September (,.u,)

Q

MAGA Z INE BRITAIN’S LAST CHANCE IN INDIA By ANUP SINGH

I l}Iarried an Ameriean . , . . . Katherina Sueetland. The Army of a Demoeracy . . lCharlotte Muret A Leseon from the Swies jDenis d.e Rougemont The Attack on Brainstorms , . George W Gray Inaanity, Drugs, and Shock Treatmenle e6The Chicago School’o lllortimer l. Ad.ler One Thought of Pity. A Srory Houard Spring An Experiment in English . . lulian Green Plywood. The Lumbernr.arf s Stepchild, toseph L. Nicholson Laboro Capital & Co. Irnin The Unione and Management Get Together ^Ross Laymen and Aleoholics . Gencoieoe Parkhurst The Jewish Question After the War Beniamin Akzin One Man’e Meat-Mr. Yolente E. B. White The Easy Chair- Under Which Kiug, Bezonian? . . . Bernard, DeYoto The New Books, by lohnChamberlain.; Personal and Otherwiee i ” , ,{ I

IIABPEB & BROTIIEBS, PUBLISNEBS

@r (A

LAYMEN AND ALCOHOLICS BY GENEVIEVE PARKHURST

AS rrE came out from under the opiate This man’s story is no longer an unfl the man in the hospital bed opened usual one. Within the past few years his eyes to black darkness. Somewhere many such hopeless cases and many less in the room, as if from a distance, his wife serious ones that were once listed as was asking quiet questions. Then the doubful have been healed. The healers doctor was answering her. ttl must be have not all been members of Alcoholics frankr” he was saying. “Itve never Anonymous, but they have all been layknown a patient who had reached this men. And their success in this difficult phase of this type of alcoholism to re- field has impelled the physicians who cover. Even if your husband were to once considered them as 6’dangerous stop drinking, and that is not likely after meddlers in a dangerous province” not twenty-five years of it, he is bound to only to sanction their practice but to inhave recurrent spells of blindness and vite them to share the burden of curing an increase of the trouble with his legs. alcoholism. Disintegration is setting in. About six At the annual meeting, held last fall, months are all I can give him to live.” by the Research Council on Problems of While he was lying there, waiting for Alcohol, a group of physicians and social the doctor’s prophecy to come true, a scientists who for the past three years have stranger came to see him, The stranger been making an intensive study of the nawas a man who had once been in the ture of the disease which makes drunksame condition. And a stranger had ards of so many men and women, Dr. come to see himrjust as he had come, to Merrill Moore, Associate in Psychiatry, tell of the unknown men who, under the Harvard Medical School, startled the name of Alcoholics Anonymous, were conference of which he was chairman helping to cure other alcoholics just as with the remark that “Physicians in genthey had been helped. eral are admitting that the lay healers are The patient was impressed with what doing remarkable work.” Asked at the his visitor told him about the new treat- end of the conference to expand his comment. When the alcohol was gone from ment, he said, “We know that if we are his system and hewas able to hobble about going to make any real advance we must on crutches he attended a meeting of the tap every source of knowledge and healgroup. Encouraged to do so by his doc- ing there is. . Not only lay therapists, tor, he consulted with its leaders. In but lawyers, clergymen, and social workthree months he was out of the hospital. ers are successfully helping and treating In six months he was well enough to be the alcoholic. . . . This means treating back at his desk. Now, after four years someone who is emotionally sick or hurt in which he has not had a drink, he is in or down or sometimes weak. Certainly excellent health. And the disease has physicians have no corner on it. There left none of its marls on him. is no magic to it. And no royal road.’1

