As Given
at the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, June 1944
“This is
a transcribed talk that Bill Wilson gave back in 1944. It can be
found in a book called "Alcohol, Science and Society" that
came out in 1945 which contains 29 lectures with discussions as given
at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies.
My first
task is a joyous one; it is to voice the sincere gratitude that every
member of Alcoholics Anonymous present feels tonight that we can
stand in the midst of such an assembly. I know that in this assembly
there are many different points of view, that we have social workers,
ministers, doctors and others - people we once thought did not
understand us, because we did not understand them. I think right away
of one of our clergyman friends. He helped start our group in St.
Louis, and when Pearl Harbor came he thought to himself, "Well
this will be a hard day for the AA's." He expected to see us go
off like firecrackers. Well, nothing much happened and the good man
was rather joyously disappointed, you might say. But he was puzzled.
And then he noticed with still more wonder that the AA's seemed
rather less excited about Pearl Harbor than the normal people. In
fact, quite a number of the so-called normal people seemed to be
getting drunk and very distressed. So he went up to one of the AA's
and said, "Tell me, how is it that you folks hold up so well
under this stress, I mean this Pearl Harbor?" The A.A. looked at
him, smiled, but quite seriously said, "You know, each of us has
had his own private Pearl Harbor, each of us has known the utmost of
humiliation, of despair, and of defeat. So why should we, who have
known the resurrection, fear another Pearl Harbor?"
So you can
see how grateful we are that we have found this resurrection and that
so many people, not alcoholics, with so many points of view, have
joined to make it a reality. I guess all of you know Marty Mann by
this time. I shall always remember her story about her first A.A.
meeting. She had been in a sanatorium under the care of a wonderful
doctor, but how very lonely she felt! Somehow, there was a gap
between that very good man and herself that could not quite be
bridged. Then she went to her first A.A. meeting, wondering what she
would find; and her words, when she returned to the sanatorium, in
talking to her friend, another alcoholic, were: "Grenny, we are
no longer alone. " So we are a people who have known loneliness,
but now stand here in the midst of many friends. Now I am sure you
can see how very grateful for all this we must be.
I am sure
that in this course you have heard that alcoholism is a malady; that
something is dead wrong with us physically; that our reaction to
alcohol has changed; that something has been very wrong with us
emotionally; and that our alcoholic habit has become an obsession, an
obsession which can no longer reckon even with death itself. Once
firmly set, one is not able to turn it aside. In other words, a sort
of allergy of the body that guarantees that we shall die if we drink,
an obsession of the mind that guarantees that we shall go on
drinking. Such has been the alcoholics dilemma time out of mind, and
it is altogether probable that even those alcoholics who did not wish
to go on drinking, not more than 5 out of 100 have ever been able to
stop, before A.A.
That
statement always takes me back to a summer night at a drying out
place in New York where I lay upstairs at the end of a long trail. My
wife was downstairs talking with the doctor, asking him, "Bill
wants so badly to stop this thing, doctor, why can't he? He was
always considered a person of enormous persistence, even obstinacy,
in those things that he wished to achieve. Why can't his will power
work now? It does work even yet in other areas of life, but why not
in this?" And then the doctor went on to tell her something of
my childhood, showing that I had grown up a rather awkward kid, how
that had thrown upon me a kind of inferiority and had inspired in me
a fierce desire to show other people that I could be like them; how I
had become a person who abnormally craved approval, applause. He
showed her the seed, planted so early, that had created me an
inferiority-driven neurotic. On the surface, to be sure, very self
confident, with a certain amount of worldly success in Wall Street.
But along with it this habit of getting release from myself through
alcohol.
You know,
as strange as it may seem to some of the clergy here who are not
alcoholic, the drinking of alcohol is a sort of spiritual release. Is
it not true that the great fault of all individuals is abnormal
self-concern? And how well alcohol seems temporarily to expel those
feelings of inferiority in us, to transport us temporarily to a
better world. Yes, I was one of those people to whom drink became a
necessity and then an addiction. So it was 10 years ago this summer
that the good doctor told my wife I could not go on much longer; that
my habit of adjusting my neurosis with alcohol had now become an
obsession; how that obsession of my mind condemned me to go on
drinking, and how my physical sensitivity guaranteed that I would go
crazy or die, perhaps within a year. Yes, that was my dilemma. It has
been the dilemma of millions of us, and still is.
Some of
you wonder, "Well, he had been instructed by a good physician,
he had been told about his maladjustment, he understood himself, he
knew that his increasing physical sensitivity meant that he would go
out into the dark and join the endless procession. Why couldn't he
stop? Why wouldn't fear hold such a man in check?"
