From the apostolic few who gathered in the basement of King School in Akron, Ohio, in June 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous has grown into the largest secular self-help organisation in the Western world. With its ten million members, it's bigger than the Freemasons, the Rotarians, the TUC, the White Aryan Resistance, the Samaritans, the KKK, the Women's Institute and - in terms of weekly attendance - the Church of England.

But if AA is big, so is alcoholism. If you accept the modest estimate that 10 per cent of the adult population of this country are problem drinkers then you will conclude that the LRB readership will contain some 10,000 of them. And that 1.5 contributors per issue might have to be so classified. According to the campaign group Alcohol Concern's latest bulletin, three out of four British adults have had their lives severely disrupted by their own or someone else's alcohol abuse.

LRB 30 November 2000 | PDF Download