LAYMEN AND ALCOHOLICS 423

Agaio at the Council’s three-day sym’ I am not of course presuming to decide posium held in Philadelphia last Decem- which of the two schools is right. Since ber, under the auspices of the Association it is the excessive driaking which causes for the Advancement of Science, the all the havoc in alcoholism, what really achievements of lay healers were touched matters is the apparent agreement on upon. Some of the healers read papers, both sides that drunkenness can be healed and at the informal luncheon and dinner and that the lay therapists are breaking conversations they were listened to and all past records in the number of their even deferred to by the medical scien- healings. tists. Now when f use the terms “alcoholic” To learn the consensus of opinion I and “drinker” f am not referring to the questioned forty of the leading medical casual convivialist nor to the extreme authorities who attended the symPo- cases in which the patients’ minds have sium either as participants or audience. lost all touch with reality. They are the Thirty-four of them admitted that, in physicians’ private enigma. I mean the face of the evidence, the lay therapists man or woman whose abilities, health, were getting the best results. Some of and social graces have been dissipated by them went so far as to say that the laymen constant drinking and who is not able to were curiug cases which the physicians stop it without help from the outside. had pronounced incurable. And when in this instance I speak of The six who held back were not com- the layman I do not include the charlaplete dissidents. Their difference was a tans who make false claims for their padifference in their school of thought. tent uostrums. f am thinking only of Unlike their colleagues who believe that those therapists whose accomplishments alcoholism is caused by some deep men- are acknowledged by the physicians and tal and emotional disturbance of which who work along with them in their drinking is only a symptom, and that its diagnoses, consulting them as the incure must therefore be mental, they con- dividual cases may warrant. tend that its cause lies in some fundamen- Specifically, these fall into three tal chemical derangement and that its groups: the trained psychologists with cure must therefore be chemical. whom tieating alcoholism is a profession; ttWe grant your” said one of them, religious healersl and former alcoholics “that a drunkard may be cured of the with whom healing is an avocation. drinking habit, but that does aot mean he The professional psychologists are not is cured of alcoholism. For the fact re- many. They are exclusive, accepting mains that alcohol is a poison to him. only a few patients at a time. And they And if at any time he takes to drinking are expensive. As I have already gone again, no matter how moderately he may into their methods of work in a previous begin, he will again end up as a drunk- number of this magazine I shall now say ard. The alcoholic may be said to be ouly that they are skilled, painstaking, completely healed only when he can and highly successful, and it is a pity that drink without disaster. Some day some there are not more of them and at a price bright young chemist will emerge from which the middle class could more easily his laboratory with some chemical which afford. The religious healers are doing will do away with the allergy which some excellent salvage work, particularly makes the systems of some people intoler- among the poor. To go into their techant to alcohol. Then the cure for al- nic would involve a discussion of articles coholism will have been found. of faith for which I am not prepared. ttfn the meantimer” he concluded, So I shall confine myself to the third “I’ll gladly give credit to the laymen who group, the men who have been alcoholics are doing so much to arrest the disease by themselves and who, having been cured, curing drunkards of drinking.” are now spreading out like a network and

