Investigative Reports: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous

[Music] my name is june i'm an alcoholic. alcoholics anonymous has been part of our collective vocabulary since 1935. but what do we really know of a.a.? is it a treatment, a therapy, a cult, or a religion? is a.a. really responsible for saving anyone from themselves? aaa is not about stopping drinking, it's about staying stopped. three million members swear by a.a., and those not part of the program are curious to know why. stay with us.

[Music] good.

[Music] tonight, investigative reports goes on an extraordinary journey inside an organization that, unless you're a part of it, it's hard to understand. it is alcoholics anonymous. hello, i'm bill curtis. with annual sales of over 100 billion dollars in the u.s. alone, alcohol is big business. it's estimated that 14 million americans suffer from alcoholism, and aa helps millions of them each year. there are no last names used at aa meetings, no preaching, no pressure, just a room full of sympathetic ears and lots of support. but what is it? a society? a fellowship? the original self-help program? for the members we spoke to, it was only one thing: a lifesaver.

alcoholic. i was from home with a tremendous amount of violence. most of the violence was not usually directed toward me, the physical violence, but i saw my mom being beaten up countless times. it was just a regular event by countless different people.

[Music] the emotional pain for me was so devastating that i was trying to distract myself from it. alcohol was just exactly what i needed.

came to aaa as a 13-year-old girl from a street gang in venice, california. the first time that i remember getting drunk, i was eight years old. i know i'd had alcohol before that, but i'd already been using drugs for a year. i started at seven years old, you know, using drugs on a regular basis because they were just more accessible. i hung out with older kids, and they had, you know, drugs and alcohol. when i began to drink, that was really the first time that, like i said, i had that just that being able to take a breath and feeling like the pain was just moved away for a little bit, and it was something i wanted to obviously hang on to.

clancy. i came from a very different background than june. a successful family man, earning a high-paying salary in the advertising business. he too reached a similar desperation through alcoholism. my drinking was always present from my early days. when i first began to drink as a boy in the pacific ocean on a ship, and some guys got me to drink, and i found it made me feel like a man. and so i used it a lot. through drink, clancy lost his wife, his family, his job, and his self-respect. i went to work in advertising and public relations and worked over the years in some fairly big places. the drinking became more and more necessary until finally, my personal life was coming apart little by little. but i kept thinking, the next job, the next town, the next situation. my last drink was october 31st, 1958. i didn't know it was halloween at the time. i was rather bedraggled. i probably would have attempted to win a costume party at a halloween affair. and all i knew was i was dying on the street. i didn't intend to stop. but it was not a goal of mine to stop. i had stopped many times, and for me, stopping just brought such intense pain that i drank to stand it. i became involved in alcoholics anonymous because there was really nowhere else to go.

bob p. was a happily married father of three and a successful executive in new york city. i was a daily drinker. i had an executive job in new york. i imagined that i was a terribly important person, but i was a daily drinker that was rapidly getting worse and worse.

for june, clancy, and bob, that downhill progression led all three through a door to an alcoholics anonymous meeting. a society of recovering alcoholics who, as a group, large or small, rent out a church basement or a library or hospital meeting room for the purpose of coming together.

my mother being an alcoholic, began taking me to meetings of alcoholics anonymous from the time that i was six years old. so i knew that a.a. existed. i knew something about it. i guess i thought that that alcoholics anonymous would be a sort of a hymn-singing kind of lagubrious group of people sitting around under beer bulbs in a church basement. but i didn't really do much thinking about it. i had to get off the street because it was cold and rainy, and i asked somebody where an a.a. club was, and i went to this aaa club. and i thought to myself, you know, five years ago, i wouldn't hire you people to mow my lawn. i have to come in here and take this crap from you people. but when i walked into alcoxonomus on my own, or for myself, i was 13, but i didn't look 13. most people who didn't know how old i was were guessing my age at about 37. i thought i was omniscient, omnipotent, charming, able to do anything in the world. and uh, if i wanted to drink, it was nobody else's business. and the next day, i went to another meeting in the morning. that was a spiritual meeting. they talked about spiritual values. made me just want to throw up. i think it's still hard for a lot of people to to believe that you could get to a point in your life where you could not think of going anyplace else but alcoholics anonymous. i found out that that i wasn't alone. there were a lot of people out there who had recovered. i felt somebody cared whether i lived or died. that was such a nice feeling.

