A.A. #3 - Bill D. - We are all Bill Dotson - He found sobriety July 4, 1935

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith had their first success in the new program of Alcoholics Anonymous with this man names Bill D. (Dotson).Show more

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Bill Dotson was born on a Kentucky farm in Carlyle County. He passed away at age 63 sober.
His sober date was July 4, 1935.
His parents were well- to-do people, and their marriage was a happy one.
His wife, a Kentucky girl, went with Bill to Akron where h completed my course in law at the Akron Law School.
Bill Dotson was influential in the area he was not an ambitious man in AA.

Bill Dotson, the “Man on the Bed,” was AA number 3. At his death, he had not had a drink in more than nineteen years. His date of sobriety was the date he entered Akron’s City Hospital for his last detox, June 26, 1935. Two days later occurred that fateful day when two sober alcoholics visited him: Dr. Bob Smith of Akron, Ohio, and Bill Wilson, a guest of Dr. Bob’s from New York.

A few days before, Dr. Bob had said to Bill: “If you and I are going to stay sober, we had better get busy.” Dr. Bob called Akron’s City Hospital and told the nurse, a “Mrs. Hall,” that he and a man from New York had a cure for alcoholism. Did she have an alcoholic customer on whom they could try it out? She replied, “Well, Doctor, I suppose you’ve already tried it yourself?”

Then she told him of a man who had just come in with DT’s, had blacked the eyes of two nurses, and was now strapped down tight. “He’s a grand chap when he’s sober,” she added.

The nurse told Dr. Bob and Bill that Bill Dotson had been a well-known attorney in Akron and a city councilman. But he had been hospitalized eight times in the last six months. (Bill Wilson sometimes said “six times.”) Following each release, he got drunk even before he got home.

Bill’s wife, Henrietta Dotson, had talked to Dr. Bob and Bill earlier. When she told her husband she had been “talking to a couple of fellows about drinking” he was furious at her “disloyalty.” When she told them that they were “a couple of drunks” Bill didn’t mind so much.

Henrietta apparently had quite a conversation with the two men, and she told her husband that their plan for staying sober themselves was to tell their plan to another drunk.

He walked out of that hospital on July 4, 1935, a free man, never to drink again. AA’s Number One Group dates from that day.

That Fourth of July they had plenty to celebrate. So they had a picnic. The Smiths, Bill Wilson, the Dotsons, and Eddie Riley, the first alcoholic they tried to help were there. (Eddie didn’t get sober at first, but later he did, and Eddie said in a talk that there were two firsts in A.A. — the first one who accepted the program and the first who refused it.)

Within a week, Bill Dotson was back in court, sober, and arguing a case. But at first his wife was doubtful. He had previously gone on the wagon and stayed sober for long periods. But then he drank again. Would this time be different? And he hadn’t had that sudden transforming experience that Bill Wilson talked about.

The three worked with scores of others. “Many were called but mighty few chosen; failure was our daily companion. But when I left Akron in September 1935, two or three more sufferers had apparently linked themselves to us for good,” wrote Bill.

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