424 HARPER’S MAGAZINE with an efficacy that is convincing to the herent tendency, such as a highly strung most conservative medical men. nervous system, which is aggravated by That they are meeting with success some such circumstance as I have menshould not, however, be either astound- tioned. As a second or remote cause, ing or extraordinary. For the truth is there are the problems which arise in that while all along the doctors-and I every life and which the unbalanced temam only echoing them when I say so- perament is. not able to cope with. have been trying to find out what alcohol Third, there is the drinking, which is the does lo the alcoholic, nobody has tried to means of escape and a symptom of the find out what it does/or him. But these disease at the same time. mea Lnow the whole bitter story. They If the disease is to be cured every one of know the drive of drink, its satisfactions its elements must be taken into consideraand elations. They know the sting of its tion. The first cause must be detected broken resolutions, as they are drawn and explained away. The patient must back to it again and again. They know be taught how to face his problems as its humiliations and deep despairs. They they come to him. And he must be know the things, so infinitesimal to the given new interests to take the place of balanced temperament, which set the his former interest in drinking. drinker on edge and send him into his Two further points should be borne in cups as a way of escape. They know his mind. To be healed of alcoholism the whims and his disinclinations. How he drinker must have the desire to stop thinks, how he feels, how he rationalizes drinking and he must be willing to face a are well-worn pages to them. future in which he witl never again be This is not to say that every alcoholic able to take a drink. For in the annals who has been straightened out is quali- of medical science there is no record cf a fied to heal others. But among them man’s having been healed of alcoholism there are many whose highly sensitive unless he had taken the cure of his own and intelligent natures, added to a capac- volition. Nor is there any record of a ity for maLing friends, fit them peculiarly reformed drunkard who was ever able to for this highly specialized curative art. drink moderately without going the As a further aid there is that strong bond whole way down hill again. between drinkers which makes it easy for With the perspective clear, let us look the man who has been down and is up into the processes of this new lay therapy again to reach those who are still down through the story of one of its practior groping. tioners. II Mr. Ex, as we shall know him, began to drink when he was a student at college In order to keep their record straight, during the prohibition era. By the time before going into their processes, it must he was thirty-five he had been arrested be noted that their therapeutic defini- for drunken and disorderly conduct in a tions and principles coincide with those chain of ports around the world. More of the medical specialists. They recog- to please his parents than himself he had nize alcoholism as a “fugal” disease, taken the t’cure’, in five expensive alcomeaning that it is made up of several holic retreats, only to drink more on strains, each one of which is involved in coming out of them than he had before the others. There is the .first cause going in. Outstanding psychiatrists had which is usually some circumstance or told his father that his rype of alcoholism event in early environment which sets up was rarely curable. an ttimba-lance” in the personality, mak- – Then something ing it difficult or even impossiblb for happened he does not speak of to make him want io stop those who are thus affiicted to face the drinking. With all that he had learned realities of life. Or it may be some in- about drinking and the drinker in his fif-

=

LAYMEN AND ALCOHOLICS 425

teen years’ carousal he was able to stop going to an institution-then when he by himself. During the months when he comes out he can take a few drinks withwas striving for equilibrium he found out wanting to get drunk. peace through helping one of his former ttAt this pointr” Mr. Ex says, ttf teil companions at the bar. Five years have him what happened to me not once, but passed during which he has devoted his five different times when I thought I had leisure to this curative work, and he has a been cured and could take a drink. number of difficult cases to his credit. What I am doing all this time is leading His technic is simple. He employs no him to a mood where I can ask him to formidable terminology, as his experience play ball with me. Just how I do so dehas been that the ominous vocabulary of pends of course on the personality I am some practitioners is confusing and repel- trying to reach.” lant to the sick and jittery mind. Since The most difficult alcoholics to apno two cases are alike, his approach proach are those who take alcohol as a comes by intuition, and the discipline narcotic to avoid the pains and the realiand text emerge out of each case as it ties of living. Most often they have to moves along. go through some devastating experience According to Mr. Ex, ninety-five out before they are ready to give it up. of every hundred drunkards have the However it comes, it is only when the padeep desire to stop drinking. Only a tient expresses a real desire to be cured few wili admit it. They think it is a con- that the cure begins. Somewhere at the fession of weakness; or they are a^fraid of outset when a diplomatic montent prebecoming unpopular in their social sents itself he is persuaded to see the docgroup; or they cannot face the knowledge tor for a general going-over. Regular that liquor has got the best of them. meals and exercise for those who can take And any direct suggestion from their it are prescribed. And work. If the family that they see the doctor or take patient still has his job so much the beta clrre drives them farther into their ter. If not something absorbing is found cups. to keep his mind employed at some spot Therefore Mr. Ex’s approach is the away from himself and his former more subtle one of man to man. He rendezvous. goes out where drinkers congregate. Some alcoholics cannot stand the The man he is looking for may be some- strain of giving up liquor all at once; they one he knows or whose family has asked can be led to taper off. When they find him to step in and take hold. fle never they are able to go any length of time talks shop uatil he is sure he is on firm without a drink their morale shoots upground. A glass of tomato juice may ward. Curiously enough, the first few evoke a question or the lift of an eye- weeks of abstinence are not always the brow, to which his a”swer implies that he hardest. For the old urgency has a way has had more than his share of gin. A of turning up at the end of the second or comparison of symptoms and an ex- third month, trying to beat them down change of reminiscences may follow. again. Mr. Ex’s prescription for such By degrees the drinker may be led to un- hours is immediate action-a brisk walk, load his troubles and the friendship is a bus ride, the movies, or even a teleestablished. phoae call-any iuterlude that will From there it is a short step to his ad- bring about a change of thought. As mission that he waD.ts to stop his drink- such temptations are resisted they recur ing-a cue for Mr. Ex to ask him why he less frequently until fit ally they are gone doesn’t stop. He may say that it will never to return. A good exercise ia remake a sap out of him. The response to sistaace is 1s salk past bars until one is this is that only a strong man can give it able to ignore one’s own favorite bar in up. Or he may say that he is thinking of the same way. A patient who can do

