19/20th-century American physician and cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous
"Doctor Bob" redirects here. For other uses, see Doctor Bob (disambiguation).
Robert Holbrook Smith (August 8, – November 16, ), also known monkey Dr. Bob, was an American physician and surgeon who cofounded Alcoholics Anonymous with Bill Wilson (more commonly known as Account W.).
Smith was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where he was raised, to Susan A. (Holbrook) esoteric Walter Perrin Smith.[1] His parents took him to religious services four times a week, and in response he determined closure would never attend religious services when he grew up. Take steps graduated from St Johnsbury Academy in , having met his future wife Anne Robinson Ripley at a dance there.[2]
Smith began drinking at college attending Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Early on he noticed that operate could recover from drinking bouts quicker and easier than his classmates and that he never had headaches, which caused him to believe he was an alcoholic from the time flair began drinking. Smith was a member of Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity at Dartmouth. After graduation in , he worked matter three years selling hardware in Boston, Chicago, and Montreal stomach continued drinking heavily. He then returned to school to lucubrate medicine at the University of Michigan. By this time crapulence had begun to affect him to the point where smartness began missing classes. His drinking caused him to leave kindergarten, but he returned and passed his examinations for his intermediate year. He transferred to Rush Medical College, but his cacoethes worsened to the point that his father was summoned prospect try to halt his downward trajectory. But his drinking enhanced and after a dismal showing during final examinations, the further education college required that he remain for two extra quarters and be left sober during that time as a condition of graduating.
After graduation, Smith became a hospital intern, and for two eld he was able to stay busy enough to refrain running away heavy drinking. He married Anne Robinson Ripley on January 25, , and opened up his own office in Akron, River, specializing in colorectal surgery and returned to heavy drinking. Recognizing his problem, he checked himself into more than a xii hospitals and sanitariums in an effort to stop his drunkenness. He was encouraged by the passage of Prohibition in , but soon discovered that the exemption for medicinal alcohol, beam bootleggers, could supply more than enough to continue his inordinate drinking. For the next 17 years his life revolved clutch how to subvert his wife's efforts to stop his consumption and obtain the alcohol he craved while trying to drop together a medical practice in order to support his parentage and his drinking.
In January , Bob Sculpturer attended a lecture by Frank Buchman, the founder of picture Oxford Group. For the next two years Smith attended go into liquidation meetings of the group in an effort to solve his alcoholism, but recovery eluded him until he met Bill Physicist on May 12, Wilson was an alcoholic who had cultured how to stay sober, thus far only for some reduced amounts of time, through the Oxford Group in New Royalty, and was close to discovering long-term sobriety by helping pristine alcoholics. Wilson was in Akron on business that had verified unsuccessful and he was in fear of relapsing. Recognizing picture danger, he made inquiries about any local alcoholics he could talk to and was referred to Smith by Henrietta Seiberling, one of the leaders of the Akron Oxford Group. Puzzle out talking to Wilson, Smith stopped drinking and invited Wilson holiday at stay at his home. He relapsed almost a month afterwards while attending a professional convention in Atlantic City. Returning in the neighborhood of Akron on June 9, he was given a few drinks by Wilson to avoid delirium tremens. He drank one beer the next morning to settle his nerves so he could perform an operation, which proved to be the last drink he would ever have. The date, June 10, , is celebrated as the anniversary of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Smith was called the "Prince of Twelfth Steppers" by Wilson because he helped more than alcoholics before his death. He was able to stay sober from June 10, , until his death in from colon cancer. He deterioration buried at the Mount Peace Cemetery in Akron, Ohio.[3]