I did some research on the founder and his name was Charles Dederich. It was interesting to see how he grew up and that his family was not a good influence on the man he was becoming. He was quickly known for having a troubled childhood. Dederich didn't get stuck with the good end of the stick, and was known by his neighborhood as the bad kid on the block but that has a lot to do with the fact that he was from an un-loving family that didn't show him any attention. I wasn't surprised that he fell into his addiction of drinking at a young age. However, he was smart enough to realize that the way he was living his life was not healthy, and he needed to get help.
Dederich was labeled as the "alcohol tramp" and when he found out this information-- wanted to seek out help and found it in AA (alcoholic anonymous). It was stated that he was very vulnerable in these meetings and didn't show any shame in the fact that he needed help. He started sharing his story in AA, and sought out to help people within this group-- by helping others, he was helping himself. I found a very important quote from an article that I was researching from, “The rough eloquence that burst forth from him at meetings belied his intimidating appearance. He was insightful yet funny, philosophical yet colloquial, and, above all, he was brutally honest with both others and himself.” I think that speaks volumes of the man that Dederich was before he started going downhill.
After Dederich saw that he was excelling in AA, he wanted to start his own organization that was centered on speaking encouragement into people's lives, and people could live there and become clean. Dederich would provide different classes that would help people learn about their addiction. Their would also be a strict diet that would be making the people who resisted there to go cold turkey from whichever drug they chose. From all the research I've done thus far, it seems as if he started out with good intentions!
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