After I
left that place, fear did keep me in check for 2 or 3 months. Then
came a day when I drank again. And then came a time when an old
friend, a former alcoholic, called me on the phone and said that he
was coming over. It was perhaps right there on that very day that the
Alcoholics Anonymous commenced to take shape. I remember his coming
into my kitchen, where I was half drunk. I was afraid that perhaps
he had come to reform me. You know, curiously enough, we alcoholics
are very sensitive on this subject of reform. I could not quite
make out my friend. I could see something different about him but I
could not put my finger on it. So finally I said, "Ebby, what's
got into you?" And he said, "Well, I've got religion."
That shocked me terribly, for I was one of those people with a dandy
modern education which had taught me that self-sufficiency would be
enough to carry me through life, and here was a man talking a point
of view which collided with mine.
Ebby did
not go on colliding with me. He knew, as a former agnostic, what my
prejudices were, so he said to me, blandly enough, "Well, Bill,
I don't know that I'd call it religion exactly, but call it what you
may, it works." I said, "What is it? What do you mean? Tell
me more about this thing?" He said, "Some people came and
got hold of me. They said, "Ebby, you've tried medicine, you've
tried religion, you've tried change of environment, I guess you've
tried love, and none of these things has been able to cure you of
your liquor. Now, here is an idea for you." And then he went on
to tell me how they explained, they said, "First of all, Ebby,
why don't you make a thorough appraisal of yourself? Stop finding
fault with other people. Make a thoroughgoing moral appraisal of
yourself. When have you been selfish, dishonest? And, especially,
where have you been intolerant? Perhaps those are the things that
underlie this alcoholism. And after you have made such an appraisal
of yourself, why don't you sit down and talk it out with someone in
full and quit this accursed business of living alone? Put an end to
this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation into which you have fallen.
And then, why don't you continue this policy of abating the
disturbance in yourself? Why don't you take stock of all the people
among your acquaintances that you have hurt - all of the people who
annoy you, who disturb you. Why don't you go out to them and make
amends; set things right and talk things out, and get down these
strains that exist between you and them? Then, Ebby, we have still
another proposal. Why don't you try the kind of giving that demands
no reward? We don't mean the mere giving of money, though you once
had plenty of that. No, we mean the giving of yourself to someone who
is in need. Why don't you try that? Seek out someone in need and
forget your own troubles by becoming interested in his." Ebby
said, "Where does religion come in?" And his friends went
on to say, "Ebby, it is our experience that no one can carry out
such a program with enough thoroughness and enough continuity on pure
self-sufficiency. One must have help. Now we are willing to help you,
as individuals, but we think you ought to call upon a power greater
than yourself, for your dilemma is well nigh insurmountable. So, call
on God, as you understand God. Try prayer." Well, in effect,
that was the explanation my friend made to me. Those of you who know
a little of the A.A. are already able to see a little of the basic
idea.
You see,
here was my friend talking to me, one alcoholic talking to another. I
could no longer say, "He doesn't understand me." Sure he
understood me. We had done a lot of drinking together, and gone the
route of humiliation, despair and defeat. Yes, he could understand.
But now he had something. He did not shock me by calling it the
resurrection, but that's what it was. He had something I did not
have, and those were the terms upon which it could be obtained.
Honesty
with oneself and other people, the kind of giving that demands no
return, and prayer. Those were the essentials. My friend then got up
and went away, but he had been very careful not to force any of
his views upon me. In no sense could I have the feeling that
he was moralizing with me or preaching, because I knew it was not
long ago that he was no better than I. He merely said that he was
leaving these ideas with me, hoping that they would help.
Even so, I
was irritated, because he had struck a blow at my pet philosophy of
self-sufficiency, and was talking about dependence upon some power
greater than myself. "Ah yes," I thought, as I went on
drinking, "yes it's this preacher stuff. Yes, I remember, up in
the old home town where my grandfather raised me, how the deacon, who
was so good, treated Ed MacDonald, the local drunk - as dirt under
his feet; and more than that, the old son of a gun short weighted my
good old grandfather in his grocery store. If that's religion, I
don't want any of it." Such were my prejudices. But the whole
point of this was that my friend had got onto my level. He had
penetrated my prejudices, although he had not swept them all away.
I drank on
but I kept turning this thing over in my mind, and finally asked
myself, "Well, how much better off am I than a cancer patient."
