Addiction Recovery Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
137 free Addiction Recovery trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
85 free addiction recovery and substance abuse trivia questions with answers. Recovery has a history worth knowing: two drunks in Akron in 1935, a nun handing out medallions, a prayer lifted from an obituary, and a book nicknamed for its thick paper. This quiz covers the fellowships (AA, NA, Al-Anon, Gamblers and Overeaters Anonymous, SMART, LifeRing, Celebrate Recovery, Women for Sobriety), the milestones (Betty Ford, Hazelden, Oxford House) and the science (DSM-5 criteria, dopamine, delirium tremens, Rat Park, stages of change). It also covers the substance abuse facts that turn up in health classes, prevention weeks and workplace wellness days: how fast nicotine reaches the brain, what a standard drink is, why alcohol withdrawal can kill, the cough medicine a German company trademarked as heroic, the pharmacist who invented vaping, the fallen agent behind the red ribbon, Prohibition and the drinking age, blood alcohol limits, the schedules of controlled substances, D.A.R.E., Just Say No and the medications and public-health tools that save lives today: naloxone, methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone, disulfiram, contingency management, Portugal's decriminalisation and Vancouver's Insite. It is written respectfully for people in recovery, counsellors, students and anyone running a recovery-month, Red Ribbon Week or Dry January quiz. Easy questions ask what a sponsor is; the hard end wants Dr. Bob's specialty and the Latin behind 'delirium'. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 137 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Ohio city did Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet in 1935, founding Alcoholics Anonymous?
Akron
Akron is where Bill W., on a failing business trip and tempted to drink, worked through church directories until Henrietta Seiberling led him to Dr. Bob.
Q 02AA's founding date, June 10, 1935, marks what?
Dr. Bob's last drink
Dr. Bob's last drink came after one more relapse at a medical convention, about a month after he first met Bill W. and stopped drinking.
Q 03What was Dr. Bob Smith's medical specialty?
Colorectal surgery
Colorectal surgery was Dr. Bob's specialty, and for years he fitted it around his drinking: sober until the afternoon, then sedatives to steady himself for work next morning.
Q 04Through which Christian revivalist movement did AA's founders meet?
The Oxford Group
The Oxford Group stressed confession, restitution and surrender to God, ideas Bill W. reworked into the Twelve Steps after the alcoholics broke away from it.
Q 05Which old friend visited Bill Wilson in November 1934, refused a drink and said he'd 'got religion'?
Ebby Thacher
Ebby Thacher could not stay sober himself and relapsed for decades, yet Bill W. looked after him for the rest of his life; he died sober in 1966.
Q 06Which New York doctor treated Bill W. and framed alcoholism as an 'allergy' plus mental obsession?
William Silkworth
William Silkworth taught Bill W. to see alcoholism as an illness of body and mind, the idea that later won over Dr. Bob; his letter still opens the Big Book as 'The Doctor's Opinion'.
Q 07Why is AA's basic text nicknamed 'the Big Book'?
The first edition used thick paper
The first edition used thick paper, which made the volume unusually bulky; the fellowship, which had no name yet, then took its own from the book's title.
Q 08Where in the Big Book are the Twelve Steps first laid out?
Start of 'How It Works'
Start of 'How It Works', Chapter 5, is where Bill W. stretched the six principles early members passed on by word of mouth into twelve numbered Steps.
Q 09In the first of the Twelve Steps, members admit that they are what?
Powerless
Powerless reflects a doctor's theory Bill W. adopted: that alcoholics have a physical 'allergy' which makes it impossible to stop once they start drinking.
Q 10What is the term for the experienced member who guides a newcomer through the Twelve Steps?
Sponsor
Sponsor was not yet a word AA used when Bill W., fighting an urge to drink, sought out Dr. Bob; AA traces the practice to that meeting, where helping another drinker kept Bill sober too.
Q 11Which step involves reviewing a written moral inventory with another person?
Fifth
The Fifth Step has members admit 'to God, to ourselves, and to another human being' what the Fourth Step's inventory found, a confession borrowed from the religious movement where AA's founders met.
Q 12Which tycoon declined to bankroll AA, fearing money would spoil it?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. refused the millions Bill W. hoped for, so AA learned to pay its own way; self-support became one of the Twelve Traditions adopted in 1950.
Q 13Which theologian is credited with the Serenity Prayer, adopted by AA from about 1941?
Reinhold Niebuhr
Q 21Which twelve-step fellowship held its first meeting in Los Angeles on Friday the 13th of September 1957?
