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Help for the Alcoholic’s Family
by Jerome Ellison
The
exclusive story, with case histories, of a new group that
is bringing
hope to alcohol’s most tragic victims: The wives,
husbands and
children of the drunkards themselves;
One
night three years ago a wife in Long Beach, California,
despondent over her husband’s drinking, went to a
meeting of the local Alanon--contraction of Alcoholics Anonymous--Family
Group to see what, if anything, might be done. After an
evening of intent listening to men and women who had served
as spouses to other drinkers, she returned home with her
strategy drastically revised.
Always
one to pour the household liquor down the drain when a binge
was on, she now purchased five imperials of the finest,
lined them up on the kitchen sink and waved an invitation
to her husband to help himself. Unmanned by this reversal,
he sat down to hear her explanation. He was so impressed
by what she had learned about his problem that he returned
the bottles unopened and hasn’t had a drink since.
Alanon
Family Groups, of which there are now about 700 neighborhood
units, have produced many recoveries which are hardly less
remarkable. The society is not mainly organized, however,
to effect such comebacks. This is the province of its parent
organization, Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, the international
fellowship of former problem drinkers who keep sober by
helping inebriates find sobriety. Alanon tackles the problem
from the standpoint of the nonalcoholic who is hurt in the
emotional and economic tornado which so often accompanies
alcoholism. Its members are mostly wives and husbands of
AA members or prospects.
The
field for Alanon is larger, the statistics suggest, than
that available to AA itself, and the need
is scarcely less urgent. The National Committee on Alcoholism,
an educational and fact-finding organization, estimates
that of the 65,000,000 Americans who drink, 4,000,000 have
well-developed cases of alcoholism. A Public Affairs Committee
summary of the annual cost to the nation charges $31,000,000
to medical care, $25,000,000 t o jail maintenance, $89,000,000
to accidents, $188,000,000 to crime, and $432,000,000 to
wage losses. Other costs, such as the addling of good brains,
the neglect and abuse of children, the disruption of families
and friendships, are borne in large measure by those closely
associated with problem drinkers. It is this population
segment of 20,000,000 that Alanon Family Groups are intended
primarily to help.
“And
we need help,” says the wife of AA’s surviving
founder. “After years of living intimately with an
acute drinking problem, we’ve become as jumpy as the
drinker, and as much in need of restorative measures.”
As
in AA, help is given mainly in the form of shared experience.
Just as former drinkers are best qualified to appreciate
inebriates problems, so the harassments of the alcoholic’s,
spouse--or
brother, father, sister, mother, sweetheart, employer or
friend--can best be understood, Alanon members say, by a
nonalcoholic who has had similar experiences.
The voices of experience are heard in the talks members
give at meetings, during the refreshment period afterward,
and through informal get-togethers between times. Sometimes,
as in the case of the Long Beach wife, a listener gains
insight that results in an immediate improvement of the
home situation. Of course, no one had suggested treating
alcoholism with alcohol. But the principle that a desire
to stop drinking is an inward thing that cannot be created
by outside lecturing, threatening, scolding or deprivation,
is one of the tenets embraced in a way of life that AA’s
and their mates call “the program.” The Californian
grasped it promptly, applied it daringly and achieved a
seemingly miraculous recovery.
“Hang
around,” new members are advised. “Sooner or
later, you’ll hear a story that exactly matches your
own.” When this happens, a feeling of belonging is
strengthened, isolation is
ended, anxiety begins to ease off.
In
a recent trip through the East and Midwest I met and talked
with scores of Alanon members attended their meetings and
heard their case histories. There was a fantastic variety
of family narratives, most of them having a happy ending.
Families had been salvaged from circumstances seasoned counselors
had pronounced hopeless. With the help of AA and Alanon,
chronic drunks had been restored as dependable fathers,
female barflies had made a comeback as conscientious mothers,
families had been lifted from a special brand of hell to
a special brand of peace.
“Stories,”
as members call their talks at meetings, briefly describe
the family’s condition before AA and Alanon, the circumstances
that led to joining and the family record since. The “before”
passages often recall days and nights of desperation and
shame. “Our house was always a mess,” a New
York husband reminisced. “I could never be sure my
wife would be sober when I came home; we could never entertain
friends or go visiting. I hated all of it.” A Westchester
father said, “I dragged my son out of bars, argued
with him, took his money and liquor away. Nothing worked.”
Wives
spoke movingly of what had happened to their loved ones
and themselves. “He was changing before my eyes, losing
his gaiety, growing irritable. He was a binge drinker and
the binges came closer together.”