But a small percentage of those people recover, and the same is true
with alcoholics, for by this time I knew quite a good deal about
alcoholism. I knew that my chances were very, very slim. I knew that,
in spite of all the vigilance in the world, this obsession would
pursue me, even if I dried up temporarily. Yes, how much better off
was I than a cancer patient? Then I began to say to myself, "Well,
who are beggars to be choosers? Why should a man be talking about
self-sufficiency when an obsession has condemned him to have none of
it? Then I became utterly willing to do anything, to try to accept
any point of view, to make any sacrifice, yes, even to try to love my
enemies, if I could get rid of this obsession. First, I went up to
a hospital to ask the doctor to clear me up so I could think things
through clearly. And again, came my friend, the second day that I
was there. Again I was afraid, knowing that he had religion, that he
was going to reform me. I cannot express the unreasonable prejudice
that the alcoholics have against reform. That is one reason that it
has been so hard to reach them. We should not be that way, but we
are. And here was my friend, trying to do his best for me, but the
first thought that flashed across my mind was, "I guess this is
the day that he is going to save me. Look out! He'll bring in that
high powered sweetness and light, he'll be talking about a lot of
this prayer business." But Ebby was a good general, and it's a
good thing for me he was.
No, he did
not collide with those prejudices of mine. He just paid me a friendly
visit, and he came up there quite early in the morning. I kept
waiting and waiting for him to start his reform talk, but no, he
didn't. So finally I had to ask for some of it myself. I said,
"Ebby, tell me once more about how you dried up." And he
reviewed it again for me.
Honesty
with oneself, of a kind I had never had before. Complete honesty with
someone else. Straightening out all my twisted relationships as best
I could. Giving of myself to help someone else in need. And prayer.
When he
had gone away, I fell into a very deep depression, the blackest that
I had ever known. And in that desperation, I cried out, "If
there is a God, will He show Himself?" Then came a sudden
experience in which it seemed the room lit up. It felt as though I
stood on the top of a mountain, that a great clean wind blew, that I
was free. The sublime paradox of strength coming out of weakness.
So I
called in the doctor and tried to tell him, as best I could, what had
happened. And he said, "Yes, I have read of such experiences but
I have never seen one." I said, "Well doctor, examine me,
have I gone crazy?" And he did examine me and said, "No, my
boy, you're not crazy. Whatever it is, you'd better hold onto it.
It's so much better than what had you just a few hours ago."
Well, along with thousands of other alcoholics, I have been holding
on to it ever since.
But that
was only the beginning. And at the time, I actually thought that it
was the end, you might say, of all my troubles. I began there, out of
this sudden illumination, not only to get benefits, but also to
draw some serious liabilities. One of those that came immediately was
one that you might call Divine Appointment. I actually thought, I had
the conceit really to believe, that God had selected me, by this
sudden flash of Presence, to dry up all the drunks in the world. I
really believed it. I also got another liability out of the
experience, and that was that it had to happen in some particular way
just like mine or else it would be of no use. In other words, I
conceived myself as going out, getting hold of these drunks, and
producing in them just the same kind of experience that I had had.
Down in New York, where they knew me pretty well in the A.A., they
facetiously call these sudden experiences that we sometimes have a
"W.W. hot flash." I really thought that I had been endowed
with the power to go out and produce a "hot flash" just
like mine in every drunk.
Well, I
started off; I was inspired; I knew just how to do it, as I thought
then. Well, I worked like thunder for 6 months and not one alcoholic
got dried up. What were the natural reactions then? I suppose some of
you here, who have worked with alcoholics, have a pretty good idea.
The first reaction was one of great self-pity; the other was a kind
of martyrdom. I began to say, "Well, I suppose that this is the
kind of stuff that martyrs are made of, but I will keep on at all
costs." I kept on, and I kept on, until I finally got so full of
self-pity and intolerance (our two greatest enemies in the A.A.) that
I nearly got drunk myself. So I began to reconsider. I began to say,
"Yes, I found my relief in this particular way, and glorious it
was and is, for it is still the central experience of my whole life.
But who am I to suppose that every other human being ought to
think, act and react just as I do? Maybe we're all very much alike in
a great many respects but, as individuals, we're different too."
At that
juncture I was in Akron on a trip, and I got a very severe business
setback. I was walking along in the corridor of the hotel, wondering
how God could be so mean. After all the good I had done Him - why, I
had worked here with drunks for six months and nothing had happened -
and now here was a situation that was going to set me up in business
and I had been thrown out of it by dishonest people. Then I began to
think, "That spiritual experience - was it real?" I began
to have doubts. Then I suddenly realized that I might get drunk. But
I also realized that those other times when I had had self-pity,
those other times when I had had resentment and intolerance, those
other times when there was that feeling of insecurity, that worry as
to where the next meal would come from; yes, to talk with another
alcoholic even though I failed with him, was better than to do
nothing. But notice how my motivation was shifting all this time. No
longer was I preaching from any moral hilltop or from the vantage
point of a wonderful spiritual experience. No, this time I was
looking for another alcoholic, because I felt that I needed him twice
as much as he needed me. And that's when I came across Dr. "Bob"
S. out in Akron. That was just nine years ago this summer.
And Bob S.
