There are friends and family of alcoholics that formed a support group called Al Anon.Al Anon was founded by Lois Wilson. Lois Wilson is the wife of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Lois was well-known and an inspiration to the people who have alcoholic loved ones.
Lois was the eldest daughter of Clark and Matilda Burnham. Her father practiced surgery in Brooklyn Heights, New York. The granddaughter of a Swedish born pastor where she was raised in that faith. She attended a kindergarten run by the Pratt Institute and later Friends School. She graduated from the Packer Collegiate Institute with a concentration in the fine arts. She had a talent for drawing, and later developed skill in interior decoration. After graduation she worked for the YWCA and later taught at a private school.
Lois and Bill got to know each other through Lois’ younger brother. Bill became an acquaintance of Roger, Lois’s younger brother and then, met Lois. To make a long story short, they fell in love and hoped to build a family.
On the contrary, Bill Wilson was raised in a not so happy family. Bill Wilson was nine when his parents divorced. His alcoholic father deserted the family, and the following year his mother left Bill and his sister with her parents and moved from Vermont to Boston. Bill’s childhood and young adulthood were spent fighting depression, anger, low self-esteem and guilty feelings that would worsen the anger, bitterness and grandiose ambitions that fueled his alcoholism.
During Bill and Lois’ marriage, Bill was still an alcohol drinker, all the more when the couple was confronted with several miscarriages and finally facing the fact that they were not able to bear children. With Bill’s problem, he had gone through darkness as any other alcoholics would. And finally, he found the light and entered a rehabilitation center. After his rehab, he made up Alcoholics Anonymous. Later on, Lois founded Al Anon which caters to the friends and family of alcoholics.
In 1935, after years of unsuccessfully fighting to cover for Bill and deal with his disease, Lois finally saw him take control of his alcoholism; however, his sobriety was not the result of Lois’s help, rather it came through the support of a fellow recovering alcoholic, Dr. Bob Smith. As Bill and Bob attained lasting sobriety and co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous, Lois began to question the value she had in her own marriage. After devoting 17 years to healing her sick husband, Lois felt left out and resentful that he had gotten sober without her help. Lois eventually discovered that she was not alone. She slowly engaged the wives of the men in Bill’s program and came to realize that while Bill was addicted to alcohol, she was addicted to him – and that the family and friends of alcoholics are, in some ways, as sick as their loved ones. Lois received the required understanding needed to repair her fractured relationship and to help millions of others do the same. And that’s how she founded Al Anon.
Lois began her own journey through informal meetings with the wives of alcoholics, a seed that would one day flourish into the organization known as Al-Anon. She was able to start the organization because she desired to help the loved ones who experienced the same thing she did. When she started to share her intimate thoughts and feelings with others, she came to comprehend that she had really believed she could control her husband’s life. She was totally sure that her love and inspiration was all that was required to accomplish his every need, that her own willpower and steadfast guidance was all that was needed to quench Bill’s thirst for alcohol.
People suffering from loved ones who are victims of alcohol abuse saw Lois as an inspiration to carry on with their battles. It is certainly true that it is those people whose loved ones have become alcoholics who endure the most. It pains them that their loved ones have become lost on their way. They could not seem to bear the ache of seeing their loved ones suffer from addiction.
Al Anon is there to support the wants and desires and the problems of the loved ones of people who suffer from alcohol abuse.