Maplean’s. May’!.5. 1945

I WAS A DRUNK By An Alcoholic

as told to J.J. Dingman

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF RECLAMATION BY CO-OPERATION, THE STORY OF A PRACTICAL FELLOWSHIP, ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Two years ago I awoke late one day in daily. Canada now has organized groups of the psychopathic ward of Toronto General Alcoholics Anonymous in Halifax, Montreal, Hospital. I was 39 years old, completely broke, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Vancouver out of a job. I was despised by my formed and Victoria. Canadian A.A.’s (that’s what we friends, shunned by my family. I was a “rubby call ourselves) number in hundreds, where five dub” who the night before had socked a cop and years ago there were none. been tossed into a cell. When the jail doctor Medicine, the Church and the state have found me still in a fog the next morning, I was struggled with the problem of alcoholism for hospitalized. I was, politely, a confirmed thousands of years. Medicine can’t cure an alcoholic, colloquially, a “drunken bum.” alcoholic. The church can seldom reform a I had drank myself out of a $10,000 a drunkard. The state can’t legislate him back to year business I had inherited from my father sanity. But Alcoholics Anonymous cures 75% of when I was 33. I had served three terms for all alcoholics exposed to it. Two per cent was drunk driving before hitting “skid road.” My wife the best ever attained by any other combination and daughter had left me after standing by me of agencies. for many miserable years. When he had fired My own introduction to A.A. was entirely me, my last employer had conceded that I was a unexpected. On release from hospital, my last good worker, when sober, but said my periods of remaining friend staked me to the railroad fare to sobriety were too short. I had no hope that another city, where in wartime I easily got anyone else would hire me. another job. The armed services would have no Today I am a respected citizen in part of me. I had “signed the pledge again.” “l’d another community, earning a good salary. My never take another drink so long as I lived. But family is with me again, and happy, and I have the same gruesome pattern began repeating. I excellent prospects of living cheerfully to a got drunk for one night, then for two days, then useful old age. Not only have I cured myself but for a week on end. This went on with briefer I have helped many other alcoholics back to periods of sobriety and longer periods of permanent sobriety. drunkenness. I lost that job, got another, and Alcoholics Anonymous is responsible for met a fellow to whom I took an instinctive liking. the change. He saw me at lunch one day when I had made it This 10 year old organization of 18,000 to work, although every muscle and nerve in my men and women in 425 groups in several score body twitched in the agony of a hang-over. He United States and Canadian communities noticed my shaking hands. proves anew every day that the age of miracles “Would you like to stop drinking?” he is not past. BY a combination of common sense, asked, casually. “l want to more than anything applied psychology, co-operative effort and else in the world,” I replied, “But I’ve tried practical Christianity, Alcoholics Anonymous has everything, and nothing works.” transformed 18,000 hopeless drunkards into “l’ve suffered from your illness for ten happy, useful citizens. lts members practice one years,” he replied. “l believe I can show you a of the greatest examples of mass therapy in the way out.” history of mankind. And their numbers multiply

So I went to my first A.A. meeting. I was amazed to find cheerful, animated, well- A.A. NOT PROHIBITIONIST groomed men and women in a clublike atmosphere. I listened to a visiting speaker tell I was relieved that I didn’t have to be simply his spectacular story of release from “saved” or hit a revival-meeting sawdust trail in alcohol by following the TWELVE STEPS as laid order to get into A.A. I never liked that sort of down in the A.A. program. thing. But I could take the prescription offered, I was introduced to many people and as plenty had done before me. I found A.A. nonmany of them told me briefly how they had sectarian, its members including Protestants, successfully come back. There was something Roman Catholics, Jews and agnostics. I was immeasurably consoling in realizing that I was a also glad to find that A.A. is not even faintly a sick man and not a bad man; that I had a prohibition or temperance group. lt is not a “gold disease, not a vice; that I suffered from an cure,” and there are no pills, no doctors, no allergy just as another man has an allergy to clergymen. This knowledge made embarking on strawberries. I was comforted most of all the Twelve Step program less formidable an because here was proof that there was a cure. lf undertaking. I decided to try it. others could do it, I could. Operating on the 24-hour plan I totally The first requisite of an A.A. member, I abstained for three weeks, though it wasn’t easy. had – I honestly wanted to stop drinking. This Then came a bad break in the office, and in my time there was no pledge to sign, no swearing bitterness I fell back on the timeworn technique off for life. A man who had once begged dimes get blind drunk and achieve oblivion. I had to for beer and is today a prosperous merchant drink again the next day and the third day I

