2020–2026 — Pandemic, Virtual, Hybrid, and 90 Years
In January 2020, the AA Grapevine was planning a routine year: print covers, fellowship stories, the usual rhythm that had carried it since June 1944. By March, that rhythm broke. COVID-19 closed an estimated 90 percent of in-person AA meetings within two weeks. Clubhouses locked, church basements went dark, and members who had measured sobriety in daily meetings suddenly faced isolation. The question asked in chat windows everywhere was simple and terrifying: how do we stay sober when we cannot meet?
Grapevine answered with an image that became iconic. The April 2020 cover shows a single empty chair in an otherwise empty room, light falling across the floor. Inside, the issue is filled with letters that sound like 1944 all over again — members writing from living rooms describing how they set up Zoom, how they passed a digital Seventh Tradition via Venmo, how they learned to sponsor by phone. PDF sales rose over 400 percent in three weeks. The “Mail Call” section from wartime returned informally as “Zoom Mail,” and for the first time since wartime paper rationing, the Grapevine felt like an emergency newsletter again.
The fellowship adapted with staggering speed. What began as a few friends on Zoom became an estimated 30,000 online AA meetings within 90 days. Grapevine documented the language shift in real time: screenshots replaced group photos, masks appeared on cover illustrations, stories titled “I Got Sober on Zoom” and “Remote Sponsorship” replaced barroom anecdotes. Issues from May 2020 to December 2020 explore themes that had been peripheral before — loneliness without meetings, racial reckoning after George Floyd, anxiety and depression during lockdown, balancing anonymity with a Facebook Live meeting, and the spiritual problem of a virtual coffee pot. La Viña, the Spanish-language sister, ran parallel issues on “Reuniones Virtuales” and immigration during border closures.
Virtual Convention and Hybrid Future
In 2021, Alcoholics Anonymous held its first fully virtual International Convention. The original plan for a massive in-person gathering was impossible, so AA leaned into what it had learned: 25,000 logins from more than 100 countries, simultaneous interpretation in 12 languages, and a 48-hour marathon of meetings that mirrored Grapevine’s own archive — stories from every decade, read aloud. Grapevine published a special virtual meeting directory that summer, listing how to find meetings by time zone rather than street address. The July 2021 issue, “We Are Not Alone — Even Online,” features a mosaic of Zoom tiles forming the Circle and Triangle.
By 2022, hybrid became the norm. Grapevine’s October 2022 issue, “Our Hybrid Future,” is often cited as the definitive record of this transition. It documents groups experimenting with a laptop at the end of a table, a speakerphone in the middle, a hybrid GSR reporting both in-room and online counts. Some old-timers resisted; many newcomers preferred hybrid because they could attend a meeting while caring for kids or working night shifts. The magazine itself shifted — QR codes linking to audio stories and spreads showing both a church basement and a living room screen.
The Road to 90 Years
In 2023 and 2024, AA prepared for its 90th anniversary. Membership globally had crossed estimates not seen since the 1-million mark in 1973, now meeting in over 180 countries with literature in more than 100 languages. The 90th anniversary events in Detroit in 2024 were deliberately dual: an in-person gathering with tens of thousands at Ford Field, and a 24-hour global virtual marathon that allowed a member in Japan to share right after a member in Brazil. Grapevine’s June 2024 issue famously reprinted the original June 1944 eight-page mimeograph as a centerfold — mimeograph smudges, stapled spine, Vesey Street address and all — inside a glossy 84-page issue. The editorial by the then-editor called it “from mimeograph to meeting in your pocket.”
For historians, the 2020s covers are a timestamp for how slogans evolved under pressure. “One Day at a Time” first appeared in 1955-04; “Let Go and Let God” surfaced in 1962-08; “Keep It Simple” in 1973-11. In the 2020s, new variants appear: “Keep Coming — Even If It’s Just a Click,” “One Day at a Time — One Zoom at a Time,” and the return of Bill W.’s phrase from 1944, “We are not alone.” Search these covers by YYYY-MM to see the visual shift: 2020-04 empty chair, 2020-10 masked figures holding a virtual chip, 2021-07 mosaic, 2022-10 laptop on a table, 2024-06 reprint.
Why This Decade Matters
This archive preserves more than paper. From 1944 to today, Grapevine has been what Bill Wilson called “the meeting between meetings — the mirror of our growth.” The 2020s prove that mirror still works. When meetings could not meet, the stories still appeared. When coffee was virtual, the sharing was real. The collection you are browsing — every issue from 2020-01 through 2029-12 that exists in this preservation effort — is maintained for historical and educational purposes. Click any cover to enlarge, search by month, and use pagination below to browse 40 at a time.
Preserving these covers is not nostalgia. It is evidence of how a fellowship that began with two drunks in Akron learned to stay sober with a laptop, a phone, and an empty chair.