“Our
problem so filled my mind that I found myself forgetting
appointments, riding past bus stops, looking at people and
not hearing what they said.”
“We
lived in a small, gossipy, party-line town. We tried to
keep up a gay front, but were stingingly
unhappy.”
From
a Western state: “You know the story: father’d
get plastered and you’d retreat to a corner to commit
mental suicide and murder. I could never know what turn
things would take; there was never any security or sense
of well being or peace. Finally I built a wall around myself
and retreated behind it. We didn’t go out for months
at a time.”
The
Alcoholic Doesn’t Fool the Children
Some
had taken refuge in a dulled acceptance. “I had given
up hope and become a martyr. We never talked much; we were
almost strangers. He was sure I had stopped loving him;
I was sure he had stopped loving me.”
“The
strain had affected my disposition, and this, in turn, affected
the children. Our daughter avoided home like a plague and
our son was in trouble at school. Bills at all the stores
were long past due, we had no cash, our furniture belonged
to a loan company. For a family accustomed to making its
way, it was hard.”
Others
had lived at a high pitch of nervous protest. “When
he was out, I’d jump out of my skin when the phone
or doorbell rang, chain myself to the house so I’d
be there when he returned, visualize accidents, extravagances,
infidelities,
arrests. When he was home there were spilt drinks, uneaten
meals, insults, physical violence, interrupted sleep, ordinary
filth, constant quarrels.”
One
wife said, “Our marriage was held together by a little
hope, a large fear and two children.”
The
children were not fooled. “I always knew when daddy
was drunk, by the way he put his key in the door,”
a drinker’s daughter said. “When he was like
that I ran to my room and locked the door.”
Another
recalled: “Kids notice things. I remember them stumbling
around saying, This is the way Marilyn’s daddy walks.“’
In
some cases a family member took the first step toward family
recovery through Alanon, drawing the alcoholic into the
AA orbit later. “Our doctor suggested AA as a possible
step for our son,” one father said. “I began
attending AA meetings on my own, and after a time Bob went
with me. AA made sense to him right away, and he hasn’t
had a drink since his first meeting.” Later, this
father helped organize a family group and served as its
chairman.
The
alcoholic’s response is not always so prompt. “Alanon
welcomed my daughter and me and gave us new hope,”
one wife said, “but my husband didn’t join AA
until a year and a half later, when being fired for drinking
finally opened his eyes.”
In
a New York City Alanon meeting it was the questing wife,
one night, who received the eye opener. After hearing the
symptoms of alcoholism described she jumped up, saying,
“I don’t belong here, but in AA. I’m an
alcoholic!”
Some
members report having been self-conscious and even suspicious
in the beginning. “We had been referred to AA by our
minister. I knew nothing about it, and my son was afraid
it might let him in for some kind of enforced soul-saving
program. He came home glowing after his first meeting, relieved
of this and a great many other fears.” This Midwest
mother learned of the family group, joined and became an
effective counselor to other families.
Family
groups like to compare notes about how they happened to
“come in.” Some are awed at the unlikely “chance”
which brought help
in a desperate hour. A husband said, “One day
when I was at my wit’s end about Mary’s drinking,
I ran into an old friend who had been a complete lush, and
found out about AA. Mary said she’d try it, and I
joined the local family group to help her.”
A
wife reported: “During the last week of Jim’s
last bout, a ninety-seven-day affair, I knelt down in my
flower garden and said what was probably my first really
serious prayer. A few minutes later a neighbor called and
suggested I phone AA.”
Frequently
the alcoholic joins AA and the nonalcoholic partner affiliates
with Alanon at the same time. “While I was in the
hospital for an operation, my husband drank himself into
another hospital. The AA’s called on him, and when
he came out he was a member. When I came out I joined the
family group.”
More
commonly the alcoholic pioneers in AA, and the spouse joins
Alanon weeks or months later. One factor is curiosity. “Something
had worked a profound change for the better in my husband,”
a Buffalo, New York’ wife testified, “and I
wanted to find out what it was.” Another factor is
a constructive kind of rivalry. In my visiting around the
groups I heard frequent reference to the growth in understanding
and maturity of the alcoholic spouse through AA. “We
had to find out what it was all about or be hopelessly outdistanced.”
Finding
out what it’s about sometimes comes as a shock.
“I was quite put out at my first meeting,” one
wife said. “I expected to hear my husband’s
problem discussed, but there was hardly any mention of husbands.
I was huffed when one wife expressed the opinion that fear,
worry, gossip, criticism, grudge-bearing, self-righteousness
and self-pity might be as reprehensible as drunkenness,
lying and thieving. This was a shock--it hit home.”
