{"id":5389,"date":"2026-04-24T08:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5389"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:42:26","slug":"we-heal-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/we-heal-together\/","title":{"rendered":"We Heal Together"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0
His real name was William Griffith Wilson.
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But for most of his life he was known as Bill W or just Bill.
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On May 12, 1935, he journeyed from his New York home to Akron, Ohio, intent on closing a business deal.

There was a lot at stake.\u00a0
\u00a0
Wilson was an alcoholic who had been drinking excessively since joining the military in 1916, shortly before America\u2019s entry into World War I.\u00a0After imbibing his first few drinks he thought, \u201cI\u2019ve found the elixir of life.\u201d Here at last was the cure for his social awkwardness.
\u00a0
Following the war, he went to law school.\u00a0He failed to graduate, however, because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. He became a stock speculator and traveled the country.\u00a0Bill was a sufficiently gifted businessman, but his drinking routinely sabotaged any real chance for success.\u00a0He spiraled into depression \u2013 which only increased his dependence on the bottle.
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Now, standing in the lobby of Akron\u2019s Mayflower Hotel, he was at a crossroads.
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Something incredible had happened the previous November. Lying in bed, despairing over the condition of his life, he had cried out, \u201cI\u2019ll do anything!\u00a0Anything at all! If there be a God, let him show himself!\u201d As Wilson later told the story, he was flooded with a feeling of ecstasy.\u00a0He suddenly felt serenity.\u00a0
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It was as if God had extended the offer of grace \u2013 and he simply said Yes.\u00a0
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On December 11, he had taken his last drink. Or so he thought.
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The Ohio business deal flopped.\u00a0A familiar feeling of dread began to engulf him.\u00a0He was a failure, and everyone surely knew it.\u00a0His mother had deserted him 30 years earlier. He felt crushed by loneliness.

At the far end of the lobby, he saw the bar and heard the familiar sounds of laughter and tinkling glasses. \u201cI\u2019m going to get drunk,\u201d he thought. He immediately knew that throwing away six months of sobriety might mean the end of his life.
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That\u2019s when another thought entered his mind. It wasn\u2019t \u201cI need a drink,\u201d but \u201cI need another alcoholic.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0
Wilson needed to find someone else \u2013 not just a fellow drinker who could empathize with his addiction, but someone who, like him, desperately needed help. Bill sensed that if he poured himself into helping another struggler, it might help break the spell of his self-centered misery.
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He stepped into the lobby\u2019s phone booth and found a directory of local churches (yes, there really used to be such publications). He called nine congregations, asking if someone might be able to put him in touch with an alcoholic. It was an odd request. He heard \u201csorry\u201d nine times.
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By the time he dialed the tenth time, Bill was getting anxious. The thought occurred to him that if just had a drink, it would help him make these calls.
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After identifying himself as \u201ca rum hound from New York,\u201d the woman on the other end of the line put him in touch with Dr. Robert Smith, the husband of one of her close friends. He was also a proctologist and a raging drunk \u2013 and it was widely known that his drinking habits had not exactly improved his effectiveness as a surgeon.
\u00a0
Smith was a Christian. He had begged for God\u2019s help. But after more than a dozen stays at various sanatoria, sobriety eluded him. Bob read a lot of Scripture, but he discovered that most of his good ideas came to him while he was drunk \u2013 after which he couldn\u2019t remember a thing.
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But when Bill W got in touch that day with Dr. Bob, something important happened. A crucial understanding dawned on both of them.
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As Smith later put it, \u201cThe spiritual approach was as useless as any other if you soaked it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself.\u201d
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In other words, in order to keep something, you have to give it away. The key to sobriety is not just getting there (as important as that is) but maintaining it through a never-ending commitment to share such grace with others.
\u00a0
In Jesus\u2019 memorable words, \u201cWhoever tries to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will preserve it\u201d (Matthew 16:25).
\u00a0
Within a few weeks Bob and Bill had established what they later called \u201ca nameless squad of drunks\u201d \u2013 a unique support system in which alcoholics help other alcoholics stay sober.\u00a0
\u00a0
The group became known as Alcoholics Anonymous, and William Griffith Wilson became Bill W.\u00a0He refused to use his full name for the rest of his life. He died in 1971 after 36 years of sobriety and wouldn\u2019t even let TIME<\/em> put his picture on their cover, honoring AA\u2019s ideal of anonymity.\u00a0
\u00a0
The magazine later identified him as one of the 100 most important figures of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u00a0The self-described hopeless drunk was now acclaimed as \u201cThe Healer.\u201d British philosopher Aldous Huxley called him the greatest social architect of our time.
\u00a0
Today there are more than 120,000 AA groups worldwide, through which millions of alcoholics have experienced help and hope.\u00a0Myriad other \u201ctwelve-step\u201d communities have sprung up to support men and women addicted to drugs, sex, food, gambling, shopping, workaholism, and a host of other self-destructive behaviors.\u00a0
\u00a0
At the heart of every one of those movements is a simple premise:
\u00a0
We sin alone, but we heal together.<\/em>
\u00a0
The purpose of life is not to get. It\u2019s to give. God\u2019s best gifts come to us because they are on their way to someone else.
\u00a0
It\u2019s worth noting that AA identifies its birthday not as December 11, 1934 \u2013 when Bill W stopped drinking \u2013 but as June 10, 1935.
\u00a0
That\u2019s when Dr. Bob took his last drink and began to embody the principle that if we commit ourselves to help each other, something wonderful happens:
\u00a0
All of us, by God\u2019s grace, can get well.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0His real name was William Griffith Wilson.\u00a0But for most of his life he was known as Bill W or just Bill.\u00a0On May 12, 1935, he journeyed from his New York home to Akron, Ohio, intent on closing a business deal. There was a lot at stake.\u00a0\u00a0Wilson was an alcoholic who had been… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1019,60],"class_list":["post-5389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aa","tag-addiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}