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Bill W. And Dr. Bob
Bill Wilson, an alcoholic goes to Akron, Ohio on a business trip in1935. He is desperately trying to wipe out his yearning for a drink. A few months prior to the trip, Wilson had stayed in a hospital. While there he was aroused by a flash of light and he felt a spiritual changeover. It encouraged him to renounce the urge that had taken the expected toll on his marriage and effectively ended his career on Wall Street.
However in the lobby of that Akron hotel, he got the urge to have a drink. Instead of trying to suppress the urge by pursuing distractions like a game of solitaire, rereading William James, he makes a phone call. What happens after the phone call forms the actual basis of the play. It tells about the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous that in its own clever and perhaps even unintended way releases Wilson from the trap of hagiography that the culture has kept him in.
In the play, Wilson thinks that he might be able to suppress his urge by talking to another alcoholic. So he calls up a minister who becomes instrumental in introducing Wilson to a surgeon named Bob Smith. The surgeon drinks secretly and when not drinking, turns into ‘a monster' and can't function.
Smith was involved with the Oxford Group, a Christian organization that sermonized self-reformation through heavenly supervision and answerability. However Smith was not in favor of religious surrender.
The two, Wilson and Smith adopted the Oxford Group's ideology, as they took over from transcendentalism because these doctrines seemed relevant to fighting any addiction. Together the two men set out to convert alcoholics.
The duo counsel a patient in a hospital and they seemed to be gaining grounds when finally the young man says that he could never completely give up drinking. Wilson in exasperation cries out that he might just give up drinking for that day and thus one of A.A.'s most famous doctrines is born.
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Bill W. and Dr. Bob the play portrays the rapport between Bill Wilson an unsuccessful stockbroker and Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon during the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous. The popular play has been written by Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey. 
