
Six New Yorkers start the Grapevine and mail it free to members in uniform.
- 1944
Marty M. founds the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism, which opens that October. Bill W. and Dr. Bob lend their names to its letterhead.
- 1944
Cleveland puts out a pamphlet of its own, A.A. Sponsorship.
- 1944–55
Bill W. is depressed, on and off, for eleven years.
- 1944
In October AA’s office writes that it has no Black group anywhere.
- 1944
AA’s office moves to 415 Lexington Avenue, across from Grand Central, and its mail goes to Box 459.
- 1944
In the Grapevine, Bill W. half wishes a newcomer could be given a straight dose of the experience and have it over with.
- 1945
Dr. Silkworth opens a ward for alcoholics at Knickerbocker Hospital, with help from AA members.
- 1945
Beginners’ classes give newcomers a short course. In St. Louis it’s four Thursday nights, the second, as the Grapevine reported, “trying to help clarify many of the 12 steps.”
- 1945
AA’s Foundation tells John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his 1940 dinner guests that AA needs no more of their money (in 1944, in another of Bill W.’s accounts). Late in the year a friend suggests turning the office’s mail into principles.
- 1945
AA’s first Black groups meet in St. Louis, Chicago and Washington, D.C., where Dr. Jim S.’s group rents a room at the YMCA for two dollars a night.
- 1945
Rowland H. dies at his desk in Waterbury on December 20, at 64. His eldest son was killed in service in 1944, his second lost at Okinawa that March.
- 1945
Paramount releases The Lost Weekend in November, and Marty M. reviews it in the Grapevine.
- 1945
In April the Grapevine prints a questionnaire for AA members. The next year E. M. Jellinek publishes phases of alcoholism drawn from 98 men’s answers.
- 1945
T.B. of Atlanta writes in the Grapevine that very few members know the hour and date of their spiritual experience.
- 1945
On March 1, AA’s office registers its first group of non-alcoholics, in Long Beach, California.
- 1946
A tanker captain begins writing to AA’s office from sea.
- 1946
In Minneapolis, Ed W. and Barry C. print Ed’s notes on the Steps as a small book, later called the Little Red Book.
- 1946
Bill W.’s twelve points appear in the Grapevine, AA’s magazine, in the spring.
- 1946
Young people’s groups start in Philadelphia and San Diego, and Ireland has its first meeting in November.
- 1946
Ricardo P. of Cleveland takes his wife’s Spanish translation of the Big Book to Bill W.
- 1947
The Preamble first appears, in the June Grapevine.
- 1947
At an AA member’s suggestion, patients at the federal narcotic hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, start a group on AA’s Steps.
- 1947
Bill W. takes lessons in Catholicism from Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, and writes to Father Ed Dowling about them.
- 1948
In South Bend two Black alcoholics are told AA has no “set-up for colored people.” A white member sponsors them anyway.
- 1948
Anne S. and Lois W. speak together at a meeting for AA families in Los Angeles.
- 1949
Anne S., Dr. Bob’s wife, dies on June 1.
- 1949
AA’s office begins mailing the Internationalists Round Robin to members at sea.
- 1949
Hazelden opens in a farmhouse at Center City, Minnesota, with lectures on the Steps.
- 1949
In December Sister Ignatia accepts the Poverello Medal on AA’s behalf.
- 1949
A ten-episode CBS radio drama about an alcoholic who finds AA brings AA’s office a flood of inquiries.
- 1949
In a paper read to the American Psychiatric Association in Montreal, Bill W. tells his night at Towns Hospital with a cry, a blinding white light and a mountain wind.
- 1950
In April the friends of Dr. Bob and Anne S. put up a plaque in the alcoholic ward at St. Thomas Hospital, thanking the Sisters and staff.
- 1950
Marty M. publishes Primer on Alcoholism.
- 1950
AA’s first International Convention, in Cleveland, adopts the Twelve Traditions in their short form. Dr. Bob gives his last talk there, on July 30.
- 1950
In November Bill W. visits Dr. Bob in Akron one last time, and Dr. Bob tells him to keep it simple. Dr. Bob dies on November 16, at 71.
I Just Work Here · Keep Coming Back · Your Size in Pajamas · Call Me Anne
- 1950
Bill W. and Helen B. of the office staff draw up the plan for a General Service Conference.
