Do
alcoholics as a class differ from other people?
Answer
Some
years ago the doctors began to look at Alcoholics Anonymous
and they got about thirty of us together and they said
to themselves "Well, now that these fellows are in A.A.,
and they won't lie so badly, and maybe for the first
time we'll get a good look at what the interior of a
drunk is like." So a number of us were examined at great
length by psychiatrists, and all sorts of tests taken,
and the object of this particular inquiry was to see
whether alcoholics as a class differed from other people,
and if they did, just why and how much.
A number of us were invited to attend the conclave,
and a number of learned papers were read, and finally
one of these physicians (a very noted one - the meeting
took place at the New York Academy of Medicine) began
to sum up what he thought the conclusion which they
had arrived at was this: that the alcoholic is emotionally
on the childish side. That the alcoholic is a person
who is more sensitive emotionally than the average person.
And then, they ascribed another quality to us - they
used the word "grandiosity," they were grandiose (meaning
by that that as a type we were what you might call "All
or Nothing people.") Someone once described it by saying
all alcoholics hanker for the moon when perhaps the
stars would have done just as well. As a class, we're
like that, said the doctors. (Memphis, Tenn., Sept.18-20,
1947)
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