DUBUQUE AREA INTERGROUP OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

DUBUQUE AREA INTERGROUP OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international mutual aid fellowship founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio. AA's stated "primary purpose" is to help alcoholics "stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety". With other early members, Bill Wilson and Bob Smith developed AA's Twelve Step program of spiritual and character development. AA's initial Twelve Traditions were introduced in 1946 to help the fellowship be stable and unified while disengaged from "outside issues" and influences.

The Traditions recommend that members and groups remain anonymous in public media, altruistically helping other alcoholics and avoiding official affiliations with other organizations. The Traditions also recommend that those representing AA avoid dogma and coercive hierarchies. Subsequent fellowships such as Narcotics Anonymous have adopted and adapted the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions to their respective primary purposes.

According to AA's 2014 membership survey, 27% of members have been sober less than one year, 24% have 1–5 years being sober, 13% have 5–10 years, 14% have 10–20 years, and 22% have more than 20 years sober.

The first female member, Florence Rankin, joined AA in March 1937, and the first non-Protestant member, a Roman Catholic, joined in 1939. AA membership has since spread "across diverse cultures holding different beliefs and values", including geopolitical areas resistant to grassroots movements. In the fourth edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (November 2001), it states "Since the third edition was published in 1976, worldwide membership of AA has just about doubled, to an estimated two million or more..."

AA's name is derived from its first book, informally called "The Big Book", originally titled Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism.

The 1987 through 1993 Dubuque City Directory listed 1593 Main.

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Source:

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous