Alcoholics Anonymous By Jack Alexander

Three men sat around the bed of an that would be the end of it. The members of alcoholic patient in the psychopathic ward, of Alcoholics Anonymous do not pursue or coddle Philadelphia General Hospital one afternoon a a malingering prospect, and they know the few weeks ago. The man in the bed, who was a strange tricks of the alcoholic as a reformed complete stranger to them, had the drawn and swindler knows the art of bamboozling. slightly stupid look that inebriates get while Herein lies much of the unique strength being defogged after a bender. The only thing of a movement which, in the past six years, has that was noteworthy about the callers, except for brought recovery to around 2,000 men and the obvious contrast between their well-groomed women, a large percentage of whom had been appearances and that of the patient, was the considered medically hopeless. Doctors and fact that each had been through the defogging clergymen, working separately or together, have process many times himself. They were always managed to salvage a few cases. In members of Alcoholics Anonymous, a band of isolated instances, drinkers have found their ex-problem drinkers who made an avocation of own methods of quitting. But the inroads into helping other alcoholics to beat the liquor habit. alcoholism have been negligible, and it remains The man in the bed was a mechanic. His one of the great unsolved public-health enigmas. visitors had been educated at Princeton, Yale By nature touchy and suspicious, the and Pennsylvania and were, by occupation, a alcoholic likes to be left alone to work out his salesman, a lawyer and a publicity man. Less puzzle, and he has a convenient way of ignoring than a year before, one had been in shackles in the tragedy which he inflicts meanwhile upon the same ward. One of his companions had those who are close to him. He holds been what is known among alcoholics as a desperately to a conviction that, although he has sanitarium commuter. He had moved from place not been able to handle alcohol in the past, he to place, bedeviling the staffs of the country’s will ultimately succeed in becoming a controlled leading institutions for the treatment of drinker. One of medicine’s queerest animals, he alcoholics. The other had spent twenty years of is, as often as not, an acutely intelligent person. life, all outside institution walls, making life He fences with professional men and relatives miserable for himself, and his family and his who attempt to aid him and he gets a perverse employers, as well as sundry well-meaning satisfaction out of tripping them up in argument. relatives who had had the temerity to intervene. There is no specious excuse for drinking The air of the ward was thick with the which the troubleshooters of Alcoholics aroma of paraldehyde, an unpleasant cocktail Anonymous have not heard or used themselves. smelling like a mixture of alcohol and ether When one of their prospects hands them a which hospitals sometimes use to taper off the rationalization for getting soused, -they match it paralyzed drinker and soothe his squirming with half a dozen out of their own experiences. nerves. The visitors seemed oblivious of this and This upsets him a little, and he gets defensive. of the depressing atmosphere that clings to even He looks at their neat clothing and smoothly the nicest of psychopathic wards. They smoked shaved faces and charges them with being and talked with the patient for twenty minutes or goody-goodies who don’t know what it is to so, then left their personal cards and departed. If struggle with drink. They reply by relating their the man in the bed felt that he would like to see own stories: the double Scotches and brandies one of them again, they told him, he had only to before breakfast; the vague feeling of discomfort put in a telephone call. which precedes a drinking bout; the awakening They made it plain that if he actually from a spree without being able to account for wanted to stop drinking, they would leave their the actions of several days and the haunting fear work or get up in the middle of the night to hurry that possibly they had run down someone with to where he was. If he did not choose to call, their automobiles.