recovered. Then we two frantically set to work on alcoholics in
Akron. Well, again came this tendency to preach, again this
feeling that it has to be done in some particular way, again
discouragement, so our progress was very slow. But little by little
we were forced to analyze our experiences and say, "This
approach didn't work very well with that fellow. Why not? Let's try
to put ourselves in his shoes and stop this preaching. See how we
might be approached if we were he." That began to lead us to the
idea that A.A. should be no set of fixed ideas, but should be a
growing thing, growing out of experience. After a while, we began
to reflect: "This wonderful blessing that has come to us, from
what does it get its origin?" It was a spiritual awakening
growing out of painful adversity. So then we began to look the harder
for our mistakes, to correct them, to capitalize upon our errors. And
little by little we began to grow so that there were 5 of us at the
end of that first year; at the end of the second year, 15; at the end
of the third year, 40; at the end of the fourth year, 100.
During
those first 4 years most of us had another bad form of intolerance.
As we commenced to have a little success, I am afraid our pride got
the better of us and it was our tendency to forget about our friends.
We were very likely to say, "Well, those doctors didn't do
anything for us, and as for these sky pilots, well, they just don't
know the score." And we became snobbish and patronizing.
Then we
read a book by Dr. Carrel. From that book came an argument that is
now a part of our system. (How much we may agree with the book in
general, I don't know, but in this respect the AA's think he had
something.) Dr. Carrel wrote, in effect; the world is full of
analysts. We have tons of ore in the mines and we have all kinds of
building materials above ground. Here is a man specializing in this,
there is a man specializing in that, and another one in something
else. The modern world is full of wonderful analysts and diggers, but
there are very few who deliberately synthesize, who bring together
different materials, who assemble new things. We are much too shy on
synthetic thinking - the kind of thinking that's willing to reach out
now here and now there to see if something new cannot be evolved.
On reading
that book some of us realized that was just what we had been groping
toward. We had been trying to build out of our own experiences. At
this point we thought, "Let's reach into other people's
experiences. Let's go back to our friends the doctors, let's go back
to our friends the preachers, the social workers, all those who have
been concerned with us, and again review what they have got above
ground and bring that into the synthesis. And let us, where we
can, bring them in where they will fit." So our process of trial
and error began and, at the end of 4 years, the material was cast in
the form of a book known as Alcoholics Anonymous. And then our
friends of the press came in and they began to say nice things about
us. That was not too hard for them to do because by that time we had
gotten hold of the idea of not fighting anything or anyone. We began
to say, "Our only motive as an organization is to help the
alcoholic. And to help him we've got to reach him. Therefore, we
can't collide with his prejudices. So we aren't going to get mixed up
with controversial questions, no matter what we, as individuals,
think of them. We can't get concerned with prohibition, or whether to
drink or not to drink. We can't get concerned with doctrine and
dogma in a religious sense. We can't get into politics, because
that will arouse prejudice which might keep away alcoholics who will
go off and die when they might have recovered."
We began,
then, to have a good press, because after all we were just a lot of
very sick people trying to help those who wanted to be helped. And I
am very happy to say that in all the years since, not a syllable of
ridicule, or criticism, has ever been printed about us. For this we
are very grateful.
That
experience led us to examine some of the obscure phrases that we
sometimes see in the Bible. It could not have been presented at
first, but sooner or later in his second, third, or fourth year, the
A.A. will be found reading his Bible quite as often - or more - as he
will a standard psychological work. And you know, there we found a
phrase that began to stick in the minds of some of us. It was this:
"Resist
not evil." Well, after all, what is one going to think? In this
modern world, where everybody is fighting, here came someone saying,
"Resist not evil." What did that mean? Did it mean
anything? Was there anything in that phrase for the AA's?
Well, we
began to have some cases on which we could try out that principle. I
remember one case, out of which some will get a kick, and I imagine
some others here may be a little shocked, but I think there is a
lesson in it, at least there was for us, a lesson in tolerance. One
time, after A.A. had been going for 3 or 4 years, an alcoholic was
brought into our house over in Brooklyn where we were holding a
meeting. He is the type that some of us now call the blockbuster
variety. He often tells the story himself. His name is Jimmy. Well,
Jimmy came in and he was a man who had some very, very fixed points
of view. As a class, we alcoholics are the worst possible people in
this respect. I had many, many fixed points of view myself, but Jimmy
eclipsed us all. Jimmy came into our little group - I guess there
were then 30 or 40 of us meeting - and said, "I think you've got
a pretty good idea here. This idea of straightening things out with
other people is fine. Going over your own defects is all right.
