1968: The Dallas Central Office was reorganized as an Intergroup Office operating under the guidance of the AA Groups, which numbered 8 or 9 by then. A local member loaned the Intergroup $2,000.00 to buy literature from AA World Services, Inc.
1969: Bill W. wrote in a letter:
In general, A.A. really has to deal with alcoholics no matter what their other complications. You would be the first to agree that there is no such thing as an alcoholic who has no emotional “complications.” So the question boils down to this: shall A.A. try to help those with severe and addictive problems, provided they are alcoholics? The answer is “yes” we should try.1970: In Argentina
This amount of charity does not mean that we cannot exclude those who disturb meetings or seriously interfere with the functioning of the group. Such people can be asked to quiet down or go elsewhere, or, [sic] to come back when they are better able to participate [right: “The Third Tradition,” from the pamphlet “The Twelve Traditions Illustrated”].
[left: location on globe], where there were twenty Alcoholics Anonymous groups, La Comisión
Organizadora de la OSG (the Organizing Committee of the GSO) was
formed.
1970:
KUAT in Tucson, Arizona, launched “AA-of-the-Air,” a radio show designed for
homebound A.A. members
[right: radio towers, including KUAT’s, on Mount Bigelow, northeast of
Tucson].1971: Morris B. got sober in a North Carolina prison when he saw a wooden sign with the Serenity Prayer printed on it. He had been in and out of A.A. in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco for many years. He recalled that at one of his first A.A. meetings, he heard, “If you are an alcoholic and if you continue to drink, the end is death or insanity.” He added, “They hadn’t mentioned the living hell before death.”
Morris described himself as a five-time loser, meaning he had five felony convictions (not including the cases he beat). He served time in four penitentiaries and several prison camps, including a maximum-security facility. He spent eleven months in solitary confinement, bouncing in and out of the “hole”—a bare concrete-and-steel cubicle—about five times during that period. The crimes he had committed were the result of drinking and drug use.
Even in prison, he was always fighting the system, even going so far as to use his body: he cracked his leg with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer in the rock hole and let lye and water eat away at four of his toes and foot for five hours.
He was released in 1974 but eventually relapsed on marijuana after approximately 20 years of sobriety. According to Gene C., “Morris knew more about alcoholism than anybody else he ever knew.” Morris’s story in the third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous is titled “A Five-Time Loser Wins.”
1971:
The Dallas Intergroup office, by this time located at the Hudson &
Hudson Building* [left, recent], was publishing a meeting directory that included groups in jails,
hospitals, and more. By 1973, the number of groups being served grew to
30.
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