1

They tell of the eight-ounce bottles of gin among those who occasionally land back in here hidden behind pictures and in caches from cellar again, we observe a profound change in to attic; of spending whole days in motion- personality. You would hardly recognize them.” picture houses to stave off the temptation to The Illinois Medical Journal, in an drink; of sneaking out of the office for quickies editorial last December, went further than Dr. during the day. They talk of losing jobs and Stouffer, in stating: “It is indeed a miracle when stealing money form their wives’ purses; of a person who for years has been more or less putting pepper into whiskey to give it a tang; of constantly under the influence of alcohol and in tippling on bitters and sedative tablets, or on whom his friends have lost all confidence, will sit mouthwash or hair tonic; of getting into the habit up all night with a drunk and at stated intervals of camping outside the neighborhood tavern ten administer a small amount of liquor in minutes before opening time. They describe a accordance with a doctor’s orders without taking hand so jittery that it could not lift a pony to the a drop himself.” lips without spilling the contents; drinking liquor This is a reference to a common aspect from a beer stein because it can be steadied of the Arabian Nights adventures to which with two hands, although at the risk of chipping a Alcoholics Anonymous workers dedicate front tooth; tying an end of a towel about a glass, themselves. Often it involves sitting upon, as looping the towel around the back of the neck, well as up with, the intoxicated person, as the and drawing the free end with the other hand, impulse to jump out a window seems to be an pulley fashion, to advance the glass to the attractive one to many alcoholics when in their mouth; hands so shaky they feel as if they were cups. Only an alcoholic can squat on another about to snap off and fly into space; sitting on alcoholic’s chest for hours with the proper hands for hours to keep them from doing this. combination of discipline and sympathy. These and other bits of drinking lore During a recent trip around the East and usually manage to convince the alcoholic that he Middle West, I met and talked with scores of is talking to blood brothers. A bridge of A.A.’s as they call themselves, and found them confidence is thereby erected, spanning a gap to be unusually calm, tolerant people. Somehow, which has baffled the physician, the minister, the they seemed better integrated than the average priest, or the hapless relatives. Over this group of nonalcoholic individuals. Their connection, the troubleshooters convey, bit by transformation from cop fighters, canned-heat bit, the details of a program for living which has drinkers, and, .in some instances, wife beaters, worked for them and which, they feel, can work was startling. On one of the most influential for any other alcoholic. They concede as out of newspapers in the country, I found that the city their orbit only those who are psychotic or who editor, the assistant city editor, and a nationally are already suffering from the physical known reporter were A.A.’s, and strong in the impairment known as wet brain. At the same confidence of their publisher. time, they see to it that the prospect gets In another city, I heard a judge parole a whatever medical attention is needed. drunken driver to an A.A. member. The latter, Many -doctors and staffs of institutions during his drinking days, had smashed several throughout the country now suggest Alcoholics cars and had had his own operator’s license Anonymous to their drinking patients. In some suspended. The judge knew him and was glad towns, the courts and probation officers to trust him. A brilliant executive of an cooperate with the local group. In a few city advertising firm disclosed that two years ago he psychopathic divisions, the workers of Alcoholics had been panhandling and sleeping in a Anonymous are accorded the same visiting doorway under an elevated structure. He had a privileges as staff members. Philadelphia favorite doorway, which he shared with other General is one of these. Dr. John F. Stouffer, the vagrants, and every few weeks he goes back chief psychiatrist, says: “The alcoholics we get and pays them a visit just to assure himself he here are mostly those who cannot afford private isn’t dreaming. treatment, and this is by far the greatest thing In Akron, as in other manufacturing we have ever been able to offer them. Even centers, the groups include a heavy element of