said; “You’ve signed the pledge a dozen times. couldn’t get out of my room. I was in the We all have. This time just take it easy. Just say; drunkard’s uniform – dressing gown, pyjamas, “l won’t take a drink today. I won’t drink for and no slippers – and could hardly lift my head twenty-four hours.” Then say the same thing from the pillow when my friend called for me to again tomorrow. lts easier not to drink for a day go to an A.A. meeting. But he didn’t seem either than to quit for a life. Easy does it, one step at a shocked or disappointed, merely remarking, time. Sobriety is new to you, drink’s an old habit. “your not the first to have a relapse, and it isn’t So just don’t drink tonight and then don’t drink necessarily serious.” He went out to a drugstore tomorrow.” for some high potency Vitamin Bl, brought me The second step for A.A. members, he food, and chatted cheerfully. I felt better before told me, was “to believe that a power greater he left, and the next day was able to go to work. than ourselves would restore us to sanity, and to This wasn’t the last time I was tempted, decide to turn our will and our lives over to the but it was the last time I fell. Over and over, care of God as we understood Him.” The words when the craving came back, I felt like giving my as we understood Him are vitally important. right arm for a drink. Often my A.A. friend would Most men recognize that there is a power appear unbidden, almost intuitively, at my elbow, greater than themselves, though definitions suggesting a movie, a ball game or some bridge. differ. I was a nominal Christian, having been With him behind me I could fight back the urge baptized a Presbyterian. MY counselor, himself to drink. For a long while I didn’t go to movies a Roman Catholic, suggested that I pray quietly alone because seeing anyone on the screen sip by myself, for strength to keep sober for the next a cocktail set up an almost unendurable craving. 24 hours. Observing my hesitation, he said; “lt This man literally saved my life, but the doesn’t matter to whom you pray. I pray to God; whole A.A. group helped. This treatment was a you suit yourself. But when you get up in the form of mass therapy, and this is, to me, the morning, say within yourself, to whatever greater foundation of A.A.’s success. Let me tell you power you recognize: “Please keep me from what I mean by the term. drinking today.” and when you go to bed at At meetings I met a man who had been night, say “Thank you, but be sincere and mean reduced to drinking the alcohol he had drained it. ” from car radiators, tell how he bounced back to

