November, 1934 Ebby visits Bill and tells him his story
The following comes from the book A.A. Comes of Age, pages 58-59.
I could not stop, and I knew it.Then one afternoon the telephone rang. It was my old boarding school friend and drinking companion, Ebby. Even over the phone I somehow knew that he was sober. I could not remember a time when he had been sober in New York City. Long ago I had marked him for a hopeless case. I had heard in fact that they were going to put him away because of alcoholic insanity. Eagerly I said, "Come right on over. We'll talk about the good old days." Now why did I say that? It was because my present was unbearable and I knew there was to be no future. Soon Ebby stood beaming in the doorway. Then he was sitting across the kitchen from me. There was a big crock of gin and pineapple juice between us. Immediately I felt that there was something different about Ebby.

It was not only that he was sober. I could not put a finger on what it was. I offered him a drink and he refused. Then I asked him, "What's this all about? You say you aren't drinking. But you also say you aren't on the water wagon, either. What's up?" "Well," said Ebby, "I've got religion."

What a crusher that was-Ebby and religion! Maybe his alcoholic insanity had become religious insanity. It was an awful letdown. I had been educated at a wonderful engineering college where somehow I had gathered the impression that man was God. But I had to be polite, so I said, "What brand of religion have you got, Ebby?" "Oh," he said, "I don't think it has got any special brand name. I just fell in with a group of people, the Oxford Groups. I don't go along with all their teachings by any means. But those folks have given me some wonderful ideas.

I learned that I had to admit I was licked; I learned that I ought to take stock of myself and confess my defects to another person in confidence; I learned that I needed to make restitution for the harm I had done others. I was told that I ought to practice the kind of giving that has no price tag on it, the giving of yourself to somebody. Now," he added, "I know you are going to gag on this, but they taught me that I should try to pray to whatever God I thought there was for the power to carry out these simple precepts. And if I did not believe there was any God, then I had better try the experiment of praying to whatever God there might be. And you know, Bill, it's a queer thing, but even before I had done all this, just as soon as I decided that I would try with an open mind, it seemed to me that my drinking problem was lifted right out of me. It wasn't like the water wagon business at all. This time I felt completely released of the desire, and I have not had a drink for months."

Ebby didn't try to pressure or evangelize me, and pretty soon he left. For several days I went on drinking. But in no waking hour was the thought of my friend absent from my mind. I could not forget what he had said. In the kinship of common suffering, one alcoholic had been talking to another.
Reprinted with permission from A.A. World Services, Inc.