2

manual workers. In the Cleveland Athletic Club, I drank themselves out of job after job, is said to had luncheon with five lawyers, an accountant, be around ninety percent. an engineer, three salesmen, an insurance man, One-hundred percent effectiveness with a buyer, a bartender, a chain-store manager, a non-psychotic drinkers who sincerely want to manager of an independent store, and a quit is claimed by the workers of Alcoholics manufacturer’s representative. They were Anonymous. The program will not work, they members of a central committee which add, with those who only “want to want to quit,” coordinates the work of nine neighborhood or who want to quit because they are afraid of groups. Cleveland, with more than 450 losing their families or their jobs. The effective members, is the biggest of the A.A. centers. The desire, they state, must be based upon next largest are located in Chicago, Akron, enlightened self-interest; the applicant must Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington, and want to get away from liquor to head off New York. All told, there are groups in about fifty incarceration or premature death. He must be cities and towns. fed up with the stark social loneliness which In discussing their work, the A.A.’s spoke engulfs the uncontrolled drinker, and he must of their drunk-rescuing as “insurance” for want to put some order into his bungled life. themselves. Experience within the group has As it is impossible to disqualify all shown, they said, that once a recovered drinker borderline applicants, the working percentage of slows up in this work he is likely to go back to recovery falls below the 100-percent mark. drinking himself. There is, they agreed, no such According to A.A. estimation, fifty percent of the thing as an ex-alcoholic. If one is an alcoholic– alcoholics taken in hand recover almost that is, a person who is unable to drink normally- immediately; twenty-five percent get well after -one remains an alcoholic until he dies, just as a suffering a relapse or two; and the rest remain diabetic remains a diabetic. The best he can doubtful. This rate of success is exceptionally hope for is to become an arrested case, with high. Statistics on traditional medical and drunk-saving as his insulin. At least, the A.A.’s religious cures are lacking, but it has been say so, and medical opinion tends to support informally estimated that they are no more than them. All but a few said that they had lost all two or three percent effective on run-of-the-mine desire for alcohol. Most serve liquor in their cases. homes and when friends drop in, and they still Although it is too early to state that go to bars with companions who drink; The Alcoholics Anonymous is the definitive answer to A.A.’s tipple on soft drinks and coffee. alcoholism, its brief record is impressive, and it One, a sales manager, acts as bartender is receiving hopeful support. John D. at his company’s annual jamboree in Atlantic Rockefeller, Jr., helped defray the expense of City and spends his nights tucking the getting it started and has gone out of his way to celebrators into their beds. Only a few of those get other prominent men interested. who recover fail to lose the feeling that at any Rockefeller’s gift was a small one, in minute they may thoughtlessly take one drink deference to the insistence of the originators and skyrocket off on a disastrous binge. An AA. that the movement be kept on a voluntary, who is a clerk in an Eastern city hasn’t had a nonpaid basis. There are no salaried organizers, snifter in three and a half years, but says that he no dues, no officers, and no central control. still has to walk fast past saloons to -circumvent Locally, the rents of assembly halls are met by the old impulse; but he is an exception. The only passing the hat at meetings. In small hangover from the wild days that plagues the communities, no collections are taken, as the A.A. is a recurrent nightmare. In the dream, he gatherings are held in private homes. A small finds himself off on a rousing whooper-dooper, office in downtown New York acts merely as a frantically trying to conceal his condition from the clearinghouse for information. There is no name community. Even this symptom disappears on the door, and mail is received anonymously shortly, in most cases. Surprisingly, the rate of through a post-office box. The only income, employment among these people, who formerly which is money received from the sale of a book describing the work, is handled by the Alcoholic

3

Foundation, a board composed of three In the Middle West, the work has been alcoholics and four nonalcoholics. almost exclusively among persons who have not In Chicago, twenty-five doctors work arrived at the institutional stage. The New York hand in hand with Alcoholics Anonymous, group, which has a similar nucleus, makes a contributing their services and referring their sideline specialty of committed cases and has own alcoholic patients to the group, which now achieved striking results. In the summer of 1939, numbers around 200. The same cooperation the group began working on the alcoholics exists in Cleveland and to a lesser degree in confined in Rockland State Hospital, at other centers. A physician, Dr. W. D. Silkworth, Orangeburg, a vast mental sanitarium which of New York City, gave the movement its first gets the hopeless alcoholic backwash of the big encouragement. However, many doctors remain population centers. With the encouragement of skeptical. Dr. Foster Kennedy, an eminent New Dr. R. E. Blaisdell, the medical superintendent, a York neurologist, probably had these in mind unit was formed with the walls, and meetings when he stated at a meeting a year ago: ‘The were held in the recreation hall. New York A.A.’s aim of those concerned in this effort against went to Orangeburg to give talks, and on alcoholism is high; their success has been Sunday evenings, the patients were brought in considerable; and I believe medical men of state-owned buses to a clubhouse which the goodwill should aid.” Manhattan group rents on the West Side. The active help of two medical men of Last July first, eleven months later, goodwill, Drs. A. Wiese Hammer and C. Dudley records kept at the hospital showed that of fifty- Saul, has assisted greatly in making the four patients released to Alcoholics Anonymous, Philadelphia unit one of the more effective of the seventeen had had no relapse and fourteen younger groups. The movement there had its others had had only one. Of the rest, nine had beginning in an offhand way in February, 1940, gone back to drinking in their home when a businessman who was an A.A. convert communities, twelve had returned to the was transferred to Philadelphia from New York. hospital, and two had not been traced. Dr. Fearful of backsliding for lack of rescue work, Blaisdell has written favorably about the work to the newcomer rounded up three local barflies the State Department of Mental Hygiene, and he and started to work on them. He got them dry, praised it officially in his last annual report. and the quartet began ferreting out other cases. Even better results were obtained in two By last December fifteenth, ninety-nine public institutions in New Jersey, Greystone alcoholics had joined up. Of these, eighty-six Park and Overbrook, which attract patients of were now total abstainers–thirty-nine from one better economic and social background than to three months, seventeen from three to six Rockland, because of their nearness to months, and twenty-five from six to ten months. prosperous suburban villages. Of seven patients Five who had joined the unit after having released from the Greystone Park institution in belonged in other cities had been nondrinkers two years, five have abstained for periods of one from one to three years. to two years, according to A.A. records. Eight of At the other end of the time scale, Akron, ten released from Overbrook have abstained for which cradled the movement, holds the about the same length of time. The others have intramural record for sustained abstinence. had from one to several relapses. According to a recent checkup, two members Why some people become alcoholics is have been riding the A.A. wagon for five and a a question on which authorities disagree. Few half years, one for five years, three for four and think that anyone is “born an alcoholic.” One a half years, one for the same period with one may be born, they say, with a hereditary skid, three for three and a half years, seven for predisposition to alcoholism, just as one may be three years, three for three years with one skid born with a vulnerability to tuberculosis. The rest each, one for two and a half years, and thirteen seems to depend upon environment and for two years. Previously, most of the Akronites experience, although one theory has it that and Philadelphians had been unable to stay some people are allergic to alcohol, as hayfever away from liquor for longer than a few weeks.