it's a very, very slow process. no two meetings are exactly alike. each group maintains autonomy, but typically, on the other side of that door, there is a group of chairs facing a table. within each meeting, there is a chairperson that leads the group. the chairperson might lead the group for that one night, for a week of meetings, for a month. each group varies. newcomers are brought by a friend, come in voluntarily, or are even court-ordered to attend. the meetings usually start with a reading from the book, alcoholics anonymous, the fellowship's textbook, as well as a reading of aa's 12 steps. and i've asked esther to read the 12 steps. in a speaker meeting, a guest will address the gathering for 30 or 40 minutes, sharing his or her a.a. story. but i'm just a member of alcoholics anonymous. i've been asked to stand up here for a little while and share with you, as it suggests that we do in the book, a little bit about what it was like, what happened, what it's like today. and that's what i'll try to do while i'm here. if not a speaker meeting, the chairperson might select a topic: gratitude, control, communication, and ask for volunteers to share. um, is there anybody here in their first with the 30 days of sobriety? a hand goes up. a person introduces himself as an alcoholic and speaks for 30 seconds or several minutes. there are no time constraints and few, if any, rules. one by one, the hands go up. one by one, the sharing begins. if you're willing to, willing to change your whole life, then why can't you just change the moment?

in accordance with aa's tradition of anonymity, there are no last names used within the organization. for the newcomer, this may seem strange, but to the aaa member, it is of absolute importance. i believe that anonymity was to enable the newcomer to feel safe and secure in coming to aaa because people are much more accepting of of reaching out for for help and treatment. the tradition of anonymity kind of assures that we're all equals. in aa, and who you are, or what your job is, or what your last name is, or who your family was, just doesn't matter. in aa, we're all equal. and it also, um, keeps any one individual from becoming a spokesperson for a. anonymity is the foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

i just didn't think there was really anything to look forward to. i think there was anything good. figured everybody in the world that you met wanted to get something from you, and you better be careful. and, you know, it was a very slow process. when i would hear people in alcoholics anonymous talk about giving something, or or being kind, or trying to see what you could add to the world, tonight, i just thought that was a ridiculous notion that really did not work out there in the real world. i thought it was very nice in a little room, but not out in the real world. and eventually, i began to see that that it can make a difference, and it can work out in the real world.

alcoholics anonymous succeeds in part because of its reliance, at the level of the individual, on a program of 12 steps. more when we come back.

[Music] i think what most people outside of alcoholics anonymous, and many people who are inside, don't realize is that aaa is not about stopping drinking. it's about staying stopped. the program of alcoholics anonymous began with two total strangers meeting in akron, ohio in 1935. bill w. and dr. bob. two drunks, one recovering, one desperately ill. the simplicity of what they discovered would end up saving their lives. from those two men, the program has evolved to an estimated membership of over three million. the secret of aa is one alcoholic talking to another. that is what a.a. had that no other treatment center ever had. it isn't someone talking down and saying, "you should do this." you say, "i know how you feel." and you think, "my god, he does know how i feel." and he can explain it. you don't have to promise to be sober. you have to admit you're having trouble drinking, and you're having trouble sober. that's all you have to admit. that's all it says. i suppose one of the great aspects of being enjoying life is coming to feel my case really isn't so different after all. i am not unique. there are people like me, and they seem to like me, and i like them. and it isn't because they're alcoholics. it's because we are together. we have shared experiences and shared emotions.

aside from sharing, the program encourages, but does not require, the individual to follow the 12 steps. 12 specific rules written by bill w. that lead to alcoholic abuse recovery, as laid out in the book alcoholics anonymous.

