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sEX! GERilANY’,S SECRET WEAPON ‘by Sierid Schulrz mosr or oun, WOUilDED WILL LTVEI by Albert Q. terlsel a

Gurt f.less Don Herold toior Oeorge Fteldlng Eltot r’ iil l rir

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FOR. OLD SOAKS By Flelen Worden

Photo from PPG Aleoholic derelicts come from various walks of life. This man may have been a doctor, an actor, a salegman in happier days.

HIRTY days in the workhouse.” holic himself. McGol&ick, tlfrty-nine, The magistrate studied the man taU, lean, likable, will tel1 you frankly before him. “You don’t belong in that he drank for fifteen years straigfrt’ prison, but there’s uowhere else to put and was periodically in and out of saniyou.” tariums. Son of a former SuPreme Picked up as a &unk in a Bowery Court Justice, he was a lawyer with a doorway, the flfty-four-year-old pris- sizable practice when drink began to oner was about to pay his ninth visit to dog him. Determined to 6nd out the Riker’s Isiand, New York’s city Peni- reason for his own drinking, he eventtentiary. A fllrn of beard coated the ually became a pupil of the late Dn bloated face; the scarecrow body sagged Menas Gregory, dynamic head of Bellebeneath tattered clothes; twitching vue Hospital’s psychiatric division. In Nerv York CitYo where hands and sunken eyes testifed to a “I knew I had begun to drink to overprolonged iag. Before night he, would come. shyness,” Mccoldrick explained’ eighty percent of all cases 6e herded, with criminais of all types, to me. ‘iBy talking with me patiently in lflagistratest Courts are into a big poUce van; in another month and understandinglY, Dr. GregorY he would be turned loose to drink again. brought that fear out into the open. Imalcoholics, theY have a new This was the waY New York disPosed mediately it ceased to exit. fhereafter, of the alcoholic last year. Today it is because I wanteil to be cured, my progway of lranclling drunks’ ress uras steady—although I had to pass difierent. Officially listed as a sick man, Bdward ittcGol dricko Director not a criminal, he is paroled in the cus- through the usual symptoms of rec-ovtody of Edward Mcc;ldrick, Director of ihp*e, resentment and just, plain of NerY York’s Ncoholic New York’s new Alcoholic Therapy Bu- “ry:ers. ‘I was occasionally tempted, also, iit Therapy Bureau, takes bums reau. Thus the nation’s biggest crty is io exhibit that terrific ego with which so the ffrst municipality to recognize alco- manv fellow-sufferers, on their waY from the BowerrY anel brings holism as a disease and to set uP an bacli cover up a feeling of inferiority’ – ‘–‘iBe”ause thern baek to rvorko to self’ organization to rehabilitate alcoholics by all these things must be arrityring and keating the mental quirk overlooked in bringing about a cure, respeet atrd familY love which creates a craving for drink. only one who understands from experi- The director of the bureau is an alco- er”L th” hell these men are going .=

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Miss Worilq,, staff wrtter for the New York Worlil-Telegram, hos cotsereil the metropolitan scene for Trears- She is the author of ,,The- Reo,l”Neto York” and other books about the city.

