Homes Were Thrown Open

Years before the Long Form was written, Cleveland showed what alcoholics could do with nothing but a door of their own. In 1939 the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a series on Alcoholics Anonymous and the calls poured in. The first Cleveland meeting had started that June in a member's home. When it ran out of space it split three ways: one part to another home, one to a hall, one under a new name. Bill W. wrote (A.A. Comes of Age): "These multiplying and bulging meetings continued to run short of home space," so they moved on "into small halls and church basements." The old-timers in New York and Akron could only watch, Bill admits, "with deep misgivings." About twenty members, "not very experienced themselves," were facing hundreds of newcomers. "But a year later we did know; for by then Cleveland had about thirty groups and several hundred members." Every one of those groups was alcoholics in a room they had found, answering to themselves. That is the shape the Long Form put in writing (Big Book, p. 563): "Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group". Nobody handed Cleveland its groups. The alcoholics opened them. Test it tonight: if your meeting place closed tomorrow, could your members open a door somewhere else by next week?