Working with other drunks, that's swell. But I don't like this God
business." He got very emphatic about it and we thought that he
would quiet down or else he would get drunk. He did neither. Time
went on and Jimmy did not quiet down; he began to tell the other
people in the group, "You don't need this God business. Look,
I'm staying sober." Finally, he got up in the meeting at our
house, the first time he was invited to speak - he had then been
around for a couple of months - and he went through his usual song
and dance of the desirability of being honest, straightening things
out with other people, etc. Then he said, "Damn this God
business." At that, people began to wince. I was deeply shocked,
and we had a hurried meeting of the "elders" over in the
corner. We said, "This fellow has got to be suppressed. We can't
have anyone ridiculing the very idea by which we live."
We got
hold of Jimmy and said, "Listen, you've got to stop this
anti-God talk if you're going to be around this section." Jimmy
was cocky and he said, "Is that so? Isn't it a fact that you
folks have been trying to write a book called Alcoholics Anonymous,
and haven't you got a typewritten introduction in that book, lying
over there on that shelf, and didn't we read it here about a month
ago and agree to it?" And Jimmy went over and took down the
introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous and read out of it: "The
only requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is an honest
desire to get over drinking." Jimmy said, "Do you mean it
or don't you?" He rather had us there. He said, "I've been
honest. Didn't I get my wife back? Aren't I paying my bills? And I'm
helping other drunks every day." There was nothing we could say.
Then we began secretly to hope. Our intolerance caused us to hope
that he would get drunk. Well, he confounded us; he did not get
drunk, and louder and louder did he get with his anti-God talk. Then
we used to console ourselves and say, "Well, after all, this is
a very good practice in tolerance for us, trying to accommodate
ourselves to Jimmy." But we never did really get accommodated.
One day
Jimmy got a job that took him out on the road, out from under the old
A.A. tent, you might say. And somewhere out on the road his purely
psychological system of staying dry broke wide open, and sure enough
he got drunk. In those days, when an alcoholic got drunk, all the
brethren would come running, because we were still very afraid for
ourselves and no one knew who might be next. So there was great
concern about the brother who got drunk. But in Jimmy's case there
was no concern at all. He lay in a little hotel over in Providence
and he began to call up long distance. He wanted money, he wanted
this, and he wanted that. After a while, Jimmy hitchhiked back to New
York. He put up at the house of a friend of mine, where I was
staying, and I came in late that night. The next morning, Jimmy came
walking downstairs where my friend and I were consuming our morning
gallon of coffee. Jimmy looked at us and said, "Oh, have you
people had any meditation or prayer this morning?" We thought he
was being very sarcastic. But no, he meant it. We could not get very
much out of Jimmy about his experience, but it appeared that over in
that little second-rate hotel he had nearly died from the worst
seizure he had ever had, and something in him had given way. I think
it is just what gave way in me. It was his prideful obstinacy. He had
thought to himself, "Maybe these fellows have got something with
their God-business." His hand reached out, in the darkness, and
touched something on his bureau. It was a Gideon Bible. Jimmy picked
it up and he read from it. I do not know just what he read, and I
have always had a queer reluctance to ask him. But Jimmy has not had
a drink to this day, and that was about 5 years ago.
But there
were other fruits of what little tolerance and understanding we did
have. Not long ago I was in Philadelphia where we have a large and
strong group. I was asked to speak, and the man who asked me was
Jimmy, who was chairman of the meeting. About 400 people were there.
I told this story about him and added: "Supposing that we had
cast Jimmy out in the dark, supposing that our intolerance of his
point of view had turned him away. Not only would Jimmy be dead, but
how many of us would be together here tonight so happily secure?"
So we in A.A. find that we have to carry tolerance of other people's
viewpoints to very great lengths. As someone well put it, "Honesty
gets us sober but tolerance keeps us sober."
I would
like to tell, in conclusion, one story about a man in a little
southern community. You know, we used to think that perhaps A.A. was
just for the big places; that in a small town the social ostracism of
the alcoholic would be so great that they would be reluctant to get
together as a group; that there would be so much unkind gossip that
we sensitive folk just could not be brought together.
One day
our central office in New York received a little letter, and it came
from a narcotic addict who was just leaving the Government hospital
down in Lexington. Speaking of intolerance, it is a strange fact
that we alcoholics are very, very intolerant of people who take
"dope," and it is just as strange that they are very
intolerant of us. I remember meeting one, one day, in the
corridor of a hospital. I thought he was an alcoholic, so I stopped
the man and asked him for a match. He drew himself up with great
hauteur and said, "Get away from me you dammed alcoholic."