A more usual first reaction is one of relief. Again and
again I heard of the newcomer’s reassurance on discovering
that others had survived all he now faced and more, and
had emerged cheerful and with a solution.
The “after” portions of the stories did not
always proclaim unqualified victories over the demon rum.
AA claims to be able to help all sincere applicants except
those who are “constitutionally unable to be honest
with themselves.” A number of these are represented
in Alanon by their spouses. One wife felt that the Alanon
program was successful in her case “simply because
I have some degree of serenity and good health, and can
feel respect and good will for my husband even though he’s
just come off a two-week drunk.” Another reported
dramatic relief from disabling headaches which she believed
had been psychosomatic. A five-year member, she is successfully
raising her two sons, though her husband remains a pathological
drinker. One wife advised newcomers to be optimistic and
patient about mates who were slow to respond. Her husband,
now sober four years, had taken seven years to “make”
AA!
Another
group of “after” stories bears a restrained
witness to improvement. “Has all disagreement ended
in our household?” one woman asked rhetorically. “No,
but friendly compromise has become possible.”
After
a year of Alanon, a wife reported: “The main difference
in our family is that now we can talk. The two hardest people
on earth to talk to are a drunk and an irritated wife. Now
that we’ve broken the sound barrier, companionship
is growing.”
Generally,
however, Alanon stories reflect a happily reconstructed
family life. They are preponderantly enthusiastic. “I’ll
never forget those
first meetings--seeing so many people I knew, never dreaming
they’d had the same problem we’d had! I’d
been a plain snob! We had all been so foolish to cover up
our problem instead of solving it!”
“I’ve
made such wonderful friends! We can laugh and even cry together
and understand just
what we’re laughing or crying about.”
“My
advice to families with an alcoholic problem is, don’t
try to do it alone; it’s too big.”
“We
found this secret of harmony: When each
partner is trying to remedy his own defects, there’s
nothing to differ about.”
I
recall particularly a meeting in Des Moines, which has a
family group of the predominantly female variety. Since
AA runs more than five-to-one male, this is the usual, but
by no means invariable, complexion of the spouse groups.
The main AA group in Des Moines has more than 200 members
and holds meetings in its downtown clubrooms, over a store
at 816 1/2 Walnut Street, on Tuesday evenings. Saturday
night is family night, and it is not unusual to have seventy
for dinner and twice that many for the evening program of
AA speakers. Family group meets on second Wednesdays at
eight P.M.
At
the meeting I attended I counted about eighty women. There
were grandmothers and there was a babe in arms. The twenties
and forties were well represented, with the thirties having
a plurality. The members were smart in appearance and cheerful
in demeanor, and the quarters pleasant. The loft measures
perhaps forty by a hundred feet. In the rear are kitchen
and dining facilities, a coffee bar and an office. The front
portion, where the meetings are held, is
a lounge and auditorium. Presiding was the secretary, a
long-limbed, gently spoken matron in her thirties named
Dorothy H.
Before
the meeting I learned that Dorothy was the wife of Ray H.,
a prominent local attorney and one of the founders of the
Des Moines AA group, and that they have an eleven-year-old
son. Ray, in his day, had been jailed eighteen times for
drunkenness, and hospitalized countless times. On one of
these occasions the attending doctor jotted: “A chronic
alcoholic, formerly a man of repute.” As Ray’s
secretary, it was once part of Dorothy’s job to cover
up for him during his binges. She agreed to marry him only
if he’d give up drinking. He accepted the condition
and stayed sober three months. There followed four “awful”
years, until one day fourteen years ago, when an AA stranger
from Omaha blew into town, told Ray he was the man to introduce
AA to Des Moines, and wrought the marvel of sobriety.
The
secretary and treasurer reported briefly, and members learned
that some $17.85 remained in the till. A collection basket
was passed, into which the ladies put as much as a dollar
and as little as a dime. Four new members were introduced,
and presented with pamphlets outlining the nonalcoholics’
adaptation of AA’s twelve suggested steps, stressing
self-examination, self-improvement, prayer and service.
A rummage sale was announced among the coming events, and
a home-talent show. These latter are popular, drawing as
many as 500 spectators. At one of them a prominent local
political candidate and AA member offered his services as
a target for custard pies. At five dollars a throw, he became
a formidable moneymaker. By these and other means, the family
group has provided the club with furniture, television,
piano, refrigerator, dining silver and kitchen range.