the bureau’s headquarters. The entire top floor was turned over to him and he begged chairs and desks from the city’s warehouse. – At the same time he set out to enlist the sympathy and cooperation of the heads of departments who would automatically become involved in the functioning of the bureau. These offlcials looked. at the Magistrates, Court reeordq and at once agreed to turn over to McGoldrick all the confirmed alcoholics he thought he could handle. May, 1943, with the help of a staft of-Intwo, McGoldrick chose, fir the bureau’s first patients, one hundred human derelicts from the Magistrates, Courts, the city hospitals, the municipal lodginj house and the prisons. ff-r”i” ari”firrE pattern covered fifteen to forty_four years of chronic alcoholism. One of them had a record of eighty-three ar_ rests. Among them were electrical en_ gineers, law5zers, doctors, .chemists, chaufieurs, reporters, hospiial workers, laborers, mechanics, artists, architects, actors, printers, insurance and automobile salesmen and credit managers. -hisMcGoldriek advances step by step in cure. The main steps ,,rlstorition ar6 of faith, remooal of fear, erucouragement, renetoal of social contacts, responsibilitg!’ Restitution should also be undertaken at the earliest possible moment; even though it be in tiny amounts, tJre alcoholic should start paying back those to whom he’s in debt. Let’s see how some Photos from rrc and KEYSToNE of these principles were applied in the ttBowery bumsrtt they’re called, and a thirty-day jail sentence wontt change cases of Bob and Tom. thern. Alcoholic therapy may-if they themselves have the will to be cured. Bob had been working fourteen years for a large corporation when his employer met him staggering in and fired through can successfully head a buxeau Ihe story of New York’s Alcoholic lim on the spot. Then he took up like this. Remember, I am-tot utas- Therapy Bureau begins early in 1943 drinking seriously. IIis heart-broken an alcoholic.” when McGoldrick decided to give up his wi{e and daughter pleaded, threatened McGoldrick uses the present tense be- law practice to devote all of bjs time and finally walked out. Debts piled up. cause he believes that alcoholics must to helping alcoholics. Shortly after this His friends crossed the street when they never forget they are allergic to alco- decision was reached, Mayor Fiorello saw him coming. At last, Bob had given hol, just as some people are allergic to LaGuardia ofiered him the post of New up, even in his sober moments, all hope strawbemies or fish. If they remember, York’s assistant city corporation coun- of anything save the insidious anesthetie “once an alcoholic always an alcoholic,” sel-an honor which many another law- for his shame-more drink. At ffftythey are less likely to indulge in casual yer might have envied. He turned it three he was a confirmed drunkard. experimenting after they feel they have down. Then he explained his new-born the craving under control. project to the mayor and found an eager f, T McGoldrick’s suggestion, Bob was While working on his own cure, Mc- listener, When he left City Hall, he was lL put in the general ward-not in the Goldrick worked also with Dr. Greg- New York’s first alcoholic therapist. alcoholic division-of Bellevue Hospital ory’s more stubborn cases. To his The mayor had’agreed to back the bu- until he got over the shakes. Then amazement, he began having success reau unofficially for one year. came personal contacts; McGoldrick visurhere his chie{ had failed. This was As a reporter who had followed the ited Bob daily. Like all drunks when mainly due to his exciting discovery shifting scenes of New York for many they start sobering up, Bob vras living that the real secret of alcohol therapy years, I was given an inside opporturrity in his past, firll of his own degladation lies in heart-to-heart, personal contact- to watch operations, *We are not alto- and shame. He was running the picture that things must be talked out gether altruistic about this,” the mayot over and over in his brain. For a broader “clinical” training he told me. “Don’t forget that eighf per- At this stage, criticism of an alcoholwent later to the Bowery, where he cent of the cases in the Magistrates’ ic’s drinking only ffxes the picture more spent months with drunks and derelicts. Courts are alcoholics. This means a ter- firmly in his mind. He must be taken Dressed like one of them, he slept in rific cost to New York. Consequently away from his past. “By the time the flop-houses, ate mission hand-outs, ex- we expect to expand the bureau to all bureau gets an alcoholic, he has hit botchanged conffdences with those not too ffve boroughs of the ciff.’ tom,” McGoldrick explains. “One of befogged by aleohol. The suacess of his As the most fertile ffeld in which to the greatest blocks to his reformation is present work has been built, largelg on stalk the city’s alcoholics, McGoldrick fear of failure. In the back of every this l-am-one-of-you approach. picked the municipal lodging house for one of these poor victims’ subconscious 49