426 HARPER’S MAGAZINE this half a dozen times is ready to enter a of our States except a few in the Middle bar or go where drinking is without tak- West between the Rocky Mountains and ing a drink. When he has gone success- the Mississippi River, had its beginnins fully through this ordeal he is well forti- in the healing of one man, a Wall Streei fied for complete recovery. broker whom we shall speak of as Mr. Mr. Ex is devoting the gratuities he re- Jones. After a drinking career of flfteen ceives for his treatments to a fund with years in which he had built his ration of which he is establishing an Alcoholic gin up to two quarts a day, he was Consultation Bureau in the city where he pronounced a hopeless alcoholic. Some lives. It is to be a county center where time before this verdict a friend who had those with drinking problems of their been c_ured of dipsomania with the help own or those who have a drinker in the of a religious group had told of his expefamily may go for treatment or advice, rience with such simple precision that safe in the knowledge that their confi- Mr. Jones had been challenged by it. dence and identity will be respected. If Thinking now of what the doctors’had it proves effective he hopes that it will be- said, his mind reverted to his friend, and come a model for other communities to he sought the same aid. ,,fn a weekr,, follow. s-ays- Mra Jones, ,,f had taken my last III drink. fn a month *y appetite for liquor was completely gone.rl- – At the time the previous article on this Shortly after this a business trip took subject was published I received hun- -him to Akron, Ohio, where he remained dreds of letters from Harper readers in to help a former crony who had lost his many parts of the country. They came job and was without the prospect of anfrom men and women in many walls other, as the title of .,confirmed drunkwho laid bare their most intimate per- ard” had been conferred upon him by sonal sorrows as they asked me to advise the townspeople. This friend healed them about some member of the family one of his own friends. Mr. who was drinking to excess. There wai likewise. Jones did tfr” time he waJready to little I could tell them. psychiatric return to New -!y York he and his patients tfeatments were beyond what most of had made plans for a full-time avbcation them could afford or there were no psy- of healing alcoholism and for starting a chiatrists in their localities. In some in- healjng movement across the country–. stances psychiatry had been tried and Mr. Jones realized that, while drinkers had failed. The few reliable private may have their similarities, no two of institutions I knew of were too remote or them are ever alike in nature. If he too costly. Most of the public hospitals, were to reach out toward all those who if there were any in the communities, had needed help he saw that he would have no alcoholic ward. The public mental to broaden his therapy, which up to this hospitals, generally speaking, were insane ‘Back lme lad been wholly asyiums from which the discharged alco- New York, he and his “”tigior.. in wifE took five nonholic patients were known to be worse off payrng alcoholics into their home for than when they had entered. study and experimentation. In healing It is to such people as these, people them he was able to formulate a set oi who do not know where to turn for help elastic principles capable of spanning a that Alcoholics Anonymous, the group wrcte area of cases. of men f mentioned in the first part of In 1936-two years after it had been this article, are hoping to have something started-the movement had spread with to say. such rapidity that money wasieeded for This organization, which aow has a othce purposes. Two or three of the membership of over two thousand and members felt that if they could take the centers in fifty localities that embrace all time to collaborate on a Look about their