The
first speaker, an attractive forty-year-old redhead celebrating
the first anniversary of her family’s affiliation
with AA, said it had been a short year and the happiest
of their married life. “When Don came in a year ago,
the neighborhood tavern keeper made a pool on which of the
first fourteen days Don would resume drinking. The pool
was extended to three, then four weeks, then called off.
Don likes AA and likes sobriety, and now it’s a year.
In our house, it was a revelation to learn that for an alcoholic
the dangerous drink is not the third or seventh or eleventh,
but the first! It’s wise to recall the things that
happened while Don was drinking—it encourages a sense
of gratitude--but unwise, I think, to brood over them. Some
of them, recalled a year or two later, even seem funny.
“We
didn’t go out much, because Don drank all day and
wanted only to sleep when he came home. Now and then, to
make up, he’d blow me to his idea of a big treat--like
the time he took me to a drive-in theater, then snored all
through the show. Our social life has improved a great deal,
now that people can understand what Don is saying. Don says
my cooking is better. Of course, it is. He used to phone
at dinnertime and say he’d be home in ten minutes.
Two hours later he’d call and say he’d be home
in five minutes. An hour later, when everything was dehydrated
to the consistency of cedar shingles, he’d turn up
for dinner.” She had long been in the habit’
she said, of cutting out and saving quotations that particularly
appealed to her. She read us one: “A clever wife sees
through her husband; a good wife sees her husband through.”
The
next speaker was one of the founders of the family group.
“Jack and I came into AA eleven years ago. He’s
a broker. He drank a lot in his business and we drank together
daily, I almost as much as he. Things were not going well
with us, with Jack’s business, with the children.
There had to be a change, either for better or for much
worse. Then Jack Alexander’s article came along in
The Saturday Evening Post, and we began to talk about AA.
After three years of talk, my Jack actually joined, and,
of course, I affiliated with the family group. It has given
me friends, and steady help with current problems, and many
good times.” She closed by reading the passage of
the marriage ceremony that goes: “---from -this day
forward, for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in
sickness and in health---” It helped her perspective
to remind herself, she said, that she had once made such
a promise and considered it binding.
The
active therapeutic ingredient of AA-Alanon, a mysterious
force that AA’s are sometimes heard to call
“the program,” is a little hard to define. After
attending meetings over a wide geographical spread, I concluded
that the effective essence is not in physical surroundings
or programming. In Montclair, New Jersey, and Kew Gardens,
New York’ the groups met in churches. In Jackson Heights
they met in an office building, in Westchester in a museum,
in New York City in an AA club, in Buffalo in an apartment.
In Des Moines there were eighty at the meeting; in other
places the average attendance was twenty. In Westchester
and in one of the North Jersey groups, the chairmen were
men. Buffalo and New York City had speaker programs. In
Kew Gardens and Jackson Heights the meetings were open discussions.
In Westchester and Montclair, new members submitted written
questions, and the program consisted of older members’
answers.
These
were typical questions: How far does one go in accommodating
an AA spouse’s drunken proteges? How do you take a
moral inventory? Should liquor be kept under lock and key?
To what extent should one cover the lies of a husband who’s
still drinking? How long after the alcoholic stop drinking
does that awful uncertainty persists?
A
question which drew a comment from practically everybody
present at the Montclair -meeting was: How do I find peace
of mind? The consensus was that one never captured it by
frontal attack; when it came at all, it was a by-product
of some other activity--usually of trying to help someone
else. Some found a measure of peace in counting blessings,
others in talking out a problem with an understanding friend.
Prayers--“Don’t let me think that way,”
“Help me to make the most of this single day,”
and the familiar AA prayer for serenity and wisdom--were
reported as tending to restore tranquility.
The
program is obviously flexible as to size, location
and form of meetings. I received an impression, however,
that it called for a certain minimum of individual effort.
A sincere desire to get sober and remain so is expected
of the alcoholic; and of the nonalcoholic, a genuine wish
to achieve and maintain harmonious family relationships.
Reform activities are to be confined to oneself; efforts
to change others are to be restricted to friendly concern.
Criticism, gossip and grudge-bearing are definitely off
the program. One may rib another person only on condition
one ribs oneself more sharply. Humility, though regarded
as nearly unattainable, is nevertheless to be sought, along
with patience, understanding, thoughtfulness and honesty.
The participation of a Higher Power is frequently alluded
to as a desirable condition for the program’s fulfillment.
Regular attendance at meetings and frequent contacts with
other members are parts of the program. Through these contacts
the extraordinary understanding of one sufferer for another
finds opportunity to take effect.
The
growth of the family groups roughly parallels that of AA,
which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this month with
an anticipated attendance of 15,000 at its St. Louis convention.