4

sufferers are to pollens. Only one note is found The victim is puzzled on coming out of to be common to all alcoholics—emotional the alcoholic fog. Without his being aware of any immaturity. Closely related to this is an change, a habit has gradually become an observation that an unusually large number of obsession. After a while, he no longer needs his alcoholics start out in life as an only child, as a rationalizations to justify the fatal first drink. All younger child, as the only boy in a family of girls he knows is that he feels swamped by or the only girl in a family of boys. Many have uneasiness or elation, and before he realizes records of childhood precocity and were what what is happening, he is standing at a bar with are known as spoiled children. an empty whiskey pony in front of him and a Frequently, the situation is complicated stimulating sensation in his throat. By some by an off-center home atmosphere in which one peculiar quirk of his mind, he has been able to parent is unduly cruel, the other overindulgent. draw a curtain over the memory of the intense Any combination of these factors, plus a divorce- pain and remorse caused by preceding or two, tends to produce neurotic children who stemwinders. After many experiences of this are poorly equipped emotionally to face the kind, the alcoholic begins to realize that he does ordinary realities of adult life. In seeking not understand himself; he wonders whether his escapes, one may immerse himself in his power of will, though strong in other fields, isn’t business, working twelve to fifteen hours a -day, defenseless against alcohol. He may go on or in sports or in some artistic sideline. Another trying to defeat his obsession and wind up in a finds what he thinks is a pleasant escape in sanitarium. He may give up the fight as hopeless drink. It bolsters his opinion of himself and and try to kill himself. Or he may seek outside temporarily wipes away any feeling of social help. inferiority which he may have. Light drinking If he applies to Alcoholics Anonymous, leads to heavy drinking. Friends and family are he is first brought around to admit that alcohol alienated and employers become disgusted. The has him whipped and that his life has become drinker smolders with resentment and wallows in unmanageable. Having achieved this stated of self-pity. He indulges in childish rationalizations intellectual humility, he is given a dose of to justify his drinking: He has been working hard religion in its broadest sense. He is asked to and he deserves to relax; his wife does not believe in a Power that is greater than himself, understand him; his nerves are jumpy; or at least to keep an open mind on that subject everybody is against him; and so on and on. He while he goes on with the rest of the program. unconsciously becomes a chronic excuse-maker Any concept of the Higher Power is acceptable. for himself. A skeptic or agnostic may choose to think of his All the time he is drinking, he tells himself Inner Self, the miracle of growth, a tree, man’s and those who butt into his affairs that he can wonderment at the physical universe, the really become a controlled drinker if he wants to. structure of the atom, or mere mathematical To demonstrate his strength of will, he goes -for infinity. Whatever form is visualized, the weeks without taking a drop. He makes a point neophyte is taught that he must rely upon it and, of calling at his favorite bar at a certain time in his own way, to pray to the Power for each day and ostentatiously sipping milk or a strength. carbonated beverage, not realizing that he is He next makes a sort of moral inventory indulging in juvenile exhibitionism. Falsely of himself with the private aid of another personencouraged, he shifts to a routine of one beer a -one of his A.A. sponsors, a priest, a minister, a day, and that is the beginning of the end once psychiatrist, or anyone else he fancies. If it gives more. Beer leads inevitably to more beer and him any relief, he may get up at a meeting and then to hard liquor. Hard liquor leads to another recite his misdeeds, but he is not required to do first-rate bender. Oddly, the trigger which sets so. He restores what he may have stolen while off the explosion is as apt to be a stroke of intoxicated and arranges to pay off old debts business success as it is to be a run of bad luck. and to make good on rubber checks; he makes An alcoholic can stand neither prosperity nor amends to persons he has abused and, in adversity. general, cleans up his past as well as he is able