- 1951
Dr. Silkworth dies of a heart attack on March 22, at 77, still working with alcoholics.
- 1951
Lois W. and Anne B. open an office for the family groups. Early the next year the groups choose the name Al-Anon.
- 1951
The first General Service Conference meets in New York.
- 1951
AA receives a Lasker Award, which praises it for emphasizing alcoholism as an illness.
- 1952
Sister Ignatia is sent to St. Vincent Charity Hospital in Cleveland. Rosary Hall, a ward AA members rebuilt for her, opens in December.
- 1952
The second General Service Conference seats Panel Two, and the first women delegates.
- 1952
A stroke in his eye makes it hard for Father Ed Dowling to read while Bill W. is writing the Twelve and Twelve.
- 1952
AA’s second General Service Conference gives two sessions to the family groups and finds them “filling a distinct need.”
- 1953
Bill W.’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is published. It puts the sponsor into the essays on the Steps.
Rule 62 · Suggestions Only · You Had to Be Sponsored · The Educational Variety
- 1953
The Narcotics Anonymous known today holds its first meeting, in California.
- 1953
Ebby T. flies to Dallas in September and enters the Texas Clinic.
- 1953
The first all-Indian group in the U.S. is believed to have started in Oneida, Wisconsin.
- 1953
Father Ed Dowling sets the Twelve Steps beside the Spiritual Exercises for a conference of priests.
- 1953
Art Linkletter interviews a masked woman member of AA on television.
- 1954
Lois W. has a heart attack in January, and rests for a year.
- 1954
Ebby T. records his memories for Bill W. in Fort Worth. Late in the year he has his last drink for seven years.
- 1954
Marty M. buys a house in Easton, Connecticut, with Priscilla P. Brinkley S. joins her board.
Handed over
1955–1971
From St. Louis, where the founders hand AA to its members, to Bill W.’s death.
- 1955
At AA’s twentieth-anniversary convention in St. Louis, in July, Bill W. hands AA over to its members, and the General Service Conference takes the Traditions over from the founders. Ebby T. is Bill’s guest. Sam Shoemaker and Father Ed Dowling speak on the Sunday morning.
Number One Man · Rule 62 · My Sponsor, Ebby · What Not to Do · Trusted Servants · Some Bum from St. Louis
- 1955
At St. Louis, Bill W. reads a letter about a monk who suggested “good” in place of “God.”
- 1955
The Big Book’s second edition comes out, with the Twelve Traditions and many new stories.
- 1955
About half of AA’s groups send nothing to the office, and money from the Big Book makes up the difference.
- 1955
Actors play Bill W. and Dr. Bob in “One Day at a Time,” on ABC’s DuPont Cavalcade Theater.
- 1955
Al-Anon’s first book, The Al-Anon Family Groups, goes on sale at AA’s convention in St. Louis.
- 1956
Bill W. takes LSD for the first time, in California.
- 1956
Father Ed Dowling leads a campaign to mark Dred Scott’s grave in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis.
- 1956
AA’s Conference approves a public information policy, and in Detroit Mr. Hope puts members in masks on Sunday television.
- 1956
The American Medical Association adopts a statement on hospitalizing alcoholics. It says illness, not disease.
- 1957
The first Alateen group registers with Al-Anon’s office.
- 1958
The Preamble drops “honest” from “an honest desire to stop drinking.”
- 1958
Young people in AA hold their first international conference, in Niagara Falls.
- 1958
The Grapevine prints a Miami member’s account of the night he nearly died, with a note from Bill W. asking to hear from every member who has had a sudden experience.
- 1959
AA’s own pamphlet, Questions and Answers on Sponsorship, is in at least its second printing.
- 1960
Around this year, her biographers learned, Marty M. drinks again, briefly. The few who know keep it secret.
- 1960
Father Ed Dowling dies in his sleep in Memphis on April 3, at 61. His last article, on people outside AA using its Steps, comes out after his death.
- 1960
At a clergy conference in New York, Bill W. explains why AA has called alcoholism an illness or a malady.
- 1961
In January Bill W. writes to thank Dr. Carl Jung for what he told Rowland H. Jung answers within a week, and dies on June 6.