The two founders of AA were a Wall Street broker and an
Akron physician. From the beginning, their wives were important
partners in the movement. They turned their homes into virtual
rescue missions overflowing with drunks. As more family
men entered AA, there were more wives to be encouraged and
advised. The book Alcoholics Anonymous, from which the society
took its name, was published in 1939. Special chapters were
addressed to the needs of wives and families of alcoholics.
When the first meetings were held in members’ homes,
spouses chatted over coffee in the kitchen while AA’s
met in the living room. Some went along on responses to
appeals for help--“twelfth-step calls”—talking
with the sober spouse while the AA dealt with the inebriate.
Later, in localities where the AA tradition includes large
“open”--to the public--meetings, the nonalcoholic
partner attended regularly. Even where there were only “closed’‘--to
all but alcoholics--meetings, enough AA thought filtered
through to provoke a lively curiosity.
Mainly,
however, Alanon has drawn its strength from a discovery
that the affected nonalcoholics have problems distinctly
their own--problems which respond amazingly to appropriate
application of the familiar ideas which make up AA philosophy.
Nonalcoholic auxiliaries, variously called Alanon, Alano,
Onala, wives’ groups and ladies’ auxiliaries
sprang up. By 1949 there were about fifty of these. The
need for some such agency as a partner and helpmeet for
AA was becoming more evident. AA general headquarters at
141 E. 44th St., New York City was receiving a steady stream
of inquiries from distracted wives and husbands of alcoholics.
Family groups were clamoring for some sort of central facility.
A
report on family groups was given at the 1950 convention
in Cleveland, which was attended by more than 10,000 AA’s
and their mates. Returning delegates spawned groups everywhere.
In the next five years 650 were formed, including units
in Europe, Africa and Oceania. There are now 300 in Canada
alone. Groups are so numerous in California that the state
had to be divided into northern and southern councils. They
are still forming, at a current rate of about one a week.
The Alanon Family Groups Handbook, a 200-page two-dollar
volume has just--June 1955, made its -appearance. The Alanon
Family Groups Clearing House publishes a monthly bulletin
and answers inquiries from P.O. Box 1475, Grand Central
Station, New York 17, N.Y. It is manned by volunteers; overhead
is defrayed by a traditional dollar a member in spring and
fall.
AA
as a whole has welcomed its offspring, if not always with
a wild exuberance, at least with a warm tolerance. What
is probably a consensus was well stated by AA’s official
publication, Grapevine, in an approving article by an initially
suspicious member. “This reporter had heard about
these goings-on,” the piece says, “and, like
many a smug AA, assumed they were mere knitting circles.
I was lured into one of their meetings recently. If I came
to sneer, I remained to pray. This was no sewing bee but
a spiritual force at work. I guess I was expecting to hear
long complaints about how they’d been put upon by
our boozing. There was none of that. They were examining
not us but themselves!”
Whatever
“the program” may be, there is no longer much
question that in many cases it can reunite families, sometimes
beyond reasonable expectation. I talked with a father of
five children who had spent nine years in a state penitentiary
for bad-check passing, an activity that invariably accompanied
his drinking. There was an AA group in the prison and he
joined. When he found that it worked for two years “outside,”
he got in touch with his wife, who meanwhile had divorced
him, and began a second courtship. Part of his wooing was
introducing her to Alanon. They’ve now been remarried
two years.
Then,
of course, there are the cases where it has not quite worked,
and these are the sad ones. While I was in Des Moines, Ray
H., the lawyer, took me down to the courthouse one afternoon
when a family case was set to be tried. “Just so you
can see what can happen when we miss,” he explained.
Both the father and mother in the case were alcoholics and
there were six children, eighteen to four. The continued
destructive drinking of the father produced a home unfit
for children. County welfare had worked with the family
for years and given up hope, and now was asking the -court
to take the children from the father and mother. This was
done, and I shall not soon forget the tear-stained face
of the fifteen-year-old daughter or the way the four-year-old
kept looking into people’s faces, trying to understand.
There are such scenes in all the courthouses all the time,
and not all of them, we now know, are beyond hope. There
is need for AA’s new present to all the family.
Volunteers
at the Clearing House--all AA wives--don’t have to
be told of this need—they read their mail. One day
they let me read some of it. I jotted down the closing words
of one letter: “My husband is an alcoholic, but will
not ask for help. He thinks he can work it out for himself.
He’s not doing it, but what can I do? Is there anyone
in the world who can help us or will try to? Please, for
God’s sake, can you help me?”
(Source:
The Saturday Evening Post, July 2, 1955)
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