RECOVERY ROOM GROUP

Emotions Anonymous History

Because EA is not well known, I would like to share with you a little something about the history. Years ago, before EA, there was a program called Neurotic’s Anonymous. It is from this program that EA was born.

Neurotic’s Anonymous (NA) was started on Feb. 19, 1964 in Washington, D.C. by a man named Grover.

Grover had emotional problems since childhood which caused him so much suffering that he attempted suicide five times by the age of twenty-one. The fifth time he nearly succeeded. He took an overdose of sleeping pills and was unconscious for two days. They barely saved him.

After lying near death, he decided to keep on living. He sought help from friends and doctors and used alcohol as a crutch. But still he suffered. He was intelligent and had a good education and job, but life was unbearable. He became an alcoholic and his psychiatrist referred him to A.A.

There he gained not only sobriety, but emotional health for the first time in his life. He thought the A.A. program could help people with emotional problems that had not become alcoholic. He tried the program on an emotionally ill woman from Miami, Florida and she got well.

He got permission from A.A. to use their program, changing the A. to N. for Neurotics Anonymous. The first N.A. meeting was held in Grover’s apartment with four or five people present.

N.A. has spread to many states and countries. It was started in Minnesota on April l3, 1966 by Marion.

In Oct 1965, Marion F. read a newspaper article about an organization, which had adapted the 12-step program of A.A. for use in overcoming emotional problems. Marion had experienced many years of fear and panic, and this sounded like an answer for her. However there was no group in her area.

In Feb. 1966 a friend asked Marion to attend an Al-Anon meeting. There she discovered people using the same 12 steps, which she had read about in the newspaper. She continued to attend Al-Anon meetings and begin to work that program.

With the encouragement of her doctor, who could see the progress she was making because of that program, Marion decided to start a group of Neurotic’s Anonymous, the 12-step fellowship mentioned in the paper. The 1^st meeting was held on April13, 1966 in St. Paul, MN. Several Al-Anon members came to the 1^st few meetings to give support. 12 people came to that 1^st meeting and the next week, due to a newspaper article, 65 people came. By fall of that year, other groups spread to other locations in MN and neighboring states and Germany.

In time, differences developed between these groups and the main office of Neurotics Anonymous. After many attempts to settle their disagreements, the MN intergroup Association voted July 6, 1971, to disassociate itself from Neurotics Anonymous. It was decided to form their own 12-step fellowship. They elected officers, chose the name Emotions Anonymous, and wrote A.A. Worlds Services, Inc. for permission to adapt and use the 12 steps, and 12 Traditions. Permission was granted.

Emotions Anonymous is a fellowship of people who share their experiences, feelings, strengths, weaknesses, and hopes with one another in order to solve their emotional problems and to discover a way to live at peace with unsolved problems. We learn to live a new way of life by using the 12-step program. Through it, we find serenity and acquire peace of mind. The primary purpose of the EA organization was originally and still is to carry the EA message of hope to people who suffer from emotional problems.

The symptoms, which led us to seek help, are diverse. These can include depression, anxiety, relationship or work problems, inability to cope with reality, or psychosomatic ailments.

We use the 12 steps and 12 Traditions of A.A., which we have adapted for people with emotional problems. We follow the 12 steps because they tell what people before us have done to become emotionally well. The steps are written in past tense as statements of action already taken, attitudes already learned, and feelings already expressed—all of which have brought recovery to others.