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."