At any rate, here was a letter from a narcotic addict who explained
that once upon a time he had been an alcoholic, but for 12 years had
been a drug addict. He had got hold of the book Alcoholics Anonymous
and thought the spirit of that book had got hold of him, and he
wanted to go back to his own little southern town that was, Shelby,
North Carolina, and start an A.A. group. We were very skeptical of
the offer. The very idea of a narcotic addict starting an A.A. group,
even if he had once been an alcoholic! And here he was going to try
to start it in a little southern town in the midst of all this local
pride and gossip.
We began
to get letters from him and apparently he was doing all right. He was
a medical doctor, by the way, and he told us modestly, as time went
on, about getting a small crowd of alcoholics together and having his
trials and tribulations. Mind you, we had never seen him all this
time; he had just been writing. He said that his practice had come
back somewhat. And so 3 years passed. We had a little pin on a map
showing that there was an Alcoholics Anonymous group at Shelby, North
Carolina. It happened that I was taking a trip south to visit one of
our southern groups. By this time the movement had grown and I had
gotten to be kind of a big shot, so I thought, and I wondered,
"Should I stop off at Shelby? You know, after all, that's kind
of a small group." It is a great thing that I did stop off at
Shelby, as you will soon see. Down the station came a man, followed
by two others. The two in back of him were alcoholics, all right, but
one looked a little bit different. I saw, as he drew near, that his
lips were badly mangled, and I realized that this was the drug
addict, Dr. M. In the agony of his hangovers he had chewed his lips
to pieces. Yes, it was our man, and he proved to be a wonderful
person. He was really modest, and that is something you seldom see in
an ex-alcoholic. He introduced me to the others, and we got into his
car and went over to the town of Shelby. I soon found myself sitting
at a table in one of those delightful southern ancestral homes. Here
was the man's mother - and his wife. They had been married about 2
years and there was a new baby. The practice had begun to come back.
Still, there was very little shoptalk at that meal; and there is no
such thing as an A.A. meal without shoptalk. I said, "Indeed,
this fellow is a very modest man, I never saw an alcoholic like him."
He spoke very little of his accomplishments for the group. And then
came the meeting that night. Here, next to the barber shop in the
hotel, on the most prominent corner in Shelby, was the A.A. meeting
room, with "A.A." looming big up over the door. I thought,
"Well, this chap must be some persuader."
I went
inside and there were 40 alcoholics and their wives and friends. We
had our meeting; I talked too much as I always do, and the meeting
was over. I began to reflect that this was the largest Alcoholics
Anonymous in all America in proportion to the size of the town. What
a wonderful accomplishment! The next morning, my telephone rang in
the hotel. A man was downstairs and he said, "I'd like to come
up. There are some things you ought to know about Dr. M. who got the
A.A. group together in this town."
Up came
this individual, and said, "You know, I too, was once an
alcoholic but for 22 years I've been on dope. I used to meet our
friend Dr. M. over in Lexington, and when he got out of there and
came back here, I heard he'd beaten the dope game. So when I left, I
started for Shelby, but on my way I got back on morphine again. He
took me into his home and took me off it. Yes, I used to be a
respectable citizen of this state, I helped organize a lot of banks
here, but I've heard from my family only second-hand for many years.
It's my guess you don't know what southern pride is, and you haven't
any idea what this man faced when he came back to this town to face
the music. People wouldn't speak to him for months. They'd say, "Why
this fellow, the son of our leading doctor, goes away, studies
medicine, comes back, and he's a drunk, and after a while, he's on
the dope. The townspeople wouldn't have much to do with him when he
first came, and I'm ashamed to say that the local drunks wouldn't
either, because they said, we aren't going to be sobered up by a dope
addict. But you see, Dr. M. himself had once been an alcoholic, so
that he could get that indispensable bond of identification across.
Little by little, alcoholics began to rally around him."
My visitor
continued, "Well, that was the beginning. Intolerance,
misunderstanding, gossip, scandal, failure, defeat, all those things
faced our friend when he came into this town. And that was 3 years
ago. Well, Bill, you've seen his mother, you've seen his wife, you've
seen his baby, and you've seen the group. But he hasn't told you that
he now has the largest medical practice in this whole town, if not in
the county. And he hasn't told you hat he has been made head of our
local hospital. And I know you don't know this - every year in this
town the citizens have a great meeting at which they cast a ballot,
and last spring, at the annual casting of the ballot, the people of
this town almost unanimously declared by their ballot that Dr. M. had
been the towns most useful citizen during the 12 months gone by."
So I thought to myself, "So you were the big shot who planned to
go straight past Shelby." I looked at my visitor and said,
"Indeed, What hath God wrought!"
DISCUSSION
Potts: Mr.
