<P>... more and more, Bill discovered that new adherents could get sober by believing in each other and in the strength of this group . Men (no women were members yet) who had proven over and over again, by extremely painful experience, that they could not get sober on their own had somehow become more powerful when two or three of them worked on their common problem . This, then--whatever it was that occurred among them--was what they could accept as a power greater than themselves . They did not need the Oxford Group . </P> <P> In 1955, Wilson acknowledged AA's debt, saying "The Oxford Groupers had clearly shown us what to do . And just as importantly, we learned from them what not to do ." Among the Oxford Group practices that AA retained were informal gatherings, a "changed - life" developed through "stages", and working with others for no material gain, AA's analogs for these are meetings, "the steps", and sponsorship . AA's tradition of anonymity was a reaction to the publicity - seeking practices of the Oxford Group, as well as AA's wish to not promote, Wilson said, "erratic public characters who through broken anonymity might get drunk and destroy confidence in us ." </P> <P> To share their method, Wilson and other members wrote the initially - titled book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism, from which AA drew its name . Informally known as "The Big Book" (with its first 164 pages virtually unchanged since the 1939 edition), it suggests a twelve - step program in which members admit that they are powerless over alcohol and need help from a "higher power". They seek guidance and strength through prayer and meditation from God or a Higher Power of their own understanding; take a moral inventory with care to include resentments; list and become ready to remove character defects; list and make amends to those harmed; continue to take a moral inventory, pray, meditate, and try to help other alcoholics recover . The second half of the book, "Personal Stories" (subject to additions, removal and retitling in subsequent editions), is made of AA members' redemptive autobiographical sketches . </P> <P> In 1941, interviews on American radio and favorable articles in US magazines, including a piece by Jack Alexander in The Saturday Evening Post, led to increased book sales and membership . By 1946, as the growing fellowship quarreled over structure, purpose, and authority, as well as finances and publicity, Wilson began to form and promote what became known as AA's "Twelve Traditions," which are guidelines for an altruistic, unaffiliated, non-coercive, and non-hierarchical structure that limited AA's purpose to only helping alcoholics on a non-professional level while shunning publicity . Eventually he gained formal adoption and inclusion of the Twelve Traditions in all future editions of the Big Book . At the 1955 conference in St. Louis, Missouri, Wilson relinquished stewardship of AA to the General Service Conference, as AA grew to millions of members internationally . </P>

Where did the name alcoholics anonymous come from