Lois W., the wife of Bill W., co-founder of AA, says in her story, ‘After a while I began to wonder why I was not as happy as I ought to be since the one thing I had been yearning for all my married life had come to pass. Then one Sunday Bill asked me if I was ready to go to the meeting with him. To my own astonishment, as well as his, I burst forth with, “Damn your old meetings!” and threw a shoe as hard as I could.’
When a horse throws a shoe, his rider can take him to a blacksmith; when Lois threw her shoe she had no place to go; she felt she should apply the AA spiritual program of recovery to her own problems. Much later with the help of Anne B. and others, she started the AI-Anon Family Groups for people who don’t drink but who throw things.