Meanwhile, in New York, a series of alcoholics - one of whom had been told by Carl Jung that his only hope was a vital spiritual experience - were cured through a group based with Sam Shoemaker at Calvary Church. Bill Wilson, a Wall Street man who had become an alcoholic following the stock-market crash of October 1929, had a dramatic cure in December 1934, and during the next months tried to sober up many other alcoholics but without success. He could not make out why, until someone said to him, 'You're preaching at these fellows, Bill. No one ever preached at you. Turn your strategy round.'

In May 1935 Wilson went to Akron on business. On a Friday night he found himself alone with only about ten dollars in his pocket. He was heavily tempted to get drunk, and in desperation telephoned a clergyman, picked at random out of the directory, to try and find some Oxford Group people in Akron. The clergyman gave him ten names, the first nine of whom were out. The tenth, Henrietta Seiberling, daughter-in-law of the founder of Goodyear Rubber, put him in touch with Bob Smith and T. Henry Williams' group. Wilson did not preach, but told Smith his experience and was, for the first time, able to help cure another alcoholic.

Bill and Lois Wilson lived with the Smiths for several months, and out of their experience blossomed Alcoholics Anonymous.

Late in life, T. Henry Williams was asked by a researcher where Alcoholics Anonymous had started. 'His eyes lit up. Pointing to a spot on his carpet, he said, "It started right there!'"11 Newton quotes the agreement worked out in those years with the Oxford Group in Akron. 'You look after drunken men. We'll try to look after a drunken world,' Williams had said to Wilson and Smith, who became world-famous as 'Bill W. and Dr Bob of AA'.

As AA's official Brief Biographies of the Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous more concisely states, 'In May 1935 a business trip to Akron led to his (Bill Wilson's) meeting with Dr Bob, who became the second successful recovery - and Alcoholics Anonymous was born.'12 Bill Wilson himself wrote, 'The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others, straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker . . . and from nowhere else.'13 Later AA developed the organisation and principles suitable for its precise mission, and, in turn, led to many other "spin-offs" dealing with specific social ills. There are currently estimated to be 500,000 self-help groups modelled on Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States alone,14 and AA itself is active in 116 countries.'15 Howard Clinebell, author of the classic textbook Understanding and Counselling the Alcoholic, describes Buchman as one of the foremost pioneers of the modern mutual-assistance philosophy.16

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