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a prosperous place in his city’s business life. I attainment of temporary sobriety. After that the heard a physician tell how he drank himself out first step is to take the patient to an A.A. of a $20,000 a year practice and had been quite meeting. There he gets the full impact of the literally yanked out of the gutter by A.A., to fight mass therapeutic treatment. his way back to sobriety and success. I listened Men who understand this disease to a workman tell how he had been in and out of explain that it’s an allergy not a vice. This theory jails for 10 years and now held a priority job in a is comparatively new, and it explains why some war plant. people can drink safely and some can’t, just as All these men had admitted publicly that some are unmoved by ragweed and others are they were alcoholics, that they could never hope reduced to agonies with hay fever when to control their drinking and therefore must exposed to the plant, lt also explains why when totally abstain. The very admission and a man is once an alcoholic he is always an subsequent discussion, helped us all alcoholic. Like the diabetic sufferer who takes tremendously. We faced facts we had evaded all insulin, the alcoholic can only hope to arrest his our lives. Having been helped by the Twelve disease. He can stop drinking but he will still be Step program, these A.A.’ s helped others. For it an alcoholic when he dies. All this is explained is the basis of our program that only an alcoholic by sympathetic fellow sufferers, who tell what can understand an alcoholic and help him. The they and other have accomplished. doctor prescribes a hypo in the arm, but he The patient must say, privately and to at doesn’t have the disease. The clergyman least one other person: “l just can’t take it.” probably never drank anything stronger than Aunt Maud’s elderberry wine. The wife says, TRAITS IN COMMON “Think of your family,” failing to understand that the alcoholic does think of his family, with the ln addition to sharing an allergy, the bittersweet remorse. The state says, passing symptom of which is unnatural craving, periodic prohibition laws, “Thou shalt not drink,” alcoholics usually have certain personality traits but alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike reply, in common. We are often emotionally immature “Nuts.” and burdened by an inferiority complex. The But the recovered alcoholic says to the A.A. program helps in this field, too, and the shaking, despondent wreck just emerging from third step requires a frank discussion of the fog after a frightful bender; “l know just how problems, and restitution to those who have you feel because I have been there myself. Not been wronged. But the past is held to be water just once or a few times. I’ve had those shakes, over the dam – just take a moral inventory, do those chills and fevers, those sweats, that the best you can to fix things up, and then go on terrible, awful remorse, that horrible feeling of being sober the rest of your life. l, for instance aloneness, that vicious craving for another drink, had always been a “worrier,” and often worry that desperation that makes me a liar and a thief literally drove me to drink. But since being in and a beggar to get another shot. l’ve had these A.A. I have been honest with myself and have not once, but hundreds of times in the past 10 or stopped worrying. 15 years. I know what it’s all about.” The majority of A.A. groups meet two or “You’re not just another drunken bum. three times a week. There is one public meeting, You’re not just another moral outcast. You’re just to which all comers are invited, always a sick man with a disease as malignant, but addressed by a recovered alcoholic who tells his more easily diagnosed and cured, than cancer. I case history. ln the Detroit-Windsor area, for think I have the cure for you if you honestly want instance, where there are 12 A.A. groups, a joint to stop drinking.” public meeting is held monthly, attended by The sanitarium treatment for alcoholism, some 400 alcoholics. That is an inspiring which does not always succeed, is not available spectacle. Annually, in both cities, A.A. stages for many but the well to do. Many a discharged public banquets where the cocktail is tomato patient will get drunk on his way home from a juice, and the liquor is demitasse coffee. three-week hospitalization only for the Windsor, the strongest of the Canadian units,

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has benefited enormously by association with he got out of jail he was plastered again as soon the able, active A.A.’s in the great Detroit as he had the money. Yet he really wanted to organization. quit. When he first approached me I was frankly A.A. has two other types of meetings – apprehensive. But when we had exposed him to the clinical session for A.A.’s only and the social our program, fed and decently clothed him, and evening. ln the clinic the boys take their hair got him a job, he was a new man. He hasn’t had down, tell of their drinking careers and try to a drink for 14 months. He’s our most spectacular analyze what made them drink, and bY cure and one of our most helpful members. exchanging experiences help each other Another was a lawyer, a man prominent permanently ride the water wagon. There is the in public life who had been hospitalized in the Saturday night bridge or poker session, when a “best places” a dozen times. But always he dozen or more alcoholics rotate around each found himself back in the same spot – holed up other’s homes. For many of them it’s the first in a hotel room, the living likeness of “The time they’ve ever played poker sober. These Unhappy Drinker” who wants to stop but can’t. activities offer an antidote to loneliness, which He did his drinking on a different level of society has driven many an alcoholic man to the nearest than the “town drunk” but he was making an bar. even better job of wrecking himself mentally and The patient exposed to this experience in physically. He was also tossing a promising mass treatment is cured in 75 out of 100 starts. career into the ash can. He didn’t know I A.A. Just being together in one large room a group of existed in this city, but he had read of the prosperous, cheerful men and women who once international organization and wrote to the New were “hopeless drunkards” has a tremendous York Office of Alcoholic Foundation lnc., and his psychological effect on the newcomer and old- letter was sent on to me. He hasn’t had a drink timer alike. for ’15 months. I went through the A.A. Program of I was at an A.A. meeting one night when admission, of acknowledging a power greater a man 60 odd years old, and very, very high than myself, of taking inventory of my indeed, stumbled in. He was belligerent and weaknesses and making restitution to those I abusive. He’d located the local A.A. group, and had injured. But it was in the Twelfth Step – in he wanted help, but he had to drink himself a helping others like myself – that I found the little courage to come to see us. We found he greatest satisfaction and a guarantee of had once been a power in the Labor movement, permanent sobriety. A couple of months after I a highly paid union organizer, now reduced to had been in A.A., I got another fellow to join. I washing dishes in a “greasy spoon.” He has thereby wrote myself an insurance policy, I paid totally abstained for 12 months and now has a the premium by helping myself and others. I good job compatible with his intelligence and drew the dividend of permanent sobriety. For education. once a man has induced others to join A.A., he’ll never be likely to fall again himself. Pride, if MOSTLY VOLUNTEERS nothing else will be his mainstay, for never can he let these men see him drunk. Of course A.A. But I want to make it clear that A.A. has backsliders, but those who do slip off the never pesters a man to join. Ninety-nine per cent water wagon climb on again with an agility they of the people who join our own group have never thought believable before. lt just isn’t done asked for help. We must first be assured that a to let down the fellow who helped you when man wants to stop drinking before we’ll move. lf everyone else, and all else, had failed’ he doesn’t want to stop more than anything else We had a fellow who had been the “town in the world then he’s not ready for A.A. and drunk” for 15 years. Skeptics said, “if you can unless he’s ripe we’d be wasting our time, and cure him you can cure anybody.” This chap slept might even prejudice him against us. lf an in used car lots, bummed dimes on the street, alcoholic comes into A.A., attends a few was in and out of jails, and drank everything meetings and then drops out, we never go after from leftover beer to shaving lotion. Everytime him. We wait until he’s taken another real nose