Number One Man · Some Bum from St. Louis · Court of Last Resort · The Educational Variety
- 1961
Frank Buchman dies in August at Freudenstadt, in Germany’s Black Forest.
- 1961
Chloe K., the woman Ebby T. loves, dies in September, and he drinks again.
- 1961
Al-Anon’s first World Service Conference meets in New York in April, with twelve delegates, on a three-year trial.
- 1962
At AA’s General Service Conference, an answer to one of the Ask-It-Basket questions calls joining in the Lord’s Prayer a matter of personal conscience.
- 1962
In Little Rock a white group lets Joe McQ. come to its meeting if he doesn’t drink the coffee.
- 1962
The General Service Conference accepts Bill W.’s Twelve Concepts for World Service.
- 1962
Bill W. writes in the Grapevine that sudden and gradual experiences are “all of the same piece.”
- 1960s
AA’s first television spots show its members only in shadow.
- 1964
Ebby T. moves to McPike’s Farm in Galway, New York, on May 30.
- 1964
Bill W. brings Sister Ignatia a scroll for her fiftieth year in the order.
- 1965
Bill W. sends AA’s doctors the first of three papers on niacin, a vitamin.
- 1965
The Responsibility Declaration is written for the Toronto convention.
- 1965
Sister Ignatia retires to the motherhouse in May.
- 1966
Ebby T. dies sober on March 21, about two and a half years after his last drink.
- 1966
Five groups hold the first AA meeting by telephone conference call.
- 1966
Sister Ignatia dies on April 1, at seventy-seven.
- 1966
Two federal appeals courts rule that a chronic alcoholic can’t be convicted for being drunk in public.
- 1967
The Big Book’s first-edition copyright runs out unrenewed, putting it in the public domain in the United States.
- 1968
Marty M. hands her council to a successor and becomes its founder-consultant.
- 1968
AA’s Conference rules that a full face on television breaks anonymity, even without a name.
- 1968
The Supreme Court upholds Leroy Powell’s conviction for public drunkenness, five votes to four.
- 1968
Rev. Joseph L. Kellermann tells Al-Anon’s Conference about a play in three acts, and the first printing of Al-Anon’s first daily reader, One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, is sold out by mid-December.
- 1969
Marty M. testifies to a Senate subcommittee on alcoholism on July 24.
- 1969
Delegates from abroad meet in New York at the first World Service Meeting.
- 1969
AA’s General Service Conference recognizes its special relationship with Al-Anon, “a separate but similar fellowship.”
- 1970
AA-of-the-Air, in Tucson, puts AA on the radio for members at home.
- 1970
On December 31 President Nixon signs the Hughes Act, which sets up a federal institute on alcoholism and pays for treatment in the states.
Since the founders
1971 to today
New editions, meetings by mail, phone and screen, and the pamphlets rewritten.
- 1971
Bill W. is flown to Miami on January 24, his and Lois’s 53rd wedding anniversary, and dies that night in Miami Beach.
- 1971
The General Service Board reaches its full twenty-one, fourteen of them AA members.
- 1971
At Bill W.’s death, AA’s board gives his full name to the press.
- 1972
At Alkali Lake, in British Columbia, Phyllis C. and Andy C. quit drinking and start holding AA meetings in their house.
- 1972
The General Service Conference turns down Lois W.’s offer of Stepping Stones, unanimously.
- 1972
In December Al-Anon’s Forum asks members whose parents were alcoholics to send in their experiences.
- 1973
AA publishes Came to Believe, in which more than 75 members tell what a spiritual awakening and God as they understood Him mean to them.
- 1974
AA’s General Service Conference agrees that all groups, gay groups among them, should be listed in its directories.
- 1975
AA’s book Living Sober gives the sponsor a chapter of its own.
- 1975
AA’s archives open in New York on November 3, with Nell Wing as the first archivist.
- 1976
The Big Book’s third edition comes out.
- 1976
The Loners and the Internationalists merge into one meeting by mail.
- 1976
AA’s sponsorship pamphlet, rewritten at the request of the General Service Conference, is usually dated to this year.
- 1976
A RAND report counts normal drinkers among those in remission, and the National Council on Alcoholism calls it dangerous.