W., is it possible for someone who hasn't been drunk, or ever been an
alcoholic, to do what an alcoholic has done? Have you found any
possibility that laymen or preachers could begin to do such work? Is
there anything in your experience that might lead to that
possibility?
Lecturer:
Yes, there is a great deal in our experience that leads to the
idea that our friends of the nonalcoholic world can participate.
While it's true that the core of our process is the transmission of
these things from one alcoholic to another, it is a fact that very
often a minister or a doctor can lay the groundwork for our approach.
Then, too, there is a class of people that we alcoholics flatter by
calling them "dry" alcoholics. In other words, they're
neurotics of our description who don't drink, and we recognize them
as more or less kindred spirits; sometimes they approach our group
and are well received. On the other hand, sometimes people who, from
their life experience, just couldn't get the pitch or couldn't make
the identification would be regarded by some of the groups as
complete outsiders. You know, one of our other faults is that of
snobbishness. We AA's have become extremely snobbish, strange as that
may be. But it is true that this is a synthesis and we draw upon
the resources of both medicine and religion. Of course, the
doctor helps us on the physical side of the treatment. He can often
prepare the groundwork with the potential by pointing out that he has
the symptoms of a well-nigh fatal malady. The preacher, or the
friend, would do well to emphasize the idea of sickness rather than
of immorality. The alcoholic knows he's a louse in most cases, even
though he won't admit it, and to be told so once more by someone who
never took a glass of beer seems to annoy him greatly. That is not
because the other fellow is wrong; we're wrong, but we're just built
that way and it's a matter of taking things as they are.
Stoneburner:
What can ministers do to cooperate with A.A.?
Lecturer:
Of course the approach to the alcoholic is everything. I think the
preacher could do well if he does as we do. First find out all you
can about the case, how the man reacts, whether he wants to get over
his drinking or not. You see, it is very difficult to make any
impressions upon a man who still wants to drink. At some point in
their drinking career, most alcoholics get punished enough so that
they want to stop, but then it's far too late to do it alone.
Sometimes, if the alcoholic can be impressed with the fact that he is
a sick man, or a potentially sick man, then, in effect, you raise the
bottom up to him instead of allowing him to drop down those extra
hard years to reach it. I don't know any substitute for sympathy and
understanding, as much as the outsider can have. No preaching, no
moralizing, but the emphasis on the idea that the alcoholic is a sick
man.
In other
words, the minister might first say to the alcoholic, "Well, all
my life I've misunderstood you people, I've taken you people to be
immoral by choice and perverse and weak, but now I realize that even
if there have been such factors, they really no longer count, now
you're a sick man." You might win the patient by not placing
yourself up on a hilltop and looking down on him, but by getting down
to some level of understanding that he gets, or partially gets. Then,
if you can present this thing as a fatal and progressive malady, and
you can present our group as a group of people who are not seeking to
do anything against his will - we merely want to help if he wants to
be helped - then sometimes you've laid the groundwork.
I think
the clergyman can often do a great deal with the family. You see, we
alcoholics are prone to talk too much about ourselves without
sufficiently considering the collateral effects. For example, any
family, wife and children, who have had to live with an alcoholic 10
or 15 years, are bound to be rather neurotic and distorted
themselves. They just can't help it. After all, when you expect the
old gent to come home on a shutter every night, it's wearing.
Children get a very distorted point of view; so does the wife. Well,
if they constantly hear it emphasized that this fellow is a terrible
sinner, that he's a rotter, that he's in disgrace, and all that sort
of thing, you're not improving the condition of the family at all
because, as they become persuaded of it, they get highly intolerant
of the alcoholic and that merely generates more intolerance in him.
Therefore, the gulf that must be bridged is widened, and that is why
moralizing pushes people, who might have something to offer, further
away from the alcoholic. You may say that it shouldn't be so, but
it's one of those things that is so.
Robinson:
Would local A.A. groups be interested in preventing the development
of alcoholics by giving cooperation to local option movements or
other programs to that end?
Lecturer:
I don't think so. That may be a very hard thing to explain. I'm sure
that many people who are in the reform movement are very, very much
disappointed with AA's because they don't seem to want to cooperate.
Now I make haste to say right away that on this question of reform,
this question of prohibition or moderation or what have you, there
are just as many points of view among the AA's and their families as
there are among the next thousand people who walk by this place.