good morning. dr. ernest noble, who holds the pike chair for alcoholic studies at ucla, cites the 12-step program as the cornerstone to aa's success. what is useful about alcoholics anonymous? now, this comes from very pragmatic knowledge of what the disease state is. they deal with the medical aspect, psychological aspects, spiritual aspect. they cover the waterfront, essentially. and they have a step program. you take this step first, you get the next step, you get the next step. it doesn't jump you from 1 to 12 right away. it's a slow process because alcoholics anonymous people understand this is not going to be cured overnight. and in fact, it's never cured. the aaa program is is one which is outlined in the basic text, alcoholics anonymous, but the interpretation is up to the individual. there's no authoritative voice that says, "you must be interpreted this way or that way." it's really an individual's interpretation. and a.a. gives you a series of actions that, over a period of time, relieve some of the terrible guilt, relieves all the terrible feelings of not fitting in. oh, the 12 steps work. the function that they serve is to take a person outside of himself. and the very first step says that that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. one, we admitted we were powerless of alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. that's the first three steps. and that help has to come from some, we say, higher power. five, admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. six, we're entirely ready to have them. the 12 steps get the person to do a moral inventory of themselves. they mean really say to themselves, everything that that they have wrong about themselves, and the terrible things that they have done. and then they confess this to somebody else. and this is the house cleaning part of the 12 steps. the last three steps are to make restitution to people that we've harmed, and to take daily steps, daily steps to make sure that when we're wrong, we probably admitted it. 12, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics. so all of this takes the person completely out of himself. and once, once that's done, then he is in a position to, um, to, to live a changed life.

most of what was in the idea of the 12 steps didn't seem to have any practical application to any of the problems that i had when i walked through the doors of alcoholics anonymous. i didn't understand what a lot of the words meant, and i certainly did not understand how any of that could really make a difference. and yet, now today, as i look back, i can see that the principles that are outlined in those steps are precisely what it was that was eventually going to change my attitude, which i think is a big part. somewhere in the middle of that process of doing those steps and applying those principles to my life, that i had an awakening and realized that there was a power outside myself. in alcoholics anonymous, i tended to become less religious and a lot more spiritual. and the big book certainly helps, helps us do that.

[Music] it itself is not a religion, but it certainly is a framework. the reverend james parks morton, dean emeritus of the cathedral of st. john the divine and the founder of the interfaith center in new york city. but that framework depends precisely upon the acknowledgement and then the involvement in a spiritual relation with a force of power or grace. we talk a lot in aaa about a power greater than ourselves or a higher power. and for some people, that's god as they knew god in the religion they grew up in. but for other people, they'll think of god as good, orderly direction, or

[Music] anything that helps them keep a focus in life. i really had no belief in spiritual principles. i had never had any formal religious doctrine in my life. yet, i discovered that if i was going to continue to be sober, continue to progress, and to be free from alcohol, that i needed to develop a spiritual way of life. that's what the 12 steps afforded me is a path, a guideline to achieve that spiritual essence that i'm so grateful that i have today.

[Music] for many, the 12 steps seem a roadmap to one's personal spirituality, the key ingredient, according to members, to a lasting sobriety. little by little, over a period of time, i've come to believe i'd be that god loves me, and i believe he loves everybody the same. i think god's grace is just like the rain. it falls on the just and the unjust. and i think that what a.a. has done for me has enabled me to move some of the junk out of the way so at least some of the grace gets through. for people who would rebel, saying, "i don't want god shoved down my throat by aaa." aa does not shove god down your throat. you're admitting and acknowledging that there is help available beyond yourself. that's, that's the operative word. that it's beyond yourself, outside of yourself, above yourself. and whether you call that god, mystery, whatever, i don't think matters. what does matter is that the alcoholic seeks help. within alcoholics anonymous, there are many people who offer support without judgment to guide the alcoholic through the steps they themselves have had to go through. it is certainly possible to stop drinking on one's own. some people are able to do it. but for others, recovery is impossible without help. the temptation is too great. and at a.a., that's where the sponsor comes in. they give new members someone to call when the urge seems overwhelming. but most important, a sponsor is someone who's been there, who understands what the alcoholic is going through. and sometimes, that makes all the difference.

