October
25, 1939 Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Alcoholics
Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
By ELRICK
B. DAVIS
“In
three previous articles, Mr. Davis has told of Alcoholics Anonymous,
an organization of former drinkers banded to break the liquor habit
and to save others from over drinking. This is the fourth of a
series.
Understanding
What gets
the pathological drinker who finally has reached such state that he
is willing to listen to a cured rummy member of Alcoholics Anonymous,
is that the retrieved alcoholic not only understands what only
another alcoholic can understand, but a great deal that the
unreformed drunk thinks no one else could know because he has never
told anyone, and his difficulties or escapades must be private to his
own history.
Fact is
the history of all alcoholics is the same; some have been addicts
longer than others, and some have painted brighter red patches around
the town — that is all. What they have heard in the "cure"
hospitals they have frequented, or from the psychoanalysts they have
consulted, or the physicians who have tapered them off one bender or
another at home, has convinced them that alcoholism is a disease. But
they are sure (a) that their version of the disease differs from
everyone else's and (b) that in them it hasn't reached the incurable
stage anyway.
Head of
the "cure" told them: "If you ever take another drink,
you'll be back."
Psychoanalyst
said "Psychologically, you have never been weaned. Your
subconscious is still trying to get even with your mother for some
forgotten slight." Family or hotel physician said "If you
don't quite drinking, you'll die."
Reproof
Lawyers,
ministers, business partners and employers, parents and wives, also
are professionally dedicated to listening to confidences and
accepting confessions without undue complaint. But the clergyman may
say: "Your drinking is a sin." And partner or employer:
"You'll have to quit this monkey business or get out." And
wife or parent: "This drinking is breaking my heart." And
everyone: "Why don't you exercise some will power and straighten
up and be a man."
"But,"
the alcoholic whispers in his heart. "No one but I can know
that I must drink to kill suffering too great to stand."
He
presents his excuses to the retrieved alcoholic who has come to talk.
Can't sleep without liquor. Worry. Business troubles. Debt.
Alimentary pains. Overwork. Nerves too high strung. Grief.
Disappointment. Deep dark phobic fears. Fatigue. Family difficulties.
Loneliness.
The
catalog has got no farther than that when the member of Alcoholics
Anonymous begins rattling off an additional list.
"Hogwash,"
he says. "Don't try those alibis on me. I have used them all
myself."
Understanding
And then
he tells his own alcoholic history, certainly as bad, perhaps far
worse than the uncured rummy's. They match experiences. Before he
knows it the prospect for cure has told his new friend things he had
never admitted even to himself. A rough and ready psychiatry, that,
but it works, as the cured members of the Cleveland Chapter of
Alcoholics Anonymous all are restored to society to testify. And that
is the reason for the fellowship's weekly gatherings. They are
testimonial meetings. The members meet to find new victims to cure,
and to buck each other up. For years their social and emotional life
has all been elbow-bending. Now they provide each other a richer
society to replace the old. Hence, the fellowship's family parties
and picnics.
Never for
a moment do they forget that a practicing alcoholic is a very sick
person. Never for a moment can they forget that even medical men who
know the nature of the disease are apt to feel that failure to
recover is a proof of moral perversity in the patient. If a man is
dying of cancer, no one says: "Why doesn't he exercise some will
power and kill that cancer off." If he is coughing his lungs out
with tuberculosis, no one says: "Buck up and quit coughing; be a
man." They may say to the first: "Submit to surgery before
it is too late;" to the second: "Take a cure before you are
dead."
Religion
Retrieved
alcoholics talk in that fashion to their uncured fellows. They say:
"You are a very sick man. Physically sick — you have an
allergy to alcohol. We can put you in a hospital that will sweat that
poison out. Mentally sick. We know how to cure that. And spiritually
sick.
"To
cure your spiritual illness you will have to admit God. Name your own
God, or define Him to suit yourself. But if you are really
willing to 'do anything' to get well, and if it is really true —
and we know it is — that you drink when you don't want to and that
you don't know why you get drunk, you'll have to quit lying to
yourself and adopt a spiritual way of life. Are you ready to accept
help?"
And the
miracle is that, for alcoholics brought to agreement by pure
desperation, so simple a scheme works.
Cleveland
alone has 50 alcoholics, all former notorious drunks, now members of
Alcoholics Anonymous to prove it. None is a fanatic
prohibitionist. None has a quarrel with liquor legitimately used
by people physically, nervously, and spiritually equipped to use it.
They simply know that alcoholics can't drink and live, and that their
"incurable" disease has been conquered.”
(our
emphases)
Cheerio
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