5

to. It is not uncommon for his sponsors to lend control of a company and rebuild his financial him money to help out in the early stages. fences, he had come out to Akron and engaged This catharsis is regarded as important in a fight for proxies. He had lost the fight. His because of the compulsion which a feeling of hotel bill was unpaid. He was almost flat broke guilt exerts in the alcoholic obsession. As Griffith wanted a drink. nothing tends to push an alcoholic toward the During his career on Wall Street, Griffith bottle more than personal resentments, the pupil had turned down some sizable deals and had also makes out a list of his grudges and resolves prospered, but, through ill-timed drinking bouts, not to be stirred by them. At this point, he is had lost out on his main chances. Five months ready to start working on other, active before coming to Akron, he had gone on the alcoholics. By the process of extroversion, which water wagon through the ministrations of the the work entails, he is able to think less of his Oxford Group in New York. Fascinated by the own troubles. problem of alcoholism, he had many times gone The more drinkers he succeeds in back as a visitor to a Central Park West swinging into Alcoholics Anonymous, the greater detoxicating hospital, where he had been a his responsibility to the group becomes. He can’t patient, and talked to the inmates. He effected get drunk now without injuring the people who no recoveries, but found that by working on have proved themselves his best friends. He is other alcoholics he could stave off his own beginning to grow up emotionally and to quit craving. being a leaner. If raised in an orthodox church, A stranger in Akron, Griffith knew no he usually, but not always, becomes a regular alcoholics with whom he could wrestle. A church communicant again. directory, which hung in the lobby opposite the Simultaneously with the making over of bar, gave him an idea. He telephoned one of the the alcoholic goes the process of adjusting his clergymen listed and through him got in touch family to his new way of living. The wife or with a member of the local Oxford Group. This husband of an alcoholic, and the children, too, person was a friend of Dr. Armstrong’s and was frequently become neurotics from being able to introduce the physician and the broker at exposed to drinking excesses over a period of dinner. In this manner, Dr. Armstrong became years. Reeducation of the family is an essential Griffith’s first real disciple. He was a shaky one part of a followup program which has been at first. After a few weeks of abstinence, he west devised. East to a medical convention and came home in Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a a liquid state. Griffith, who had stayed in Akron synthesis of old ideas rather than a new to iron out some legal tangles arising from the discovery, owes its existence to the proxy battle, talked him back to sobriety. That collaboration of a New York stockbroker and an was on June 10, 1935. The nips the physician Akron physician. Both alcoholics, they met for took from a bottle proffered by Griffith on that the first time a little less than six years ago. In day were the last drinks he ever took. thirty-five years of periodic drinking, Dr. Griffith’s lawsuits dragged on, holding Armstrong, to give the physician a fictitious him over in Akron for six months. He moved his name, had drunk himself out of most of his baggage to the Armstrong home, and together practice. Armstrong had tried everything, the pair struggled with other alcoholics. Before including the Oxford Group, and had shown no Griffith went back to New York, two more Akron improvement. On Mother’s Day, 1935, he converts had been obtained. Meanwhile, both staggered home, in typical drunk fashion, Griffith and Dr. Armstrong had withdrawn from lugging an expensive potted plant, which he the Oxford Group, because they felt that its placed in his wife’s lap. The he went upstairs aggressive evangelism and some of its other and passed out. methods were hindrances in working with At that moment, nervously pacing the alcoholics. They put their own technique on a lobby of an Akron hotel, was the broker from strict take-it-or-leave-it basis and kept it there. New York, whom we shall arbitrarily call Griffith. Progress was slow. After Griffith had Griffith was in a jam. In an attempt to obtain returned East, Dr. Armstrong and his wife, a

