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What happened to Bill W. at Towns Hospital?

In short:

  • Towns Hospital in New York, where Dr. William D. Silkworth was the physician, treated Bill W. several times. On his last stay, in December 1934, a few weeks after his friend Ebby's visit, Bill had the sudden spiritual experience that ended his drinking.
  • The 1939 Big Book tells it quietly: in the hospital he offered himself to God, became willing to have his sins taken away, and felt a peace and a "great clean wind of a mountain top" blow through him. He asked the doctor if he was still sane; the doctor said something had happened he didn't understand, but Bill had better hang on to it.
  • Bill's later accounts add a cry of despair ("If there is a God, let Him show Himself!"), a room lit with white light, and a sense of Presence. They also give the doctor's reassurance in different words.
  • Silkworth's own letter in the Big Book says the idea that led to A.A. came to this patient "in the course of his third treatment."

The 1939 Big Book

"Bill's Story." On an earlier stay at "a nationally-known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics" (p. 7), "Under the so-called belladonna treatment my brain cleared." (p. 7), and a kind doctor explained that he had been seriously ill, bodily and mentally (p. 7). He drank again, went back, and his wife was told he would die or go mad within a year (p. 7).

After Ebby's visit, he went back once more. "At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time." (p. 13). "There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would." (p. 13). His friend visited, and they made a list of the people Bill had hurt (p. 13). When Bill fully accepted these proposals, "the effect was electric. There was a sense of victory, followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known." (p. 14). "I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through." (p. 14). "God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound." (p. 14).

Alarmed, he asked the doctor if he was still sane. The doctor said: "Something has happened to you I don't understand. But you had better hang on to it." (p. 14). Still in the hospital, Bill thought of the thousands of hopeless alcoholics he might help (p. 14). The 1939 text names neither the hospital nor the doctor; the names come from later accounts.

"The Doctor's Opinion." Dr. Silkworth's letter, also from 1939, doesn't name Bill: "In late 1934 I attended a patient who, though he had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity, was an alcoholic of a type I had come to regard as hopeless." (p. xxv). "In the course of his third treatment he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery." (p. xxv). See What is "The Doctor's Opinion," and who wrote it?

Bill's later accounts (1957, and as told in 1984)

A.A. Comes of Age (1957). In the summer of 1934 Bill lay in Towns, and Dr. Silkworth told Lois he was hopeless (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). In December, after Ebby's visit and a night at the Calvary Mission, he walked into Towns carrying a bottle of beer (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "In three or four days I was free of what little sedative they gave me" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), but very depressed and still choking on the idea of God. Ebby came and repeated his formula (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Then, at the bottom of the pit, he cried out: "If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The room lit up with a great white light; he felt he was on a mountain in a wind of spirit, and that he was a free man (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "So this is the God of the preachers!" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Frightened that he was hallucinating, he called the doctor, who said: "No, Bill, you are not crazy." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Elsewhere in the same book Bill quotes him: "you are not hallucinating" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The next day, Bill thinks Ebby brought him William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, which helped him understand what had happened (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See Why does the Big Book mention William James?

P-53 (Bill's biographical sketch, pamphlet © 2017): in Towns Hospital a month after Ebby's message, "in total despair, he cried out for help" (P-53), and the experience brought a conviction of release and the insight that helping other alcoholics could keep him sober (P-53).

Pass It On (1984) dates his admission to December 11, 1934, and says the treatment then was barbiturates for sedation and belladonna (Pass It On, 1984). It gives the cry as "If there be a God, let Him show Himself!" (Pass It On, 1984), and Silkworth's answer as: "Yes, my boy, you are sane, perfectly sane in my judgment." (Pass It On, 1984). He left the hospital on December 18 (Pass It On, 1984). The book calls 1934 "a year that had seen Bill hospitalized four times" (Pass It On, 1984).

What Towns meant afterward

Bill went back to Towns to work with patients, with Dr. Silkworth's permission (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet." (p. 15). Chapter 11 mentions an unnamed, well-known hospital in an eastern city where a doctor sends members patients and "Many of us have felt, for the first time, the Presence and Power of God within its walls." (p. 162). Later, the owner, Charles B. Towns, offered Bill a paid position as a lay therapist, which Bill turned down after his group objected (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957; Pass It On, 1984), and lent money toward the Big Book (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Where the sources differ

  • The experience itself. The 1939 text has no cry, no light and no "Presence"; it describes humble surrender, then a sense of victory, peace and a mountain wind (pp. 13–14). The cry and the white light are in Bill's 1957 account and later (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957; Pass It On, 1984). The wording of the cry differs slightly between them.
  • What the doctor said. 1939: something had happened he didn't understand; hang on to it (p. 14). 1957: "you are not crazy," and that he had read of such events and they sometimes release people from alcoholism (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), or, in another passage, "you are not hallucinating" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). 1984: "you are sane, perfectly sane" (Pass It On, 1984).
  • Which stay. Silkworth's 1939 letter says the ideas came in the patient's "third treatment" (p. xxv); Pass It On says Bill was hospitalized four times in 1934 (Pass It On, 1984). Our sources don't reconcile the counts.
  • The medicine. Pass It On lists barbiturates and belladonna as the treatment of that time (Pass It On, 1984); Bill (1957) says he was free of the sedative after three or four days, before the experience (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Our sources draws no connection between the treatment and the experience.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages Date
Alcoholics Anonymous, "Bill's Story" 7, 13–15 1939
"The Doctor's Opinion" (Dr. Silkworth's letter) xxv 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 11 162 1939
P-53, Bill W.'s biographical sketch — pamphlet © 2017
A.A. Comes of Age — 1957
Pass It On — 1984

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, P-53, A.A. Comes of Age and Pass It On are © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.