Gamblers Anonymous
Gamblers Anonymous was started by Jim Willis, an AA member who adapted its programme for compulsive gamblers; a newspaper columnist's publicity drew thirteen people to that first meeting.
Q 22Bill W. first floated AA's Twelve Traditions in 1946 in the fellowship's own monthly magazine, known by what name?
The Grapevine
The Grapevine was started in June 1944 by six New York members and became AA's national journal a year later, billed as 'an AA meeting in print'.
Q 23What does SMART stand for in the secular programme SMART?
Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer reached AA in 1941 when a member spotted it in a New York Herald Tribune memorial notice; another member paid to have it printed on wallet cards.
Q 14The nun Sister Ignatia gave each departing alcoholic patient what, to hand back before any drink?
A Sacred Heart medallion
A Sacred Heart medallion went to each patient leaving her ward, with a request to return it before taking a drink; AA's sobriety tokens are often traced back to that custom.
Q 15Sobriety coins are traditionally the size of what?
A poker chip
A poker chip is the usual size, and often that is just what it was: many groups handed out inexpensive coloured poker chips to mark sober time, and AA itself has no official token.
Q 16Approximately how many members did AA estimate it had worldwide in 2021?
About 2 million
About 2 million, by its own estimate, spread over about 180 countries; yet it took the first four years to produce just 100 sober members.
Q 17A 2020 Cochrane review found Twelve-Step Facilitation for AA produced higher rates of what?
Continuous abstinence
Continuous abstinence was more common after AA-based programmes than after therapies such as CBT, and healthcare costs were lower; one of its authors credited the support members give one another.
Q 18Which early AA member founded what became the National Council on Alcoholism to teach that alcoholism is a disease?
Marty Mann
Marty Mann, one of the first women to get sober in AA, set up the committee in 1944 and toured the country telling doctors and legislators that alcoholism was an illness, not a moral failing.
Q 19Which famous psychiatrist told an American patient that only a spiritual awakening could cure his drinking, advice that reached AA's founders?
Carl Jung
Carl Jung told Rowland Hazard his case was nearly hopeless without a spiritual experience; Hazard's circle passed the idea to Bill W., who exchanged letters with Jung about it in 1961.
Q 20Which fellowship did Jimmy Kinnon help start in California in 1953?
Narcotics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous treats all drugs as equal, alcohol included, so its literature speaks of 'addiction' rather than any one substance; it began as a few meetings around Los Angeles.
Self-Management and Recovery Training
Self-Management and Recovery Training, founded in 1994, swaps the higher power for tools from cognitive behavioural therapy, on the principle that people can learn to manage their own behaviour.
Q 24What does Rational Recovery call the 'addictive voice'?
The Beast
The Beast is Jack Trimpey's name for the craving itself: every thought in favour of drinking is its 'bark', and from 1999 he cancelled the group's meetings as no longer needed.
Q 25Which programme did sociologist Jean Kirkpatrick found in the 1970s as an alternative to AA?
Women for Sobriety
Women for Sobriety swaps the Steps for 13 statements meant to build self-worth and shed guilt, because Kirkpatrick saw low self-esteem as the core problem for women who drink.
Q 26What was Bill W.'s profession before he co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous?
Stockbroker
Stockbroker Bill W. made his name touring the country to size up companies for investors, until drink wrecked his career; a failing deal later took him to Ohio and to Dr. Bob.
Q 27The Christ-centred programme Celebrate Recovery began in 1991 at which megachurch?
Saddleback
Saddleback Church's John Baker, drawing on his own alcoholism, founded it with pastor Rick Warren's backing, pairing the Twelve Steps with eight principles drawn from the Beatitudes.
Q 28Which former First Lady disclosed her alcoholism and founded a treatment centre in Rancho Mirage?
Betty Ford
Betty Ford's family staged an intervention in 1978 over her drinking and pill use; four years later she co-founded the centre that carries her name.
Q 29Which Minnesota treatment pioneer, begun in a lakeside farmhouse in 1949, merged with a famous California clinic in 2014?
Hazelden
Hazelden came to treat alcoholism as a disease, giving alcoholics an alternative to the mental hospital and a simple programme built on AA's Twelve Steps.
Q 30A nationwide sober-living network began in 1975 when residents of a closing halfway house did what?
Took over the lease themselves
Took over the lease themselves: Paul Molloy, a former Senate staffer, and his fellow residents kept the Maryland house going when money troubles shut the halfway house that had been treating them.