These Drug Addicts Cure One Another By Jerome Ellison A new approach to a tragic social problem – drug addiction – has been found by the ex-addicts of Narcotics Anonymous. Here’s how they help users out of their horrible habit – as in the case of the mining engineer, the hot musician, the minister and the movie actor.

Tom, a young musician just out of a job names such as yellow jacket, red devil and on a big-name dance band, was pouring out the goofball. story of his heroin addiction to a small gathering Addicts work up to doses sufficient to kill in a New York City Y.M.C.A. He told how he a non-addicted person or an addict with a lesser started three years ago, “fooling around for tolerance. In New York recently, three young thrills, never dreaming to get a habit.” His band addicts met and took equal portions of heroin. went on the road. One night in Philadelphia he Two felt no unusual reactions; the third went into ran out of his drug and became so shaky he convulsions and in a few hours was dead. Many couldn’t play. It was the first time the band barbiturate users daily consume quantities, management knew of his habit. He was promptly which would be lethal to a normal person. sent home. Others have demonstrated an ability to use “Music business is getting tough with barbiturates for years, under medical junkies,” Tom said. supervision, without raising their consumption to His audience was sympathetic. It was dangerous levels. composed of former drug addicts who had found The drug addict, like the alcoholic, has freedom from addiction. They met twice weekly long been an enigma to those who want to help to make this freedom secure, and worked to him. Real contact is most likely to be made, on a help other addicts achieve it. The New York principle demonstrated with phenomenal group, founded in 1950 and called Narcotics success by Alcoholics Anonymous, by another Anonymous, is one of several which have been addict. Does the prospect, writhing with shame, piling up evidence that the methods of confess to pilfering from his wife’s purse to buy Alcoholics Anonymous can help release people drugs? His sponsor once took his children’s from other drugs than alcohol – drugs such as lunch money. Did he steal the black bag of a opium, heroin, morphine and the barbiturates. loyal family doctor? As a ruse to flimflam The groups enter a field where patients druggists, his new friend once impersonated a are many and cures few. The population doctor for several months. The N.A. member addicted to opiates has been placed by first shares his shame with the newcomer. Then competent but incompatible authorities at 60,000 he shares his hope and finally, sometimes, his and at 180,000. The Federal Bureau of recovery. Narcotics estimates that the traffic in illegal To date, the A.A. type of group therapy opium derivatives grosses $275,000,000 a year. has been an effective ingredient of “cures” – the About 1000 people a month are arrested for word as used here means no drugs for a year or violation of Federal, state or local laws more and an intent of permanent abstinence. – regulating the opiates. Addiction to the in at least 200 cases. Some of these, including barbiturates, it is believed, involves more Dan, the founder of the New York group, had people. There are some 1500 known been pronounced medically hopeless. The compounds of barbituric acid, some of them “Narco” Group in the United States Public Health having pharmaceutical names and others street Service Hospital at Lexington, Kentucky, has a

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transient membership of about eighty men and women patients. The group mails a monthly The American interested himself in Frank newsletter, The Key, free to those who want it, Buchman’s Oxford Group, found sobriety, and currently a list of 500 names. Many of these are told an inebriate friend of his experience. The interested but nonaddicted friends. Most are friend sobered up and took the message to a “mail-order members” of the group-addicts who former drinking partner, a New York stockbroker have left the hospital and been without drugs for named Bill. Though he was an agnostic who had periods ranging from a few weeks to several never had much use for religion, Bill sobered up. years. The H.F.D. (Habit Forming Drug) Group Late in 1935, while on a business trip to Akron, is a loosely affiliated fellowship of California ex- Ohio, he was struck by the thought that he addicts who keep “clean” – the addicts term for a wouldn’t be able to keep his sobriety unless he state of abstinence- by attending Alcoholics passed on the message. He sought out a heavy Anonymous meetings with volunteer A.A. drinking local surgeon named Bob and told