Therefore, no A.A. group can very well say, "We have a
particular view about prohibition, or this or that degree of
prohibition, or about any educational program that involves
controversial issues." You see we AA's are of particular and
unique use to other alcoholics, therefore we have to be very careful
about anything that is going to get between them and us. In other
words, we can't do anything that is going to arouse prejudice. For
example, if I were to make the statement here that I believe in
prohibition, or that I don't believe in prohibition, and either of
those points of view were quoted publicly, I would inevitably arouse
prejudice. If I said, "Well I don't believe in prohibition and
that's my personal view," then a great many good people who do
believe in prohibition would get annoyed; they might go out and say
to the alcoholic's wife, 'Well, I don't like that crowd of AA's
because they don't believe in prohibition and look what liquor has
done to your husband." So she doesn't suggest A.A. to her
husband and he eventually dies because we have been foolish enough to
arouse prejudice in somebody's mind.
Likewise,
if we said, "Well, we believe in prohibition," and that
were quoted, every alcoholic, almost without exception, reading that
in the newspapers, would say, "Why, that's a bunch of reformers!
And none of that for me." He shouldn't react that way, but he
does. Since ours is a life and death job, you can understand why, as
a group, we are very careful not to express any opinions on
controversial questions. As a group we have no opinion on any kind
of controversy regardless of the merit of either side, because if
we show such an interest, as a group, then we cut down our own
peculiar usefulness.
It isn't
that there aren't bonds of sympathy between us and a great many
points of view. It isn't that individuals among us don't have points
of view. But I wouldn't for the world, in a place like this, express
my personal views about any controversial question lest my opinion be
imputed publicly to the group, to A.A. Then we would be thrown into a
controversy that could only prejudice our efforts and not help
anybody very much. It isn't a lack of understanding or lack of
sympathy; it's a matter of policy about which we have to be unusually
careful.
Question:
How many drug addicts are there in the A.A. and in the organization
similar to A.A., which operates among drug addicts?
Lecturer:
We have quite a number of drug addicts who were once alcoholics. So
far, I don't know of any case of pure drug addiction that we have
been able to approach. In other words, we can no more approach a
simon-pure addict than the outsider can usually approach us. We are
in exactly the same position with them that the doctor and the
clergyman have been in respect to the alcoholic. We just don't talk
that fellow's language. He always looks at us and says, "Well,
those alcoholics are the scum of the earth and besides, what do they
know about addiction?" Now, however, since we have a good number
of addicts who were once alcoholics, those addicts in their turn are
making an effort, here and there, to transfer the thing over to the
straight addict. In that way we hope the bridge is going to be
crossed. There may be a case here and there that has been helped. But
in all, I suppose, there may be around 50 cases of real morphine
addiction in former alcoholics who have been helped by A.A. Of course
we have a great many barbital users, but we don't consider those
people particularly difficult if they really want to do something
about it, and particularly if it's associated with liquor. They seem
to get out of it after a while. But where you have morphine, or some
of those derivatives, then it gets very tough. Then you have to have
a "dope" talk to a "dope," and I hope that we can
find, some day, a bridge to the addict.
Rogers:
How many members do you have in A.A.? How many A.A. groups are there?
Lecturer:
I might have made that point, although, I suppose that the A.A. 's
here would have advertised it from the housetops. We have, I think,
about 15,000 members, and A.A. groups are in about 367 places. A.A.
is showing a capacity to spread by way of literature and
correspondence even outside of the United States. We have a very
successful group now in Honolulu and until recently they had had no
contacts with us except by mail.
Question:
If an alcoholic comes to an A.A. meeting under the influence of
alcohol, how do you treat him or handle him during the meeting
itself?
Lecturer:
Groups will run usually run amuck on that sort of question. At
first we are likely to say that we're going to be supermen and save
every drunk in town. The fact is that a great many of them just don't
want to stop. They come, but they interfere very greatly with the
meeting. Then, being still rather intolerant, the group will swing
way over in the other direction and say, "No drunks around these
meetings." We get forcible with them and put them out of the
meeting, saying, "You're welcome here if your sober." But
the general rule in most places is that if a person comes for the
first or second time and can sit quietly in the meeting, without
creating an uproar, nobody bothers him. On the other hand, if he's a
chronic "slipper" and interferes with the meetings, we lead
him out gently, or maybe not so gently, on the theory that one man
cannot be permitted to hold up the recovery of others. The theory is
"the greatest good for the greatest number."”
(our
emphases)
Comment:
Note the lack of dogma, and the inclusivity of this approach, the
recognition that alcoholics are not 'rolled out' of some kind of
'template' but should be treated rather as individuals and not as
chattels to be directed merely at the whim of some control freak.
Moreover we work with the medical profession and indeed are
much indebted to them for their contribution to our “synthesis”,
and we do not presume therefore to lecture these professionals on the
proper course of treatment (by interfering in that process). Finally
the frequent repetition of the word “intolerance” (and its
variants) throughout the address should be noted, that this is
something rather to be avoided than indulged in to excess. These
principles represent AA at its best; and their converse - the cult at
its very worst!
Cheerio
The Fellas
(Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
