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In 1939 [Early], Marty M.
[right, at Blythewood with her sisters Chris (L) and Betty (R), 4
Jul 1938] had been a charity patient at the upscale Bythewood Sanitarium [left] under Dr. Harry Tiebout
[below left] for over a year,
but she showed no signs of progress.
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However, she soon encountered a significant
obstacle. “On every page, there were four or five capital Gs [‘God’]!” The
following day, she confronted Tiebout, declaring, “God is nothing but
self-hypnosis. I’m not about to accept this! I can’t buy it.”
Tiebout responded calmly but firmly, “Oh, never mind about that. Go back and read some more, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Marty resisted. Each day, she read just enough to arm herself for their next session. Tiebout would always say, “All right. Now go read some more.” This routine continued for six weeks, and she was only halfway through the manuscript.
Then a crisis erupted, sending Marty into a rage that involved her sister Chris and her friend Grennie. Feeling responsible, she stormed up to her third-floor attic room. “I was angry with a kind of anger I had never felt before, and thank God, never have since,” she later recounted. “I was raging. I wanted to kill!” She literally saw red as the blood vessels in her eyes began to break.
As she was contemplating a thought to “get two big bottles of whiskey and get good and drunk” to drown her anger, out of the corner of her eye she noticed “that damn book,” Alcoholics Anonymous, lying open on her bed.
Tiebout responded calmly but firmly, “Oh, never mind about that. Go back and read some more, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Marty resisted. Each day, she read just enough to arm herself for their next session. Tiebout would always say, “All right. Now go read some more.” This routine continued for six weeks, and she was only halfway through the manuscript.
Then a crisis erupted, sending Marty into a rage that involved her sister Chris and her friend Grennie. Feeling responsible, she stormed up to her third-floor attic room. “I was angry with a kind of anger I had never felt before, and thank God, never have since,” she later recounted. “I was raging. I wanted to kill!” She literally saw red as the blood vessels in her eyes began to break.
As she was contemplating a thought to “get two big bottles of whiskey and get good and drunk” to drown her anger, out of the corner of her eye she noticed “that damn book,” Alcoholics Anonymous, lying open on her bed.
In the middle of the page was a line that stood out as if carved in raised block letters, black, high, sharp—“We cannot live with anger.” That did it. Somehow those words were the battering ram that knocked down my resistance.
In 1939 [Fall?], Kaye M., a non-alcoholic, divorced
her alcoholic husband Ty while he was trying to get sober in Akron, Ohio, and
traveled to New York City to meet Bill W.
Previously, after Ty had managed to stay sober for two years, he and Kaye had moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles, California. However, in Los Angeles, he relapsed and drank himself into one jam after another. His attorney in Cleveland, Ohio, sent Ty a copy of the multilith final draft of Alcoholics Anonymous, which Bill Wilson had provided him. Though Ty was deeply impressed with the manuscript, he did not stop drinking. Kaye, who did not read the manuscript herself, was moved by her husband’s reaction and wired the Alcoholic Foundation for help.
When they told her that the nearest A.A. meeting to Los Angeles was in Akron, Ohio, Kaye took Ty there and asked Dr. Bob S. and Wally G. to help him.
On meeting Bill in New York City, Kaye was surprised when he spoke not about Ty’s issues, but about her’s, saying that she was spiritually bankrupt. She later recalled:
Previously, after Ty had managed to stay sober for two years, he and Kaye had moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles, California. However, in Los Angeles, he relapsed and drank himself into one jam after another. His attorney in Cleveland, Ohio, sent Ty a copy of the multilith final draft of Alcoholics Anonymous, which Bill Wilson had provided him. Though Ty was deeply impressed with the manuscript, he did not stop drinking. Kaye, who did not read the manuscript herself, was moved by her husband’s reaction and wired the Alcoholic Foundation for help.
When they told her that the nearest A.A. meeting to Los Angeles was in Akron, Ohio, Kaye took Ty there and asked Dr. Bob S. and Wally G. to help him.
On meeting Bill in New York City, Kaye was surprised when he spoke not about Ty’s issues, but about her’s, saying that she was spiritually bankrupt. She later recalled:
Bill told me that I had been an extremely bad wife because I had broken all his falls for him and never let him hit bottom.Bill also gave her a newly published copy of Alcoholics Anonymous. While in New York, Kaye attended her first A.A. meeting, which made a significant impression on her. Saying goodbye to Bill, she told him:
I’m going home to Los Angeles, and if Ty can stay sober on these twelve steps of yours for six months, I’m going to beat the drum for Alcoholics Anonymous up and down the state of California, I swear to God.Kaye returned home—without Ty—by freighter via the Panama Canal, a journey that likely took 2 to 3 weeks. She used this time to read the Big Book.
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