Alcoholics Anonymous celebrated the 75th anniversary of its 12-Step recovery program earlier this summer with no mention of the true hero of 12-Step recovery. Despite the program’s requirement for anonymity, AAs two co-founders are fairly well-known: Bill Wilson, a dowdy stock broker from Manhattan, and Doctor Bob Smith, a surgeon from Akron, Ohio.
What’s not as well-known is that early on Bob relapsed, went on a tear. The next morning Bill asked Bob if he was ready to try again. Bleary eyed and shaking, the good doctor agreed to give it another go. But he had to be in the operating room that very morning, so Bill gave him two brown bottles of beer to steady his nerves.
And so the true anonymous hero of recovering people everywhere is that patient, whose name has been lost to time. He lay face down on the operating room table. Whoever you were, nameless patient, wherever you are, recovering people from all over the world ought to thank you. A toast—of sparkling cider perhaps?
As Dr. Bob was a proctologist, we all know whose ass was really on the line.
Junk Talk 