Wynn L’s story “Freedom From Bondage” appears on the following pages in the Big Book (p. 553, 2nd and 544 in 3rd edition). Wynn joined A.A. in California in 1947 at age thirty-three.
Wynn said in her story that she didn’t know how to love. Fear of rejection and its ensuring pain were not to be risked. When she found alcohol it seemed to solve her problems — for a time. But soon things fell apart and jails and hospitals followed. When she wound up in a hospital for detoxification, she began to take stock and realized she had lived with no sense of social obligation or responsibility to her fellow men. She was full of resentments and fears.
When she wrote her story she had been in A.A. eight years and her life had changed dramatically. She had not had a drink since her first meeting, and had not only found a way to live without having a drink, but a way to live without wanting a drink.
Wynn believed she had many spiritual experiences after coming to the program, many that she didn’t recognize right away, “For I’m slow to learn and they take many guises.”
