A close relative of mine used to complain that Bill Wilson, the "anonymous founder" of AA, was a "churchie", someone who was a church-goer, and perhaps as a result a hard-driving Pharisee type.
If indicating Pharisee one thinks of "hypocrite," no term could be more accurate.
This man did not live the program to the fullest, not in the slightest. Even a recent documentary acknowledged that the man experimented with LSD, hardly the makings or workings of a man who touted sobriety all of his life.
But there's more, sadly.
In meetings, members often share that while on his death bed, Bill W. still desire a sip of whiskey. Another source is more telling:
"He drank no alcohol for the final 37 years of his life; however, in the last days of his life he made demands for whiskey and became belligerent when refused." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W.#cite_note-Cheever.2C_2004.2C_pp_245_-_247-22)
The man was a compulsive smoker all of his life, eventually dying of emphysema. His fate has become the fate of many in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, in which individuals still linger onto something else to get them through the day. Smoking, coffee drinking, the desserts at the table brought during the break, people will find something else to feed the inner man, yet never find the life that they can find in Christ Jesus.
Bill W. endured a stinging depression for the greater part of his life, as well, at one point having to turn over control of the AA central office to someone else.
Bill W., in my opinion, was not a sober man, certainly not a recovered one. The insanity of attributing so much virtue to a man riddled with vice is very disturbing, one which should lead members of the AA program to reconsider their affiliation altogether.
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