- 1977
AA’s publishers turn down study guides. Joe McQ. and Charlie P. are asked to present the Big Book to a home group, the start of their weekend studies.
- 1979
Lois W. publishes Lois Remembers, and sets up the Stepping Stones Foundation.
- 1979
The Conference approves AA’s own film, Alcoholics Anonymous—An Inside View.
- 1980
Marty M. speaks to AA’s convention in New Orleans. She dies on July 22, at 75.
- 1980
The psychiatrists’ manual drops the word alcoholism for alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence.
- 1985
By the end of the year nearly a thousand Al-Anon groups for adult children have been proposed and registered.
- 1986
A group begins meeting online, on Q-Link.
- 1988
Lois W. dies on October 5, at 97.
- 1988
The Supreme Court upholds the VA’s rule that primary alcoholism is willful misconduct, keeping two veterans from more time to use the GI Bill. That November Congress changes the rule for those deadlines.
- 1989
ABC broadcasts My Name Is Bill W., with James Woods as Bill.
- 1992
AA’s office moves to 475 Riverside Drive.
- 1992
A joint committee of the National Council and the addiction doctors’ society defines alcoholism as a primary, chronic disease.
- 1994
AA’s sponsorship pamphlet gains a section on service sponsorship.
- 1994
Al-Anon’s Conference votes to move its office to the Norfolk area of Virginia, and to buy property on a fifteen-year trial.
- 1996
Online groups form the Online Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous.
- 1996
The first copies of La Viña, AA’s magazine in Spanish, come off the press in June.
- 1996
Al-Anon’s World Service Office opens in Virginia Beach on June 1, and puts up a public website that October.
- 1997
The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse calls addiction a brain disease.
- 2001
The Big Book’s fourth edition comes out.
- 2001
Moral Re-Armament becomes Initiatives of Change.
- 2001
Two researchers in New Mexico publish Quantum Change, on 55 people who said their lives had changed in a short time.
- 2003
On December 3 Al-Anon’s Board makes requirements for the adults who serve Alateen mandatory in every Area.
- 2006
Amy Colwell Bluhm and Cora Finch, working separately, find letters placing Rowland H.’s time with Jung in 1926, not 1931.
- 2011
Toronto’s Intergroup takes two agnostic groups off its meeting list. In 2017 it settles a human rights complaint over it.
- 2011
The Conference adopts a policy on actors who play members in AA’s videos.
- 2011
Al-Anon publishes its own history, Many Voices, One Journey, and its Conference votes to keep the office’s building.
- 2013
The fifth edition of the psychiatrists’ manual names one alcohol use disorder, mild, moderate or severe.
- 2014
AA’s pamphlet Many Paths to Spirituality includes a member who writes that an atheist on matters of the supernatural can still have a spiritual awakening.
- 2018
AA World Services opens a YouTube channel, with the comments turned off.
- 2019
AA’s new Big Book in American Sign Language comes out on four discs.
- 2020
The meeting rooms close, and the meetings move to telephones and screens.
- 2021
AA’s Conference recognizes online groups as groups.
- 2021
The Preamble’s “men and women” becomes “people.”
- 2022
In AA’s membership survey, 81 percent of members say they have a sponsor.
- 2022
In AA’s membership survey, 87.7 percent of the members who answered say they are white.
- 2022
A trial of the drug psilocybin for alcohol use disorder reports fewer heavy-drinking days among those given the drug than among those given a placebo.
- 2024
The General Service Board elects an AA member as its chair, by AA’s count the first.
- 2025
AA revises the sponsorship pamphlet again in June.
- 2025
AA replaces its 1989 pamphlet for Native members with Indigenous People in A.A.
- 2025
For AA’s International Convention in Vancouver, in July, in AA’s ninetieth year, Al-Anon schedules daytime sessions of its own.
- 2026
AA’s General Service Conference approves a fifth edition of the Big Book, with 26 new stories, due in February 2027. The Steps keep their words.
By the Carload · Suggestions Only · Trusted Servants · An Illness of This Sort · The Educational Variety
- 2026
AA’s yearly letter to the media asks for first names only, and no faces that can be recognized.
- 2026
In its seventy-fifth year Al-Anon counts more than 22,000 groups and 1,100 Alateen groups, with meetings in over 140 countries.