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Saved from Skid Row
Medicine
Column
The
reformed drunkards numbered only 100 or so after four years
of often-discouraging efforts when, in 1939, they decided
to publish a guide to giving up alcohol. The collaborators’
first choice for a title was The Way Out. But a check at
the Library of Congress showed twelve previous works thus
named; the authors shied at the 13th, settled instead for
their second choice, Alcoholics Anonymous. It has sold 300,000
copies.
Last
week the 5,000 A.A. members gathered in St. Louis had two
items to celebrate: 1) their 20th anniversary, which marks
their growth to a massive fellowship of 150,000 reformed
alcoholics organized into 6,000 chapters in more than 50
countries, and 2) publication of a new and enlarged (575
pages) edition of “the big book,” as they fondly
call Alcoholics Anonymous (Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing
Co.; $4.50).
News
from a Broker. Bill W., former Wall Street broker and surviving
co-founder of A.A., argued that it was time for a permanent
guiding body within the organization to take over from the
elder statesmen, and the delegates agreed by ratifying a
charter with a 15-member board of trustees. He also noted
a switch in emphasis: now that its fame is widespread, A.A.
gets more and more alcoholics (about half of its new members)
who have not yet sunk out of social respectability into
Skid Row obscurity, who have had little or no experience
with delirium, hospitals and jails. In consequence, A.A.
is approaching closer to preventive medicine. Such cases
make up one of the most encouraging sections of the new
edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. A prime example:
A
neurosurgeon named Earl in a Western state had always been
fortune’s darling; class president from high school
through medical school and a professional success, he had
never lost family or income because of alcohol. ("I
made more money the last year of my drinking than I ever
made before in my whole life.“) He knew that something
had to give when he found that the drinks he craved made
him miserable even before they made him drunk. His wife
read him an A.A. pamphlet. For the moment it
had no effect. But a few evenings later, as he was opening
his second fifth, the thought struck him: “This is
the last one!”
Help
from a Butcher. The break came easy for Dr. Earl, but continued
abstinence came hard. Although he was a graduate of 5 1/2
years in psychoanalysis, he had to call on the local butcher,
a pillar of A.A., for guidance when the going got rough.
The butcher brought the doctor down to earth, interested
him in A.A.'s program of mutual support. Dr. Earl has not
had a drink for three years.
In
writing his own case history, the doctor speculates whether
A.A.'s curative power should be called “benevolent
interpersonal relations” or group psychotherapy. Then,
like so many other successful A.A. members, he gives his
own answer: “To me it is God.”
(Source:
Time, July 18, 1955)
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