6

Wellesley graduate, converted their home into a self-multiplying. Because of the absence of free refuge for alcoholics and an experimental figureheads and the fact that there is no formal laboratory for the study of the guests’ behavior. body of belief to promote, they have no fears One of the guests, who, unknown to his hosts, that Alcoholics Anonymous will degenerate into was a manic depressive as well as an alcoholic, a cult. ran wild one night with a kitchen knife. He was The self-starting nature of the movement overcome before he had stabbed anyone. After is apparent from letters in the files of the New a year and a half, a total of ten persons had York office. Many persons have written in saying responded to the program and were abstaining. that they stopped drinking as soon as they read What was left of the family savings had gone the book, and made their homes meeting places into the work. The physician’s new sobriety had for small local chapters. Even a fairly large unit, caused a revival in his practice, but not enough in Little Rock, got started in this way. An Akron of one to carry the extra expense. The civil engineer and his wife, in gratitude for his Armstrongs, nevertheless, carried on, on cure four years ago, have been steadily taking borrowed money. Griffith, who had a Spartan alcoholics into their home. Out of thirty-five such wife, too, turned his Brooklyn home into a wards, thirty-one have recovered. duplicate of the Akron menage. Mrs. Griffith, a Twenty pilgrims from Cleveland caught member of an old Brooklyn family, took a job in the idea in Akron and returned home to start a a department store and in her spare time played group of their own. From Cleveland, by various nurse to inebriates. The Griffiths also borrowed, means, the movement has spread to Chicago, and Griffith managed to make odd bits of money Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, around the brokerage houses. By the spring of Atlanta, San Francisco, Evansville, and other 1939, the Armstrongs and the Griffiths had cities. An alcoholic Cleveland newspaperman between them cozened about one hundred with a surgically collapsed lung moved to alcoholics into sobriety. Houston for his health. He got a job on a In a book which they published at that Houston paper and, through a series of articles time, the recovered drinkers described the cure which he wrote for it, started an A.A. unit which program and related their personal stories. The now has thirty-five members. One Houston title was “Alcoholics Anonymous.” It was member has moved to Miami and is now adopted as a name for the movement itself, laboring to snare some of the more eminent which up to then had none. As the book got into winter-colony lushes. A Cleveland traveling circulation, the movement spread rapidly. salesman is responsible for starting small units Today, Dr. Armstrong is still struggling to in many different parts of the country. Fewer patch up his practice. The going is hard. He is in than half of the AA. members have ever seen debt because of his contributions to the Griffith or Dr. Armstrong. movement and the time he devotes gratis to To an outsider who is mystified, as most alcoholics. Being a pivotal man in the group, he of us are, by the antics of problem-drinking is unable to turn down the requests for help friends, the results which have been achieved which flood his office. are amazing. This is especially true of the more Griffith is even deeper in the hole. For virulent cases, a few of which are herewith the past two years, he and his wife have had no sketched under names that are not their own. home in the ordinary sense of the word. In a Sarah Martin was a product of the F. manner reminiscent of the primitive Christians, Scott Fitzgerald era. Born of wealthy parents in they have moved about, finding shelter in the a Western city, she went to Eastern boarding homes of A.A. colleagues and sometimes schools and “finished” in France. After making wearing borrowed clothing. her debut, she married. Sarah spent her nights Having got something started, both the drinking and dancing until daylight. Her husband prime movers want to retire to the fringe of their had a weak stomach, and she became movement and spend more time getting back on disgusted with him. There were quickly divorced. their feet financially. They feel that the way the After her father’s fortune had been erased in thing is set up, it is virtually self-operating and 1929, Sarah got a job in New York and

