I'm sure Bill W. and Dr. Bob had no idea what they had started, but God did.
I will never understand why those two gentlemen haven't gotten a posthumous Nobel Prize.
Oh yeah, I remember: Nobel Prizes are for those who further Communism.
"I'm sure Bill W. and Dr. Bob had no idea what they had started, but God did."
I'm sure you're correct. Would imagine their free attention was monopolized by how to stay sober on an individual and a collective level. Amazing, in that the outgrowth of their personal success became the basis of the world's most successful recovery program for alcoholism. Next year AA will be 70 years old, as I'm sure you realize. In all that time, no other program has touched AA's success rate. And I think that's because Bill W and Dr. Bob -- and the first 100 drunks who got sober -- managed to get the whole how-to-stay sober business straight in the first place. But then I'm prejudiced. Admittedly so.
God and I weren't getting along too well when I first got sober. Not His fault, of course. I was told I could use whatever I liked as my 'Higher Power;' which may have saved my life. I was far too angry and sick to accept anything else at that point. So, my 'HP' was the collective sobriety of AA people all over the world. Around the time of my second birthday, I began to think about how amazing it was that the steps, meetings and people had been able to keep me me in one piece. More I thought about it, the more I realized that something else had to have been helping me. I wasn't a joiner, by nature. Prior to AA, I'd always been too arrogant to follow any kind of program. Prided myself on not playing by the rules yet I'd generally come out even, if not ahead. Also wasn't my style to stay plugged into any kind of group. Yet, there I was. That simple fact allowed me to get over my nonsense about God, and to simply believe again.
Not a doubt in my mind that God was the chief engineer and architect of AA. Know too many people who still marvel that they're not drunk. As I do about myself, on occasion. "We can do what I can't," definitely applies to me.