LAYMEN AND ALCOHOLICS 427 experiences they would be able to raise healing methods. For it is a synthesis of the necessary amount. Someone told everything that has proved useful in the Mr.John D. Rockefeller of the recoveries whole field of alcoholic diagnosis and they had effected. After he had looked treatment. A movement that has for its into their activities he made it possible purpose a crusade of mutual assistance in for them to take the time to wiite the which one drinker becomes therapist for book. When it was ready to be pub- another, it is open to anyone who drinls lished a group of Mr. Rockefeller,s isso- too much and cannot stop of himself. ciates consented to form a Board of Two exactions only are demanded of Trustees to handle the royalties as they him. He must be sincere accrued. in his wish to be healed. He must have the desire Last year, with the work speeding on- to help his fellow drinkers. Anonymity ward, Mr. Rockefeller felt that what it is maintained because of the now needed was ((not .*ir.*L money but stand- sensitiveness ofthe alcoholic to prejudice iog.” At a dinner given by him to two or ridicule. And it prevents giving ofhundred of the country,s most prominent fense to relatives or to doctors u.rd ,firitmen he invited Mr. Jones to speak. ual advisers, all of whom have their What he had to say was verified arrd ,p- redemptive parts to play. proved_ by medical scientists and clergy- The actual phases of the treatment are men through such spokesmen as Dr. not fundamentally different from other Foster Kennedy and the Reverend mental therapies. But the instruments Harry Emerson Fosdick. The honora- are not the same and the terminology is rium of three thousand dollars raised non-existent. The .omental catharsisD that evening, together with royalties of the psychologists becomes here the from the book, maintain a small office in simple business of talking out loud to an downtown New York. Mr. Jones,s sal- audience made up of those who are ary is thirty dollars a week. .,I have a taking the cure themselves. These open strong feeling,” he explains, c.that if f meetings are practical forums in which were to commercialize my services the members exchange points of view ryimil the group by accepting money I and offer suggestions ,rrrder the leadershould impair my effectiverresi.,, ship of the more experienced therapists Among the members of Alcoholics such as Mr. Anonymous are lawyers, doctors, clerls; families of the Jones. Once a week’the patients are invited. to chaufleurs, stenographers, and house- special meetings where the wives, and they are of all ages between convalescents is the care of the early twenties and the late sixties. conversation main topic of Out of two thousand current casesl – Another-important ninety-five per cent of whom are em- inveotory which step is the mental the patient lists his ployed, one thousand have not tasted virtues andin-his faults as-an aid to selfliquor since they attended their first appraisal. It is from this evaluation meeting. For some this means three that the pattern of adjustment, the vital months. For others, six years. Five core of rehabilitation, is drawn. (It is hundred have slipped a bit now and what the. psychiatrists call ..personality then, but they are out ofthe quicksands. change.”) For instance, if i member The other five hundred are not yet has mistreated his wife, neglected his quite sure that they want to be cured,-or family, or been dishonest in liis business they are suffering from the more doubtftrl dealings, or quarreled with his neighbor, folms -of the disease; but they are being he must not only change his ways, bui helped. he must try somehow It has been said that the technic has damage he has caused. to repair the Whaiever his the mark of Buchmanism. It nrobablv troubles, he is_ given ample opportunity has, and of other religious g”o,rpt u.ri to talk about them; for it is through such