7

supported herself. In 1932, she was informed again. He was drunk before the final bandages that she had tried to throw herself out a window. were removed. Two years ago, a former drinking During another bout, she did jump or fall–she companion got him into Alcoholics Anonymous, doesn’t remember which–out of a first-floor and he hasn’t touched liquor since. His wife and window. She landed face first on the sidewalk children have returned, and the home has new and was laid up for six months for bonesetting, furniture. Back at work, Watkins has paid off the dental work, and plastic surgery. major part of $2,000 in debts and petty alcoholic In 1936, Sarah Martin decided that if she thefts and has his eye on a new automobile. changed her environment by returning to the At twenty-two, Tracy, a precocious son of United States, she would be able to drink well-to-do parents, was credit manager for an normally. This childish faith in geographical investment-banking firm whose name has change is a classic delusion which all alcoholics become a symbol of the money-mad twenties. get at one time or another. She was drunk all the After the firm’s collapse during the stock-market way home on the boat. New York frightened her crash, he went into advertising and worked up to and she drank to escape it. Her money ran out a post which paid him $23,000 a year. On the and she borrowed from friends. When the day his son was born, Tracy was fired. Instead friends cut her, she hung around Third Avenue of appearing in Boston to close a big advertising bars, cadging drinks from strangers. Up to this contract, he had gone on a spree and had point, she had diagnosed her trouble as a wound up in Chicago, losing out on the contract. nervous breakdown. Not until she had Always a heavy drinker, Tracy became a bum. committed herself to several sanitariums did she He tippled on canned heat and hair tonic and realize, through reading, that she was an begged from cops, who are always easy alcoholic. On advice of a staff doctor, she got in touches for amounts up to a dime. On one sleety touch with an Alcoholics Anonymous group. night, Tracy sold his shoes to buy a drink, Today, she has another good job and spends putting on a pair of rubbers he had found in a many of her nights sitting on hysterical women doorway and stuffing them with paper to keep drinkers to prevent them from diving out of his feet warm. windows. In her late thirties, Sarah Martin is an He started committing himself to attractively serene woman. The Paris surgeons sanitariums, more to get in out of the cold than did handsomely by her. anything else. In one institution, a physician got Watkins is a shipping clerk in a factory. him interested in the A.A. program. As part of it, Injured in an elevator mishap in 1927, he was Tracy, a Catholic, made a general confession furloughed with pay by a company which was and returned to the church, which he had long thankful that he did not sue for damages. Having since abandoned. He skidded back to alcohol a nothing to do during a long convalescence, few times, but after a relapse in February, 1939, Watkins loafed in speakeasies. Formerly a Tracy took no more drinks. He has since then moderate drinker, he started to go on drunks beat his way up again to $18,000 a year in lasting several months. His furniture went for advertising. debt, and his wife fled, taking their three Victor Hugo would have delighted in children. In eleven years, Watkins was arrested Brewster, a heavy-thewed adventurer who took twelve times and served eight workhouse life the hard way. Brewster was a lumberjack, sentences. Once, in an attack of delirium cowhand, and wartime aviator. During the tremens, he circulated the rumor among the postwar era, he took up flask-toting and was prisoners that the county was poisoning the food soon doing a Cook’s tour of the sanitariums. In in order to reduce the workhouse populations one of them, after hearing about shock cures, he and save expenses. A mess-hall riot resulted. In bribed the Negro attendant in the morgue, with another fit of D.T.‘s, during which he thought the gifts of cigarettes, to permit him to drop in -each man in the cell above was trying to pour hot lead afternoon and meditate over a cadaver. The on him, Watkins slashed his own wrists and plan worked well until one day he came upon a throat with a razor blade. While recuperating in dead man who, by a freak of facial contortion, an outside hospital, he swore never to drink wore what looked like a grin. Brewster met up

8

with the A.A.’s in December, 1938, and after wherever they happen to be. In the larger cities, achieving abstinence, got a sales job which A.A.’s meet one another daily at lunch in favored involved much walking. Meanwhile, he had got restaurants. The Cleveland groups give big cataracts on both eyes. One was removed, parties on New Year’s and other holidays, at giving him distance sight with the aid of thick- which gallons of coffee and soft drinks are lens spectacles. He used the other eye for consumed. Chicago holds open house on close-up vision, keeping it dilated with an eye- Friday, Saturday and Sunday–alternately, on the drop solution in order to avoid being run down in North, West, and South Sides–so that no traffic. Then he developed a swollen, or milk, lonesome A.A. need revert to liquor over the leg. With these disabilities, Brewster tramped weekend for lack of companionship. Some play the streets for six months before he caught up cribbage or bridge, the winner of each hand with his drawing account. Today, at fifty, still contributing to a kitty for paying entertainment hampered by his physical handicaps, he is expenses. The others listen to the radio, dance, making his calls and is earning around $400 a eat or just talk. All alcoholics, drunk or sober, month. like to gab. They are among the most society- For the Brewsters, the Martins, the loving people in the world, which may help to Watkinses, the Tracys, and the other reformed explain why they got to be alcoholics in the first alcoholics, congenial company is now available place.

Source: The Saturday Evening Post, March 1, 1941

9