October 24, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer
Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
By
ELRICK B. DAVIS
“In two previous articles, Mr. Davis told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drinkers, banded to overcome their craving for liquor and to help others to forego the habit. This is the third of a series.
Help
The
ex-drunks cured of their medically incurable alcoholism by membership
in Alcoholic Anonymous, know that the way to keep themselves from
backsliding is to find another pathological alcoholic to help. Or to
start a new man toward cure.
That is the way that the Akron chapter
of the society, and from that, the Cleveland fellowship was begun.
One of
the earliest of the cured rummies had talked a New York securities
house into taking a chance that he was really through with liquor. He
was commissioned to do a stock promotion chore in Akron. If he should
succeed, his economic troubles also would be cured. Years of
alcoholism had left him bankrupt as well as a physical and social
wreck before Alcoholics Anonymous had saved him.
His
Akron project failed. Here he was on a Saturday afternoon in a
strange hotel in a town where he did not know a soul, business hopes
blasted, and with scarcely money enough to get him back to New York
with a report that would leave him without the last job he knew of
for him in the world. If ever disappointment deserved drowning, that
seemed the time. A bunch of happy folk were being gay at the bar.
At the
other end of the lobby the Akron church directory was framed in
glass. He looked up the name of a clergyman. The cleric told him of a
woman who was worried about a physician who was a nightly solitary
drunk. The doctor had been trying to break himself of alcoholism for
twenty years. He had tried all of the dodges: Never anything but
light wines or beer; never a drink alone; never a drink before his
work was done; a certain few number of drinks and then stop; never
drink in a strange place; never drink in a familiar place; never mix
the drinks; always mix the drinks; never drink before eating; drink
only while eating; drink and then eat heavily to stop the craving —
and all of the rest.
Every
alcoholic knows all of the dodges. Every alcoholic has tried them
all. That is why an uncured alcoholic thinks someone must have been
following him around to learn his private self-invented devices, when
a member of Alcoholics Anonymous talks to him. Time comes when any
alcoholic has tried them all, and found that none of them work.
Support
The
doctor had just taken his first evening drink when the rubber baron's
wife telephoned to ask him to come to her house to meet a friend from
New York. He dared not, his wife would not, offend her by refusing.
He agreed to go on his wife's promise that they would leave after 15
minutes. His evening jitters were pretty bad.
He met
the New Yorker at 5 o'clock. They talked until 11:15. After that he
stayed "dry" for three weeks. Then he went to a convention
in Atlantic City. That was a bender. The cured New Yorker was at his
bedside when he came to. That was June 10, 1935. The doctor hasn't
had a drink since. Every Akron and Cleveland cure by Alcoholics
Anonymous is a result.
The
point the society illustrates by that bit of history is that only an
alcoholic can talk turkey to an alcoholic. The doctor knew all of the
"medicine" of his disease. He knew all of the psychiatry.
One of his patients had "taken the cure" 72 times. Now he
is cured, by fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. Orthodox science
left the physician licked. He also knew all of the excuses, as well
as the dodges, and the deep and fatal shame that makes a true
alcoholic sure at last that he can't win. Alcoholic death or the
bughouse will get him in time.
The
cured member of Alcoholics Anonymous likes to catch a prospective
member when he is at the bottom of the depths. When he wakes up of a
morning with his first clear thought regret that he is not dead
before he hears where he has been and what he has done. When he
whispers to himself: "Am I crazy?" and the only answer he
can think of is: "Yes." Even when the bright-eyed green
snakes are crawling up his arms.
Then
the pathological drinker is willing to talk. Even eager to talk to
someone who really understands, from experience, what he means when
he says: "I can't understand myself." ”
Comment:
Apart from the “cured” bit, spot on we'd say!
Cheerio
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