him sponsors. The Federal prison at Lorton, Virginia, the story to date. They sat down and formulated has a prisoner group which attracts thirty men to a program for staying sober-a program featuring its weekly meetings. Narcotics Anonymous in twelve Suggested Steps and called Alcoholics New York is the sole “free world”-outside of Anonymous. Bill devoted full time to carrying the institution-group which conducts its own weekly A.A. message, and the news spread. The nowopen-to-the-public meetings in the A.A. tradition. famous article by Jack Alexander in The Today’s groups of former addicts mark Saturday Evening Post of March 1, 1941, made the convergence of two historic narratives, one it nationally known, and by 1944 there were A.A. having to do with alcohol, the other with opium. groups in the major cities. References to the drug of the poppies go back In June of that year an inebriate mining to 4000 B.C. According to Homer, Helen of Troy engineer whom we’ll call Houston “hit bottom” used it in a beverage guaranteed to abolish with his drinking in Montgomery, Alabama, and care. Opium was employed to quiet noisy the local A.A.’s dried him up. Houston gobbled children as early as 1552 B.C. De Quincy and the A.A. program and began helping other Coleridge are among the famous men to whom alcoholics. One of the drunks he worked with-a it brought disaster. In its dual role it appears sales executive who can be called Harry-was today, through its derivatives, as the friend of involved not only with alcohol but also morphine. man in surgery and his enemy in addiction. A.A. took care of the alcoholic factor, but left The alcoholic strand of the story may be Harry’s drug habit unchanged. Interested and taken up in the Zurich office of the Swiss baffled, Houston watched his new friend struggle psychologist Carl Jung, one day late in 1933. At in his strange self-constructed trap. that time the eminent doctor was obliged to The opiate theme of the narrative now impart an unpleasant bit of news to one of his reappears. Harry’s pattern had been to get patients, an American businessman who had roaring drunk, take morphine to avoid a hangcome for help with a desperate drinking over, get drunk again and take morphine again. problem. After months of effort and repeated Thus he became “hooked”-addicted. He drove relapses, the doctor admitted that his treatment through a red light one day and was stopped by had been a failure. a policeman. The officer found morphine and “Is there, then,” the patient asked, “no turned him over to Federal jurisdiction, with the hope?” Only if a profound religious experience result that Harry spent twenty-seven months at were undergone, he was told. How, he wanted Lexington, where both voluntary and involuntary to know, could such an experience be had? It patients are accommodated, as a prisoner. After could not be obtained on order, the doctor said, his discharge he met Houston and, through A.A., but if one associated with religious-minded found relief from the booze issue. The drug people for a while _______ problem continued to plague him. During this period, Houston, through one Narcotics Anonymous – A.A.’s Young of those coincidences which A.A.’s like to Brother attribute to a Higher Power, was transferred by

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his employers to Frankfort, Kentucky, just a few he managed keep himself regularly supplied. An miles from Lexington. “Harry’s troubles kept addict at the hospital taught him how to inject jumping through my brain,” Houston says. “I was himself, so for a time he was able to recapture convinced that the twelve Suggested Steps the mood at will. He was embarrassing his foster would work as well for drugs as for alcohol if mother professionally, however, and though not conscientiously applied. One day I called on Dr. yet acknowledging the fact to himself, was V.H. Vogel, the medical officer then in charge at becoming known locally as an addict. Sources of Lexington. I told him of our work with Harry and drugs began to close up, and one day there was offered to assist in starting a group in the no morphine to be had. He went into an hospital. Doctor Vogel accepted the offer and on uncontrollable panic which grew worse each Feb. 16, 1947, the first meeting was held. hour. Weekly meetings have been going on ever There followed muscular cramps, since.” diarrhea, a freely running nose, tears gushing from his eyes, and two sleepless, terror-filled The Phenomenon of “Physical Dependence” days and nights. It was Dan’s first experience with the mysterious withdrawal sickness which is Some months later, in a strangely woven experienced sooner or later by every addict. web of coincidence, Harry reappeared