it's got a buddy system, you know. when you join a.a., you're assigned to somebody who's been a member of a.a. for a long time, and they can reach out for that person when you get the temptation to drink. just somebody who'll take a newcomer, here's my phone number, call me anytime. call me before you pick up that first drink, and we'll talk it through. it's just kind of a guide. gail became my sponsor because she had been taught to never say no to an a.a. request. she'd come from a warm, loving, supportive family. i really hated people like that. and as if all of that was not enough, which in my mind it really was, i mean, she had been seen on numerous occasions in public wearing pink. the woman that first became my sponsor, um, did not want to really be my sponsor. and, uh, i don't think anybody really wanted to be my sponsor. i think there were some people who felt badly for me, but i had a rotten attitude, and i was very abrasive, and i was very hostile towards everyone. it wasn't a personal thing. i didn't like anybody.

dr. enoch gordez, head of the national institute of alcohol abuse and alcoholism in washington, d.c., studies the nature and effects of alcohol addiction. they don't worry about anything else except helping each other to keep sober. and there's a certain genius in that because the goal here is that by helping others keep sober, one helps one's own sobriety. to those in and out of the program, this is a secret to success: one alcoholic talking to another. this is the program's essence and its saving grace. aa has no opinion on who is an alcoholic. we give that freedom to each individual person. it's a process of discovery, and that discovery is what makes a.a. so attractive to people because we make no pronouncements on people's conditions.

greg m., general manager of the general service office of aa, which is the coordinating body of alcoholics anonymous. we ask them just to come to aaa, read the material, experience aaa meetings, and come to their own conclusions about whether they're alcoholic or not. there are no hard and fast rules in alcoholics anonymous. it's just sharing. but as far as interpretations, it's, uh, it's certainly, you know, from the inception, been an individual's right to interpret what that means. some people believe that once they have surrendered to their alcoholism, that they have recovered from aaa and their illness is arrested, day at a time. others believe that since we live life a day at a time, that they're in a process of recovering from alcohol.

[Music] a key ingredient to the program's success is acceptance, allowing the alcoholic the leeway to fail in the bid for sobriety, to enter and leave the program at his or her own choosing.

vicki, alcoholic. hey, i really, really need to be here because i found out yesterday that three people i got sober with 15 years ago are now out drinking, and i am so afraid. she's totally shaken my foundation because one of the people drove me to treatment, and i'm so glad that i'm sober and i want to stay that way. i think the key to the success of the basic message of aa is the fact that it's, um, it's based on acceptance. somebody can walk into an aaa meeting, their first day, a meeting, and they can be dirty, and they can smell, and they can not be able to put two sentences together very well, and be shaking, and and people are going around them. and if this person has even a smidgen of a desire to stop drinking, the individual's going to get help from from people. it's almost like the worse off they are, the more help they're going to get. you can't imagine how small an alcoholic's life becomes. there's just him and his next drink, and where's it going to come from? you know, and you come into a program like alcoholics anonymous, and the whole world opens up to you. and that's why we have to get together and reinforce what we already know, and remember that it is not a problem of drinking, it's a problem of alcohol and sobriety. and alcohol and sobriety, it's like a pendulum, you know. the pen keeps going up and down. as you're drinking, it's going down. you don't even know it. it's just salmo up and down. one day you're way down here. then you start to do better in a.a., and you, oh, it's just the same old ups and downs, but the whole pendulum is moving up. it takes a while to discover that. very early in, in my, uh, sobriety, i'm, i'm, i'm just so grateful for this. i heard an old timer say, aaa doesn't teach us how to handle our drinking. a.a. really assumes that you really want to stop drinking, and maybe even have stopped drinking before you ever come to a.a. a.a. teaches us how to handle sobriety. and so i just want to thank everybody for being so supportive because each year is a new journey, each month is a new journey, and i need all the help i can get through this program thing. there's no line of demarcation. i mean, you don't just get sober, say, "wow, that's now i'm all right." because actually, because of the nature of the problem, sobriety is the more painful aspect of it. and so most of us live with the idea that, well, if i stop drinking and aaa works, i'll feel wonderful. but it isn't that way because the natural state of sober alcoholics turns out to be progressive pain.

as the program begins to take shape, as the 12 steps encourage change, a world of possibilities opens up. the alcoholic stands with hope of a new life.

i'm billy, i'm an alcoholic. i'm, i'm delighted to be at an aaa meeting because i never thought i'd grow up to say that that my favorite place in the world would be to be an a.a. tears to my eyes. mark, alcoholic. we're very, very lucky to be in these rooms. you know, we're really a room full of dead people, and we have survived. everything across the world.