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dive, and then we’ll comb the bars and joints to Davis had become intensely interested in the drag him back to sanity. That may sound a bit problem of alcoholism while paying a visit to a brutal, but we have found that it is best to get a New York detoxicating hospital where he had man when he is full of remorse after crawling out been a patient. ln his Akron hotel lobby Davis of the stupor of a bat, than to try to work on him looked at a Church directory opposite the bar, when he’s cold sober and falsely believes he impulsively he called a clergyman, although he has liquor licked. did not know him, and through the minister he Let me make it very clear that Alcoholics met an Akron physician who was really an Anonymous is for alcoholics only. We want no advanced alcoholic. The doctor and the broker part of the social drinker, or the man or woman became friends, and tried to hold each other up who occasionally ties one on at a party. We on the water wagon. But the doctor fell off. lt define the alcoholic as one who is “powerless was on June 10, 1935, that the physician took over alcohol.” Any “morning after” drinker is his last drink. lt was a drink given to him by either an alcoholic or a potential alcoholic. This Davis, to pull him out of a hangover. These two is the type who’ll take a drink when he doesn’t became the first A.A. group. ln a year and a half want to, when he knows that taking that drink they had effected only 10 cures. By the early may wreck his future economically. The part of 1939 the number had grown to 100. lt recovered alcoholic wants to cure others like was at that time that Alcoholics Anonymous – the himself, but he does not want to interfere with A.A. bible – was published. This is a remarkable the drinking habits of those who enjoy their work, with a preface by the founder, and case liquor and forget about it. We don’t want to close histories of a dozen spectacular cures. A.A.’s any bars or cut liquor rations. We recognize that call it the “Big Book.” lt is such a powerful piece for most people drinking is an enjoyable, of simple writing that cures have been effected harmless social pastime, one that adds a good by one reading of it, and nothing else. lt is deal to the gaiety of nations. But we also procurable from any A.A. group or by writing to recognize that it is not for us. A.A. will almost the head office, Box 459, Grand Central Annex guarantee a cure based on total abstinence, but Post Office, New York City. as yet to turn out a safe social drinker. Many of Since then, groups have been almost us firmly established in A.A. serve liquor to self-starling in Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, others in our homes and clubs, tippling Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, ourselves on fruit juice and cokes. But that is not Pittsburgh, Toronto, Washington, Montreal, sound practice for new recruits, on the principle Chicago and some 50 other cities and towns in that its foolish to stick one’s head into the lion’s the United States and Canada. Everywhere they mouth. He is wise to avoid temptation. are endorsed by clergymen, doctors and social After I had been in A.A. a while the man workers. who 10 years ago founded the movement spoke About five years ago the movement one night in a nearby city and I went to hear him. gained a foothold in Canada. Toronto is the A charming, intelligent man, an able executive oldest and Windsor is the second oldest group. and fluent speaker, he could earn $80,000 a year today, yet he devotes his life to A.A., NO RESPECTER OF RANK running the international organization from New York for barely enough to keep him going. Let’s What has Alcoholics Anonymous got to call him arbitrarily and to preserve the principle offer Canada and Canadians? A.A. offers to of anonymity, Davis. thousands of Canadian drunks and to borderline Davis, a New York stockbroker who had cases and potential alcoholics restoration to a a rich and varied drinking career, found himself happy and gainful place in society, painlessly one day in Akron, Ohio. He was alone, knew not and without cost. All they have to do is want to a soul in the city, and was almost stone-broke, be cured. A.A. is really a co-operative, and and he badly wanted a drink. But he knew that if alcoholics can band themselves together in a he took one he would walk the same old path co- operative just as can the grain growers of again to torture and eventual hospitalization. Western Canada or the farmers of Ontario. A.A.