428 HARPER’S MAGAZINE disclosures that the real cause of his daughters, husbands and wives-may malady reveals itself. fnstead of evad- very well be the deciding factor in the ing his problerns, as he has in the past, he success or failure of his curerjust as they is taught how to solve them. And if he are often the chief contributors to the strikes a snag he knows where to go for disturbance which causes the illness. help-and it will be to someone who has Because of this possibility some physibeen through the same experiehce and cians will not treat certain patients will therefore be able to give him a unless they are removed from their sympathetic and helPful hearing. homes until recovery is pretty well As the treatments progress he is di- assured. And all healers make every rected toward some interest absorbing effort to gain the co-operation of relaenough to take his mind away from tives as a precaution against relapse. liquor. Sometimes he may find his re- When families fail it is not as a rule lease in the recognition of a Supreme because they are contrary or apathetic, Being, a Power outside of himself who is but because they do not know the rules. greater than himself. Ihere have been For their benefit f am setting down a a number of cases in which this religious list of things to be remembered which I awakening has broken the spell of the have gleaned from the specialists: exaggerated egotism which was one of The convalescent needs care and symthe persistent causes of his illness. How- pathy, not nagging and recrimination. ever, no compulsion is Put uPon the IIe must, until’you are sure that his patient. He makes his own choice. recovery is complete, be handled with About sixty per cent of the members of silken gloves. For he has been through Alcoholics Anonymous are deists. Many adevastatingpurgatory. Invalidthough who have not been to church since they he is, he wants tb be treated like a man were children have returned to their and not a child. Yet, paradoxically, he faiths. And there are not a few atheists must in some things be looked after as if among them. For most of them the he were a child. Great care must be great hobby that holds their enthusiasm given to his diet. Some medical scienis the help they are giving to one another. tists are now thinking that alcoholism “It is a great satisfactionr” said one of may be due to lack of suffi.cient vitamins them who was in the advanced stages of in the drinker’s system. Tomato and the disease when he was enrolled, ” to orange juice, carrots, beets, celery, wild know that you are marking the difference rice, milk, eggs, good red meat (if his between life and death for someone.” blood pressure is normal), and some The processes employed in the course chocolate and sweets (if he is not diaof treatment are not allowed to become betic), are some of the foods that will give stagnant. ttWe are always experiment- him the needed vitamins. However it ingr” Mr. Jones explained. “We trY is always best to consult a doctor on his something and if it doesn’t work we diet necessities. throw it out. What we are striving for Huppy occupation for his leisure hours is a progressive and ever more flexible is a vital must on his program. Study system of healing which will cover more his tastes, if you do not already know and more of the peculiar effects of them, and use =)rour ingenuity in finding alcoholism on the many diverse human things for him to do that he will enjoy. personalities.” Don’t try to force him to meet people or do things that he dislikes. IV It is imperative not to discuss his illness The layman’s burden I have indicated with him or to comment about his is not for the shoulders of the therapist abstinence or attract attention to it, alone. The family of the alcoholic- unless of course he opens up the subject. paxents, sisters and brothers, sons and Then talk round and away from it. If

THE MILL 429

you are in the habit of serving cocktails he gets home. That one drink will make be sure to have one for him on the tray him feel just fine. So he may rationalize as well as not one glass but two or three that just one more won’t do him anY glasses of tomato or orange juice. Let harm. And he’s right back where he [im make his own decisions. That is a started. part of his readjustment. He is not Beyond everything, never rake up past well until he can say ‘6No” to himself in offenses. Alcohol draws a curtain over the face of temptation. Don’t lock the the reason and the memory of its victims, liquor away from him. Don’t Pat him driving them blindly into acts for which on the back and tell him how proud you they are not responsible and which they are of him and how you all appreciate cannot remember when they are sober, what he is going through and are feeling as such acts make no record on the sorry for him. Don’t set up pressures conscious mind. by holding him too strictly to household These details are not trifles’ The routine. Don’t scold if he is late to convalescent drinker is edgy and highdinner. Maybe he was finishing uP a strung. If he can be kePt healthY in round of golf. Next time, remembering body and contented in mind he has a what happened last time, he maY take far better chance of complete and perone drink to brace him for what he manent recovery than in an environment thinks is going to happen to him when where he is constantly on the defensive.

THE MILL BY ELFORD CAUGHEY

mole, the ant, the sParrow and I ‘T-HE L Labor Jor Jood, and the Tears go b1t. At night in sleep ue driJt away, Returning to toil at break of da2; ReJresh our bones with sleep once more To do the work we did beJore. And none will shirk a bloodlt deed To saue the liJe he toils to feed, So that at dawn he may arise And slaae till stars urueil their eys. How Joolish is this mill, I know, Tet daily Jorth to labor go.