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Early women alcoholics get sober and help open doors for more women

The women who came to Alcoholics Anonymous in the early days often wondered if the program would work for them. After all, the alcoholic women who came to AA for help encountered a Fellowship comprised of men.

Marty M., an alcoholic in New York City, who could have been included in the previous chapter, reflects on her life after 29 years of sobriety in the article “After 29 Years.” And in the story “For Men Only?” she describes attending her first meeting in 1939. “I was the only woman alcoholic there,” Marty writes. When she saw the book Alcoholics Anonymous, her first thoughts were, This was a man's book, entirely about men, obviously written by and for men ... I'd have to find my own way out after all. But bravely, she claims her seat. With a year’s sobriety, she travels with Bill W. and Lois to Akron, where she makes her first Twelfth Step call, a woman she finds “drunk in bed.”

In “Learning to Fly,” Sybil C. of Los Angeles writes how she initially thought AA was a clinic or hospital in New York. Ruth Hock, Bill W.’s stenographer, sets her straight and suggests that she attend the one AA meeting in Los Angeles. She warns Sybil that the group is struggling and “they have no women alcoholics in California.” Fortunately, Sybil goes anyway and her journey in AA begins.

In “Still Active After All These Years,” Mary W. comes to her first meeting in 1960, one of the few women on the San Francisco peninsula. Her first sponsor, who had but six months of sobriety, was the only other woman there. Mary also had to contend with her husband who “didn’t want me to quit, didn’t want me to go, but I went anyway.”

These and other stories in this chapter recount the lengths that early women in AA went to get and stay sober.