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welcomes everybody who wants to slay the sending him to jail this time, the magistrate dragon that has made his life hell-extrovert and paroled him to me when I was able to tell the introvert, beggarman and thief, lawyer and office court that the man had been in A.A. for six worker, banker and day laborer, rich, poor and months and had had but this one brief relapse. I the suffering white-collarman, society lady and staked my own and the reputation of A.A. on the truck driver. that fellow, and I know I’ll win. For one thing, A.A. has taught its And A.A. is for potential alcoholics, too, members that alcohol is no respecter of rank or for the smart operator who’s intelligent enough birth or worldly position. I know the head of a to see where he’s heading before he actually war plant who’s making money so fast he can’t musses his trousers in the gutter. We have had count it. I know a chap who works for this man more than a dozen of that type join us in the last for forty cents an hour, when he works. They are month. both alcoholics. One is a well educated, To answer the inevitable “wise guy,” who intelligent man, with a charming wife and family. sees a racket in all human endeavors let me The other is a poor: chap who never had a point out that the modest organization chance to acquire an education, or the capacity maintained by A.A. is financed through the to absorb it. They both suffer from the disease of voluntary contributions of recovered alcoholics. alcoholism, just as they might in other There are no dues or fees. At our meeting we circumstances have tuberculosis. A.A. can, and contribute to the “kitty” the price of one drink or does, help both these extreme types and all the one bottle, depending on how flush we are at the run-ofthe-mill humanity in between. moment. No newcomer pays a nickel. Each of A.A. groups offer very Practical the groups is completely autonomous. The assistance too. Our reputation has grown to be Alcoholic Foundation lnc., New York, is the respected by employers and by agencies of the central clearinghouse for information and advice, state. We feed and cloth some down-and-outers and helps each individual unit. But no group we think deserving, and get them jobs. Six owes money of allegiance to New York. Each moths ago a large firm wrote me asking if we can help pay the New York rent or not, as it had in our group a personnel man, for they seems fit. Many don’t, but most do. believed an ex-alcoholic could, by his greater The other night at our local meeting, a understanding of man and his frailties, handle King’s Counsel, just in two months said, “l don’t men better than most other types. The other day know why I drank. I don’t really care. I know that I met the head of that firm on the street. l’m not drinking now. I’m not yet sure how this “You know that ex-drunk you sent me?” program works, or why, but I know that it does. he enquired. That’s enough for me right now.” “Yes, ” I recalled, “What’s the matter? This brilliant lawyer is but one of Did he get drunk again?” hundreds of Canadians who have been restored “Drunk, no!” he snorted, “Send me half- to sanity and usefulness. That is what Alcoholics a-dozen more like him.” Anonymous offers to Canada and Canadians – That was one of the most satisfYing sane and sober men and women, who once moments of my life. were drunkards, contributing of their best to the Recently a big bruiser of a chap, one of nation in wartime and peace. those “fighting drunks,” was up in court on the old fighting the cops charge. But instead of Source: Macleans, May 15, 1945

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