Post-prohibition, alcoholism was seen less of a disease than a personal, moral, failing. Christian groups offered limited help to the fallen alcoholics, but by and large no practical treatments existed. Dr. William Silkworth saw it differently. Treating one of this patients, Bill Wilson, a once-promising Wall Streeter who drank away his future, he prescribed some concrete, practical steps Wilson could take to curb his desires. On a business trip to Akron, Ohio, Wilson followed his doctor’s advice and got in touch with another alcoholic struggling to quit, Dr. Bob Smith.

On this day, May 12, in 1935, Wilson met Smith at the home of Henrietta Siberling, a member of the religious alcoholism treatment organization, the Oxford Group. Both men were also part of the Oxford Group and spent a month together in daily prayers and bible readings to help break their addiction.

Based on their experience, Wilson and Smith decided to found a national program that treats alcoholics with empathy, which the two found with each other, rather than the moral sin paradigm taught by the Oxford Group. At the same time, they wanted to emphasize that alcoholism was a disease, and curable like one with the right steps. Smith had his last drink in June 10 of 1935, the date that Alcoholics Anonymous is said to have launched.