[Music] i live a life today that i never would have wanted, and i am a person today that i wouldn't have even liked when i came to alcoholics. there's a tremendous amount of hope in alcoholics anonymous, and i think that that was, and is, what made a huge change in my life. but it was, wasn't easy to see immediately, i don't think for me. but the hope that i could, that i didn't have to live the way that i was living, i didn't have to be the kind of person that i thought that i just had to be. and, and alcoholics anonymous has taught me that i have some, a lot of choices, and i have to take some responsibility as well for my actions and for how i live. it works.

[Music] there are 99,000 autonomous aa groups worldwide. it is estimated that over 4,000 a.a. meetings take place each week in los angeles alone. another of the traditions that we have found to be so useful is that there is group autonomy. each group is autonomous in their own fashion, unless it affects other groups or aaa as a whole. the individual groups hold up to a dozen meetings a week. these various groups are coordinated by their general service office, which is located in new york city. the general service office is really here solely. the only reason we exist is to give service to aaa members and groups. probably close to 40 countries have enough aaa development to have their own service structure, their own general service office, and many of them publish their own literature.

the operation of aa's general service office in new york costs an estimated 12 million dollars annually. the sale of the big book, alcoholics anonymous, and other literature is one way aaa finances itself. the mistakes that aa avoided were several. they didn't take outside contributions, number one, even though some very wealthy people wanted to support them when they became well known in the early 1940s. they do no lobbying of a government sort, even on behalf of alcoholics. well, the best thing about aaa is it is a non-profit organization. unlike most organizations, not-for-profits around the world, we seek no outside funding. we accept voluntary contributions from aaa members only, and we put a limit on the amounts of those contributions at two thousand dollars annually from each member.

this preset limit on contributions, in which only aaa members may participate, can lead to some unusual situations for the organization. when i was working as the general manager of aa's general service office in new york, a lawyer called me, and he said, "i have a client who has died, and she has left in her will ten thousand dollars to alcoholics anonymous in grateful, in in gratitude for 12 years of wonderful marriage that she had because her husband had gone to alcoholics anonymous." and he said, "i think that's just wonderful." and he said, "i'm calling to find out how to make out the check and where to send it." and i said, "well, gee, that's wonderful, but i'm sorry, we can't accept that." it was a long silence. he said, "you can't be serious." i said, "oh yes, we're serious. we accept money only from from our members." and so we have no dues, no fees, no membership requirements. all we want to do is help people not drink. alcoholics anonymous has survived for 65 years.

[Music] in this age of self-help and recovery, of disclosure of one's personal challenges, that may not seem to sound like such a triumph, but it was not always so. years ago, even the idea of alcoholism as a disease shook the medical community.

[Music] today, there is still no one single definition of alcoholism. alcoholism is a disease in which the person's, um, obsession with it activities and finding it and abusive use of it become dominant in the person's life. alcohol is a great tranquilizing energy. you know, you drink it, you know, all of a sudden, the world has a glow. troubles are not that bad, etc. if you keep drinking long enough, the addiction mechanism sets in, and you may become alcohol abuser and alcoholic. there are those who see alcoholism as nothing more than a challenge. they don't view alcoholism as an affliction. what's important is that i don't see that this is inbred or a disease. my definition of alcoholism is when you drink to such an extent that it interferes with your ability to function. and in that, i see alcoholism being similar to a whole host of other things that i would call addictions. to the alcoholic, the definition is much simpler. what makes alcoholics is what alcohol does for you. if it has the ability to distort your perceptive reality, and you can depend on that, you are lost because you will use it. and as you use it, you get away from the conflicts of reality. till eventually, alcohol gets to be a problem. then you got to get sober, and you discover it's even more painful than it was before. and eventually, you got to drink. you can't keep drinking, so you got to get sober. and pretty soon, you can't stay sober, so you got to drink. and that's called alcoholism.

no matter its definition, the social and medical costs of alcoholism are staggering. the cost to the country of alcohol misuse or alcoholism turns out to be about 165 billion dollars a year. the majority of this 165 billion dollars goes for the tremendous social cost associated with alcohol misuse, including the police and help for destitute families and welfare and jails and loss of productivity and so on. so it's an immense cost, costing more than society than all the costs of the illegal drugs combined.

in this age of false promises and fast results, a.a. makes no such claims. the program of alcoholics anonymous does not work for everyone. it failed marianne gilliam, and she wrote a book about it. i think that aa didn't work for me because i needed something different than to be taught that i was powerless, and i needed something different than focusing any more attention on my character defects or my moral wrongs or making amends, because i think that my addiction was born out of a huge sense of guilt, a huge sense of not having ever accomplished anything in my life that was meaningful, and in a sense that i really was powerless.

the idea of acknowledging powerlessness in one's life is the first step into alcoholics anonymous. some critics find that step to be troublesome. they say you have to give up control of yourself. you have to acknowledge and grant, "i am powerless." that's what aa makes you do. you have to take on the label, "i am an alcoholic." you have to decide that you're going to be an alcoholic for the rest of your life.

hi, i'm cheryl, and i'm an alcoholic. even today, aaa remains under fire from a variety of sources, but has from the very beginning adopted a policy of silence, or as the literature says, of attraction rather than promotion. when AAA is attacked from the outside, our best policy is silence and not to defend ourselves, to let ourselves and our our records speak on its own, and to let our friends recommend us.

alcoholics anonymous is no longer alone in its 12-step program. over 200 organizations owe their beginnings to aa's 12-step foundation. right now, the recovery field is so overshadowed by aaa. i think almost every treatment center in the united states uses some form of the 12 steps as the basis of their program. i don't think that alcoholics anonymous is the answer for everybody in the whole world. over the years, i have met people who found spiritual answers and and different programs, you know, things that have helped them. and i think that it would be prideful, for lack of a better word, for me to think that alcoholics anonymous is the one and only. it has been for me.

[Music] but what of alcoholics anonymous as an organization? with its reliance on a spiritual element being fundamental to recovery, a.a. has on occasion been called a religion unto itself. i think it is not a religion. i think it's precisely a therapy, but i think it's a therapy that explicitly requires an orientation that is spiritual. who would like a 24-hour check? to get you. it has been called a cult. people have called it a cult. if i want to call it a cult, that's all right. we don't think it's a cult. bill called it a society. he said it was a society of recovered drunks. i've become a day since 1991 and have tried to figure it out and be intellectual and do it my own way and do it every other way except for the way that you suggested. i've had six months in a long time. you have to break this conviction that the alcoholic has that he's god. so you've got to, you've got to give him humility. you've got to give him a feeling that he has to get help from somewhere else.

at any hour of any day, there is an aaa meeting taking place somewhere in the world. hundreds of them. there are so-called open meetings where the non-a public is invited to attend. there are smoking meetings, bilingual meetings, morning, noon, and night meetings, conferences, roundups, and gatherings. but one of the great surprises to the first-time attendee is the levity, the laughter, and the joy that's present.

i was not an alcoholic, and even if i had been, i wasn't going to join an organization that was allowing my mother to belong to it. the first time i went to an a.a. meeting, i wasn't going for help for myself. i was accompanying a friend who had joined a.a., and i was trying to be supportive, and i was also interested in finding out about a.a. because by that time, my father had died as a result of cirrhosis of the liver, and my mother was still drinking very heavily. so i was kind of on a research trip. but what impressed me, i think, was the laughter that i heard before the meeting even started, and the warmth and the friendliness.