at In one of the strangest phenomena “Narco” as a voluntary patient and began known to medicine, the body adjusts to the attending meetings. He was discharged, invasion of certain drugs, altering its chemistry in relapsed, and in short time was back again. a few weeks to a basis-called “physical “This time,” he says, “it clicked.” He has now dependence”-on which it can no longer function been free from both alcohol and drugs for more properly without the drug. How physical than five years. Twice he has returned to tell his dependence differs from habit may be illustrated story at meetings, in the A.A. tradition of passing by imagining a habitual gum chewer deprived of on the good word. gum. His unease would be due to the denial of In the fall of 1948 there arrived at habit. If he were denied gum and also water, on Lexington an addict named Dan who had been which he is physically dependent, he’d feel an there before. It was, in fact, his seventh trip; the increasingly painful craving called thirst. The doctors assumed that he’d continue his periodic drug addict’s craving is called the “abstinence visits until he died. This same Dan later founded syndrome,” or withdrawal sickness. In extreme the small but significant Narcotics Anonymous cases it includes everything Dan experienced, group in New York. Dan’s personal history is the plus hallucinations and convulsions. Withdrawal story of an apparently incurable addict of opiates rarely causes the death of a healthy apparently cured. person; sudden cessation of barbiturates has An emotionally unsettled childhood is the been known to. The violent phase, which is rule among addicts, and Dan’s childhood follows usually over in two to three days, may under the pattern. His mother died when he was three expert care be largely avoided. Physical years old, his father when he was four. He was dependence gradually diminishes and ordinary adopted by a spinster physician and spent his habit, of the gum-chewing type, asserts itself. boyhood with his foster mother, a resident This is the interval of greatest vulnerdoctor in a Kansas City hospital, and with her ability, N.A. members say, to the addict’s relatives in Missouri and Illinois. When he was inevitable good resolutions. He has formed the sixteen he developed an ear ailment and was habit of using his drugs when he feels low. If he given opiates to relieve the pain. During and breaks off medical supervision before he is after an operation to correct the condition he physically and medically back to par, the received frequent morphine injections. Enjoying temptation to relapse may be overwhelming. It is the mood of easy, floating forgetfulness they in this period, Dan says, that the addict most induced, he malingered. needs the kind of understanding he finds in N.A. Living in a large hospital gave Dan If he yields to the call of habit, physical opportunities to pilfer drugs, and for six months dependence is quickly reestablished and his

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body calls for ever greater doses as the price of accelerated. On his seventh trip to Lexington, in peace. 1948, he was in a profound depression. Dan went through the cycle dozens of After a month of sullen silence, he began times. Besides the half dozen withdrawals at attending the group meetings, which were a new Lexington, there were several at city and state feature at the hospital since his last trip. “I still institutions, and numerous attempts at self- wouldn’t talk,” he reports, “But I did some withdrawal. He tried sudden and complete listening. I was impressed by what Houston had abstinence, the “cold-turkey” method. He tried to say. Harry came back one time and told us relieving the withdrawal pangs with alcohol, and his story. For the first time, I began to pray. I found it only cancelled out his ability to think, so was only praying that I would die, but at least it he automatically returned to drugs. When he was a prayer,” He did not die, nor did he attempted withdrawal with barbiturates he “just recover. Within six months of his discharge he about went goofy.” was found in possession of drugs and sent back All this, however, was to come later; in to Lexington for a year-his eighth and, as it his early twenties he had no intention of giving turned out, final trip. up the use of drugs. Having been spotted as an “This time things were different,” he says. addict in the Kansas City area, he sought fresh “Everything Houston and Harry had been saying fields. He found a job as a salesman and suddenly made sense. There was a lawyer from traveled several Midwest states. The demands a Southern city there at the time, and a of his habit and his scrapes with the law made it Midwestern