mind lurks the memory of some fail- owner whom McGoldrick salvaged. Siture-either in school, society, love or lirg it the f,ureau’s offices, with the business. He fears that in making.ao- homey smells of the municipal lodging other attempt he may fail again fousel-s qoon-day meal spicing the-air], “Our object is to focus his attention he talked freely of his past and preson a healthy, happy future. As soon as enL IIis brown eyes u/ere clear and he believes that fate is working with, direct, his face freshly shaven and his not against him, he has taken the first brown hair neatly combed fhere was step toward restored self-respect, But nothing of the alcoholic about him and you can’t preach religion to him. If he yet, up to the snow3r day last lrinter wants God, it helps, but it’s up to hirn-” when McGoldrick singled him out for a Bob was advised to stay away from talk, Tom’s life had been one prolonged his family-lest their eondemnation push binge. him back into his.cups-untiI he could “IVlr. McGoldrick found me down-. show practical proof that he had come stairs,” he grinned; “in dirty Navy back for good. The relatives of an al- pants, worn pea jacket, old cap and coholic have sufiered a special brand of shoes, and a three days’ growth of humiliation, both before the public and beard. I was surprised when he spoke in their own hearls. They have flayed to me, but I soon learned that he was themselves with the nagging thought on the main floor every day looking for that perhaps, after all, they dida’t do fellows I’ike me.” enough. But once they have washed The first ten days Tom spent sobering their hands of him, it usually takes an up at the lodging house. Ihe bureau unmistakable reformation to revive their got him a job as dish-washer at twenty interest and love, dollars a week, with meals, then a bet- After Bob was sobered up, th€ bureau ter job in a sanitarium at one hundred helped him find a job-one which hei and fifty dollars a month, with keep. could do well without too much efiorf tNo, f haven’t fallen ofi the wagon in one in which he vrould not fail, with these’ nine monthsr” Tom said “! the subsequent feeling of having lost his couldn’t drink again. Not because of grip. myself alone, but because of others. I’m “At this stage there is an upsurge of coaxing four alcoholics along now. One seE-respect and the patient’s moral in- is my brother. Ihey would all go down ventory begins,” says McGoldrick. ‘TIe without me.” Friends and self.resp.”,’JllI”i;'” is encouraged to look at his past ob- Ifis expression was serene. ‘T don’t Eleeps on steps, in aiywlieie. jectively, to balance his character have to fight myself when I pass a gin “ll-“ys, books, to start paying his debts. Alco- mi-l today. f never felt that way beholics, whether they know it or not, are fore. Itm staying sober because f want always the outside chance of a miracle, usually trying to escape from some- to. ‘When you see an alcoholic like however, if those near and dear to hirn thing, Once they have faced it, they, McGoldrick on his feet you ttrink, ‘May- have enough love and perseverance; if, have nothing to run away from. I know. be I can do it too.”‘ instead of condemning-hirn, they enf found this out myself-and Bob found I asked McGoldrick .if an alcoholic’s courage him to talk things out, to anait out. He’s been going strong ever family could cure him. He shook his ly”e his drlnking as he -mighi l analyze since,” head” t’Only under the most excep- a disease; if they can make-him I, interviewed Torn, a former saloon tional circumstances,” he said” “T[reret how much they are depending on”u.Lru him: and if,,above all, they are tliere when Scenes Iike this are common in large cities, but they will become lees so h.” l”qd”. reassuring. But if the average when chronic drunkennees is treat6d as a’diseaee rather than a crime. alcoholic’s family had the patience, cori- Photo from npc passion and realism to do this success_ fully, they probably would have saved their black sheep long ago.” _ In_ talking to the bureau,s men, Mc- Goldrick begins about like this: ,,I guess you’ve been_hitting the bottle, BiU, and feel pretty shaky?” “That’s right. And fve done some .awful thhgs in my life. Lost my jobhurt my family. I,m ashamed-,, “I know how you feel.,, “How do gou. know?,’ “Because I’ve been through it all, perhaps even through worse.rr- McGoldrick then cites an experience in his own life that parallels Biil,s. He speaks of men with even more deplorable drinking records. IIe tells ihat they have done and how the bureau is helping them. “You can dr5r up, toorrt he adds, “if you really want to.t, -‘ Twenty-five of the original hrmdred human wrecks whom McGoldrick picked up fell by the wayside. But tlie reryam:1g sevent;r-Iive are now solidly on their feet f asked McGolclriclc iI he thought one year was long enough to prove his case. “A month is enough if the alcoholic wants to be curedr” he said. ,,Ite known so-called reformed drunkarils who were

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what I eail ‘dry drunls., Activated by fear or some other negative reason, they had been on the wagon three to four years, yet they were still far from being cured. You can look at my men and know they are not going to drink again-not because they are afraid to, but because they d,onit watut to. The cure comes from within, and it doesn,t take a year to prove it,s working.,, I asked him if an Alcoholic Therapy Bureau would be practicable in other communities. “Sure, if you keep it selective,” he replied. ,,Once it gets .into mass production, it flops. The best setup is twenty or thirty patients to a gIoup, reporting to one director.” Any Alcoholic Therapy Bureau could be patterned after the one opened in New York ihis July, when the growth of the bureau made a separate building necessary. McGoldrick selected a threestory, twenty-room frame house, with a basement, opposite the cool green of Bronx Park. The ground floor was converted irrto offices, dining room and kitchen. On the second floor are the sleeping quarters-twenty beds-and a large sitting room, with a radio, books and newspapers. “We have no doctor, no medication and no injections,” McGoldrick says. “We want to keep away as much as possible from the institutional atmosphere. The men make their beds and help around the house. Our only paid employees are the cook and the building custofian. Ihe buiiding looks like a private home or club.”

1 N the early stages of their cure the I men seldom go outside the bureau building without being accompanied by McGoldrick or by one of the other alcoholics to whose feet the upward path is more familiar. Later, when he is on his own, if a man feels an almost irresistible impulse to drink, he puts in a telephone S O S to McGoldrick or rushes to him. Seldom does McGoldrick fail to talk him out of his desire. “I’here will be no attempt to cure alcoholics wholesale,” says McGoidrick, “They can’t be cured that way. Our system is more like the endless chain One will cure four others and these four wi{ do likewise, until the city has an army of sincere alcoholic workers.whose only recompense lies in seeing others get back on their feet.” Where may other communit5r directors be found? t’In Alcoholics Anonltrnous,” says Mc- Goidrick. “That’s a ten-year-old organization with twelve’ thousand members and fifty branches scattered throughout the United States. All the membersand I’m orlH.re reformed drunkards. It has no dues, fees or officers, and its principles consist of twelve rules of living developed from the Ten Commandments. (A postcarcl sent to P. O. Box 459, Grand Central Annex, New york 1?, N. Y., will bring frrrther information ) Since it takes an alcoholic to reform an alcoholic, I believe that’s where the other communities will find their directors.’ rEE END