i am, i've thrown up a lot. i've overdosed a lot. and that's really about all i did before i came from alcox anonymous. aaa members, recovering alcoholics, seemed to find humor in their past, even when dealing with the most difficult topics. i've thrown jail overnight in the middle of night, so sick, got it, went the toilet, threw up, and turned. i've, i was mistaken, wasn't the toilet, was the guy's bunk, and kicked my front teeth out. maybe it's morbid humor. you think that's funny? or perhaps it's a comment on the fact that that was then, and this is now. that was one of the few mornings i was really glad i'd been in psychoanalysis. we're almost worth all the thousands of dollars because i was almost instantly able to identify that guy's problem. i remember thinking, this son of a [ __ ] is overreacting.

what the program of alcoholics anonymous does is tell me how to live most fully, most fulfillingly, and, and as we say, to live happy and joyous and free. and that's really the ultimate place that we, we hope to be. and if you're there, or even on the way there, you couldn't make that person take a drink. you could not. i have actually told people that they should go to aaa. i think it's a program that still has a lot of merit for a lot of people. and even in the beginnings, if there's not, if you want to quit drinking, and there's, there's not all these alternatives around, an aaa meeting is a good place to go. it gives you an alternative to going to a bar. it keeps you sober. the fellowship of people to me is the most healing aspect of aa. the fellowship of people just going in and having all these people say, "man, we know, we've been there, and we can help you." whether the cart is the individual or the cart is the group, the the essence of the aaa program is is not one person, but a group, be it two or more. and that's really how aa's success has been. i tell you, gratitude is the biggest gift i've gotten in the last four years. they say about the, the young newcomer who comes up to a guy like me, you know, and says, "oh gee, how do you get to be an old timer?" and the answer is, "you, you don't drink, and you don't die."

they enter an unmarked door, each and every day. a church basement, a community center, a hospital meeting room. they enter with no names and no future, only a past that didn't work out because of a condition that for centuries has been grossly misunderstood. they come one at a time, in numbers that boggle the mind, whether 15 years old or 80, poor or rich, man, woman, or child. millions who, without that person sitting next to them or across from them at the meeting, may never have lived through their addiction to alcohol. and if they're lucky, if they work at it, they leave a changed human being. a.a. has given me my life, and that's true of almost anybody in aaa. you hear it more than almost anything else. i'm alive now. you know, a.a. has given me a life, a new life. uh, it was a fellow i used to say, uh, um, a a didn't give me a second chance at life. it gave me a chance at a second life. for years, i tried to not drink. i had every reason to stop, yet i could never stop drinking until i found another alcoholic that wanted to stop drinking. together, we both could stop drinking. to me, a good time now is walking on a beach, watching a sunset, playing with two kittens that i have at home. and i would say my entire value system has changed in a.a., and has changed for the better.

[Music] life's just good. but i feel god's grace sometimes, and i would have bet my life that could not happen to me. and it wasn't any lightning-like change. it was a long, laborious change, inch by inch by inch. at that moment, i wanted to feel like i was feeling. i wanted to be living the life that i was living. i didn't wish i had your mother. i didn't wish i came from your town. i don't wish i had your sponsor. i didn't wish i had your car. i didn't wish i had your job. i didn't wish i had anything different than what was going on in my life right there and then, for that moment. and i'll tell you, when i walked through the doors of alcoholics anonymous, there was not one person here, or all of them put together, who could have told me that someday i would want to be who i was, look how i was, and most of all, feel like i felt. you know what? but for the grace of god, rooms like this, and people like you, i could have missed it all. thanks for not letting me.

today, june ji is a happily married mother of three and successful trial lawyer. she has been sober for 27 years. bob p. is 84 and lives with his wife of 50 years. he is the ex-general manager of the gso of alcoholics anonymous and has been sober for 39 years. clancy i. is the managing director of a major homeless mission in los angeles. he's been sober for 41 years. we've all heard it a thousand times: alcoholism destroys families and leaves children of alcoholics with permanent emotional scars. and if the drinker is underage, the hazards are even greater. alcohol is a factor in over 20 percent of traffic accidents with underage drivers, and in 12 percent of teen suicides. but aa has shown it doesn't have to be this way, and it has done so without judgment or rules. as is stated in the 12 traditions of aa, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. i'm bill curtis. thanks for watching investigative reports.

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