surgeon. They were in the same hard to hold a job long. Drifting from one mood I was-disgusted with themselves and employment to another, he found himself, in the really ready to change. The three of us used to early 1930’s in Brooklyn. have long talks with Houston every Saturday His attempts at withdrawal resulted in morning, besides the regular meetings.” All three several extended periods of abstinence, the recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of their longest of which was three years. When off emancipation from the drug habit. drugs Dan was an able sales executive and a Dan, conscious of what seemed to him a good provider. He married a Staten Island girl. miraculous change of attitude, returned to New They had a son. Dan continued to have short York full of enthusiasm and hope. The twelfth of relapses, however. Each new one put a further the Suggested Steps was to pass on the strain on the family tie. For a time, to save message to others who needed help. He money for drugs, he used slugs in the subway proposed to form the first outside-of-institution turnstiles going to and from work. He was group and call it Narcotics Anonymous-N.A. He spotted by a subway detective and spent two contacted other Lexington alumni and suggested days in jail. A month later he was caught they start weekly meetings. passing a forged morphine prescription. As a There were certain difficulties. Addicts result, he was among the first prisoner patients are not outstandingly gregarious, and when all at the new United States Public Health Service the excuses were in only three-a house painter Hospital for addicts at Lexington, when it was named Charlie, a barber named Henry and a opened on May 28, 1935. waiter we’ll call George-were on hand for the After a year there, he made a supreme first meeting. There was uncertainty about effort to be rid of drugs for good. To keep away where this would be; nobody it seemed wanted from the temptations offered by New York drug the addicts around. Besides, missionary, or pushers he found a job with a large Midwest “twelfth step,” work of the new group would be dairy. He worked hard, saved his money and hampered by the law. When the A.A. member is sent for his family. By this time, however, it was on an errand of mercy he can, if occasion too late; his wife refused to come, and a divorce warrants, administer appropriate “medicine” to action was begun. “Her rebuff gave me what I stave off shakes or delirium long enough to talk thought was a good excuse to go back on a little sense into the prospect. If the N.A. drugs,” Dan reports. After that, his deterioration member did so, he’d risk a long term in jail. Drug peddlers were not enthusiastic about the new

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venture. Rumors were circulating discrediting cannot change, the courage to change the the group. things I can, and the wisdom to know the Out of the gloom, however, came difference.” The secretary then introduces a unexpected rays of friendliness and help. The leader-a member who presents the speakers Salvation Army made room for meetings at its and renders interlocutor’s comments from his 46th Street cafeteria. Later the McBurney own experience with a drugless life. The Y.M.C.A., on 23rd Street, offered a meeting speakers-traditionally two in an eveningroom. Two doctors backed their oral support by describe their adventures with drugs and with sending patients to meetings. Two other doctors N.A. In two months of meetings I heard a score agreed to serve on an advisory board. of these case histories. I also charted the There were slips and backslidings. progress of a newcomer, the young musician Meetings were sometimes marred by obstinacy named Tom, whose first N.A. meeting coincided and temper. But three of the original four with my own first reportorial visit. remained faithful and the group slowly grew. Within the undeviating certainties of Difficult matters of policy were worked out by addiction, individual histories reveal a wide trial and error. Some members once thought that assortment of personal variations. Harold, an a satisfactory withdrawal could be made at optometrist, is a “medical” addict; he got his home. Some hard nights were endured and it habit from the prescription pad of a doctor who was concluded that the doctors were right-for a was treating him for osteomyelitis. An outspoken proper drug withdrawal institutional care is advocate of psychotherapy for all, Harold necessary. Addicts are not admitted to meetings absorbs a certain amount of ribbing as the while using drugs. Newcomers are advised to groups “psychiatric salesman.” Florence, the make their withdrawal first, then come to N.A. to housewife-cashier-secretary, recently celebrated learn to live successfully without drugs. her first anniversary of freedom from morphine, Group statisticians estimate that 5000 which she first received twenty-five years ago in inquiries have been answered, constituting a a prescription for the relief of menstrual cramps. heavy drain on the group’s treasury. Some 600 Carl, an electrician, became interested in the addicts have attended one or more meetings, 90 effects of opium smoke thirty years ago, and have attained effective living without drugs. One reached a point where he could not function of these is a motion picture celebrity, now doing without his daily pipe. He eventually switched to well on his own. One relapse after the first heroin and his troubles multiplied. exposure to N.A. principles seems to have been Manny, an executive in a high-pressure about par, though a number have not found this advertising agency, and Marian, a registered necessary. “A key fact of which few addicts are nurse with heavy administrative responsibilities aware,” Dan says, “is that once he’s been began using morphine to relieve fatigue. Don, addicted, a person can never again take even Marian’s husband, regards alcohol as his main one dose of any habit-forming drug, including addictive drug, but had a bad brush with selfalcohol and the barbiturates, without running into prescribed barbiturates before he came to A.A. trouble.” and then, with Marian, to N.A. Pat, another The weekly “open”-to the public- young advertising man, nearly died of poisoning meetings are attended by ten to thirty persons- from the barbiturates to which he had become addicts, their friends and families and concerned heavily addicted. Harold and Carl have now outsiders. The room is small and, on Friday been four years without drugs; Manny, three; evenings when more than twenty-five turn up, Marian, Don and Pat, one. crowded. Perhaps a third of the membership are There is an interval of chitchat and graduates of the teen-age heroin fad which visiting, and then, about nine o’clock, the swept our larger cities a few years ago, and secretary, a Brooklyn housewife, mother and which still enjoys as much of a vogue as dope department -store cashier, opens the meeting. In peddlers can promote among the present teenthis ceremony all repeat the well-known prayer: age population. Rita, an attractive daughter of “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I Spanish-American Harlem, was one of the

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group’s first members. Along with a number of The Narco meetings at Lexington have her classmates, she began by smoking borne other fruit. There was Charlie, the young marihuana cigarettes-a typical introduction to GI from Washington, D.C., who once looted firstdrugs-then took heroin “for thrills.” She used the aid kits in the gun tubs of a Navy transport en drug four years, became desperately ill, went to route to the Philippines and took his first Lexington and has now been free of the habit morphine out of sheer curiosity. After his Army four years. Fred, a war hero, became a heroin discharge his curiosity led him to heroin and addict because he wanted friends. In the teen- several bad years; then to Lexington, where the age gang to which he aspired, being hooked Narco Group struck a spark. He heard about was a badge of distinction. He sought out the Dan’s work, went to New York to see him, and pusher who frequented the vicinity of his high on his return to Washington looked around to school and got hooked. There followed seven see what he could do. He discovered that there miserable and dangerous years, two of them in was a concentration of addicts in the Federal combat and one in a veteran’s hospital. In penitentiary at Lorton, Virginia. Working with December of 1953 he came to N.A. and, he Alcoholics Anonymous, which already had says, “really found friends.” meetings in the prison, he obtained permission Lawrence’s story is the happiest of all. to start a group like the one at Lexington. Now a He came to N.A. early in his first addiction, just year old, these meetings, called the Notrol out of high school, just married, thoroughly Group- Lorton backward-attract the regular alarmed at discovering he was addicted, and attendance of about thirty addicts. Washington desperately seeking a way out. N.A. friends has no free-world group, but Charlie helps a lot recommended that he get “blue-grassed,” an of addicts on an individual basis, steering them arrangement by which a patient may commit to A.A. meetings for doctrine. himself under a local statute to remain at Friendliness of ex-drug addicts with Lexington 135 days for what the doctors former devotees of alcohol sometimes occurs, consider a really adequate treatment. He though Bill, the same who figured so prominently attended meetings in the hospital and more in A.A.’s founding, says a fraternal attitude meetings when he got home. Now happy and cannot be depended upon. The average A.A., grateful, he thanks N.A. His boss recently he says, would merely look blank if asked about presented him with a promotion; his wife drug addiction, and rightly reply that this recently presented him with a son. specialty is outside his understanding. There Besides the Friday open meeting there is are, however, a few A.A.’s who have been a Tuesday closed meeting at the Y for addicts addicted both to alcohol and drugs, and these only. As a special dispensation I was permitted sometimes function as “bridge members.” to attend a closed meeting, the purpose of which “If the addict substitutes the word ‘drugs’ is to discuss the daily application of the twelve whenever he hears ‘alcohol’ in the A.A. program, steps. he’ll be helped,” Houston says. Many ex-addicts, The step under discussion the night I in the larger population centers where meetings was there was No.4:”Make a searching and run to attendances of hundreds, attend A.A. fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The point meetings. The H.F.D. (Habit-Forming Drug) was raised as to whether this step might Group, which is activated by an energetic exdegenerate into self-recrimination and do more addict and ex-alcoholic of the Los Angeles area harm than good. Old-timers asserted that this named Betty, has dozens of members, but no was not the proper application. A life of drug meeting of its own. Individual ex-addicts who are addiction, they said, often built up an abnormal “making it” the A.A. way include a minister in a load of guilt and fear, which could become so South-eastern state, a politician in the deep oppressive as to threaten a relapse unless dealt South, a motion-picture mogul in California and with. When the addict used step 4 honestly to an eminent surgeon of an Eastern city. The role face up to his past, guilt and fear diminished and call of ex-addict groups is small. There is the he could make constructive plans for his future. parent Narco Group, Addicts Anonymous, P.O. Box 2000, Lexington, KY; Narcotics Anonymous,

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P.O. Box 3, Village Station, New York 14, N.Y.; $300,000 when finally cut, packaged and sold in Notrol Group, c/o U.S. Penitentiary, Lorton, Va.; America. H.D.F. Group, c/o Secretary, Bay Area Among the judges, social workers and Rehabilitation Center, 1458 26th St., Santa doctors with whom I talked there is a growing Monica, Calif. feeling that the Harrison Act needs to be re- A frequent and relevant question asked examined. Dr. Hubert S. Howe, a former by the casually interested is, “But I thought Columbia professor of neurology and authority habit-forming drugs were illegal-where do they on narcotics, says the statute, like the Volstead get the stuff?” The answer involves an Act, “removed the traffic in narcotic drugs from interesting bit of history explaining how opiates lawful hands and gave it to criminals.” In an come to be illegal. In the early 1800’s doctors address before the New York State Medical used them freely to treat the innumerable ills Society he asserted that the financial props then lumped under the heading, “nervousness.” could be knocked from the illegal industry by Hypodermic injection of morphine was minor revisions of present laws and rulings, with introduced in 1856. By 1880, opium and no risk of addiction becoming more widespread. morphine preparations were common drugstore Doctor Howe proposes a system of regulation items. An 1882 survey estimated that 1 per cent similar to that of the United Kingdom, which of the population was addicted, and the public reports only 364 addicts. became alarmed. A wave of legislation swept Meanwhile the lot of those who become the country, beginning in 1885 with an Ohio involved with what our British cousins rightly call statute and culminating in the Federal Harrison “dangerous drugs” is grim. It is just slightly less Narcotic Law of 1914. Immediately after the grim than it might have been five years ago. passage of this prohibitory law, prices of opium, Since then a few addicts have found a way back morphine and heroin soared. A fantastically from the nightmare alleys of addiction to a profitable black market developed. Today, normal life which may seem humdrum enough at $3000 worth of heroin purchased abroad brings times, but which when lost, then regained, is found to be a glory.

Source: The Saturday Evening Post, August 7, 1954

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