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t8 TODAY’S HEATTH

Yo, who call yourselves “alcoholics” or “problem have hung the label on you. You have used the label -f drinkers” are among the least understood people to keep away from people. in the world. In spite of extensive publicity and ardent But I don’t believe there is any such thing as an organizations in your behalf, you arent getting the alcoholic, ol any such thing as alcoholism. I think we breaks from science or modern methods of trea.tment. can get together as people, and there is as much hope You are the victims of a label, “alcoholism,” rvhich you for you as for the rest of us. I’m saying to you, and to and your well-rvishers have l-rung about your necks. your friends anc{ families: “You deserve better, and I’m being brutally frank, nt the risk of ofiending you. you can do better. You need not live in that lonely realm In my estimation, there’s no hope for alcoholics. I mean called alcoholism. You can come back into the world, that when you think of yourself as an “alcolrolic” and and live rvith people,” not as a person among others, you shut yourself ofi from I’m h’ying to reach you through Twelve Steps, an the rest of the people. You and I can’t get to one another approach that should ring a bell with many of you. on common grounds. And I think it is as much your l. Your problem is the aaA Aor.t. feel about other fault as it is the fault of me and the rest of us who people, and the roay theg feel about gou. ln years past

STEPS I

for t

alcoholics

by RICHARD LAKE f-T”t’-j =itrYl:: -*a’.

-l l9 NOVE}tBER 1957

I’ve put it this way: “You don’t know how to get along face-to-face experiences with others who are just as sick with people.” And you come right back: “Why, I get as you are, but who have no fancy label to help them alongtne-except when I’m drinking”‘That still doesnt feel more alone than they are already. account for how you feel. I’ve learned over a period of 2. People are more important to you than alcohol. lf ten years with thousands of you that how you feel is people were not so extremely important, you would not the last &ing you are going to struggle with. When a have to put alcohol between yourself and them’ Thoufeeling starts hurting in you, or even before it starts sands of you have told me, “Well, I guess I got started hurting, you grab a drink’ Drinking doesn’t do away drinking rvhen I was ffrst going to dances-sort of to with the ieeling-may even make it hurt worse. Drinking get over being bashful.” Or, “I didnt have any friends ffxes things so you can’t do anything about facing up to except those I could find in a bar.” Or, “I never thought that feeling, studY or master it. I had anything to talk about until I had a few drinks You get along fine with people so long as you can in me.” have things the way you want them. You always want There’s no such thing as the “alcoholic” personality’ to talk with me alone. You are marvelously clever at There are as many difierent kinds of alcoholics as there impressing me with iust what you want me to know- are different kindb of people. But all of you “different” and hiding all the rest. After I leamed people have one thing in common-you this, I quit seeing you in Private. I don’t know what to do with the feelput you drinking people together. I ings you have about others. want you to learn from one another. Again I’m remembering how many You need each other as desPeratelY of you have told me, “I get along just as do any other disturbed and sick fine.” I believe you. You get along just people. 0ne until one of your tender spots is Here’s the catch, though. When threatened. You cant stand your you’re all together and all alcoholics, wife’s critical attitude. Your mother is you still do not learn anything from interfering with your life. A promotion one another. You talk about alcohol. is coming along which.means you will With all sincerity and with the most have to take more responsibility. Begenuine feeling, you tell about your fore any of these tender spots is hurt, harrowing experiences, your personal you have a drink in you to protect it. ruin, your fight to ionquer the habit After a few drinks-or a hundredof drinking, your slips and so on. matters are different. The alcoliol has Granting your sincerity and the bitter become an insulation between You reality of your experiences, this sort and the people whose attitudes and of trading stories does not teach any feelings make you uneasy. You don’t of you anything new about your feel- have to feel their feelings. ings toward one another. That’s rvhy I won’t let you tell me Somewhere in all these amazing that your problem is drinking. Your and impressive stories should lie the answer to &e problem is and always has been people’ “drinking problem.” I have heard you express this wish 3. Your habit of drinking is gour way of deoling witlt many thousands of times: “-Some one of you guys has people. r\4any of you tell me, with an air of triumph, got ihe answer to my probfem.” “I was born an aleoholic!” You’d like to believe that. Certainly the answer would be there, and just as You haven’t reasoned it out because once you grab hold certainly you would discover it-if drinking were your of this exclrse, you don’t have to. If you were born an problem. The fact that you cannot find the answer to alcoholic, there’s nothing you can do about it, so no your problem by listening to the experiences of other one can blame you for being what you cannot help’ drinkers should show you that drinking is not your Sorry. You weren’t born an alcoholic. Alcoholism may problem. run in families, but it isn’t inherited. You learn from But a grim logic continues to prove that a person your parents and relatives and their friends. They don’t eannot learn anything unless he is personnlly inoolaed know how to live with people either. They get sore, in his own learning. Listening to other people’s experi- blow up, ffght, scream, get hurt feelings. They drink ences and talking about a common problem does not so they won’t have to feel what people feel. They set get you sufficiently involved on a personal basis. the example of dodging each other’s feelings. You learn When I bring you into groups with other sick and from their example. You see no one who knows how disturbed people, I tell you, “Leave your bottle outside.” to express feelings, explore them and understand them, When you try to bring your bottle (the discussion of so you never get a chance to learn that. alcoholism) in with you, the group soon tells you to When you talk with me, you tell me the truth, frethros, it out. With this sort of atmosphere, you have a quently without realizing it. I wish you could hear chance to leave your label to <lne side, to get out of yourselves telling me these truths. “I had a quarrel with that lonely world of alcoholism, and to have firsthand my wife.” “My husband left me (Continued on page 50)

NOVEMBER I957 again. Same way with those pills. You kept tossing the whisky dorvn, and after a while some of it stayed, and then you didn’t car.e any more. Drinking is a way of living that you learned very, very well! 5. lf gou learned drinking that uell, gou can learn another method. I think you have been selling your. selves short. You don’t like me for including you in with “mentally sick” people. And you dont like me foi. taking away your ready-made excuses. But I don’t think you need your crutches-that you were born an alcoholic, that you are allergic to alcohol, that you are always “just one drink from a drunk,” and that you must depend on fear to keep you straight.

Yo,, hu,o” other crutches too, just as I have, but I think the one that ,iveakens you most is the simple label “alcoholic” that you have allowed to be hung around your neck and which Twelve Steps for Alcoholics you wear proudly. An alcoholic isn’t people. He can’t be expected to deal (Continued from page 19) with people. He must deal with alcohol. alone too much with the ehildren- human being that I’ve put in on being a drunk, I’d be sitting pretty to- If you stay in this blind alley, wouldilt take me out.” “My husband there’s no hope for you. wanted me to drink along with him.” day. Ivlaybe what I ought to develop But I believe there’s a great deal “She wouldn’t talk with me.” “I was is some won’t power.” of hope. You have lear:ned drinking stumped whenever I tried to talk Fair enough, and beautifully as a way of life in the face of the with her.” “My mother wouldn’t let stated. This sort of self-examination most heart-rending difficulties. Loss me make any decisions for mYself.” is what psychiatrists eall good in- of job, family, self-respect, love, “My dad told me if I drank, he’d sight into your problem. But knowing health-none of these losses has debeat me.” And so you drank. all this didn’t help you, did it? You terred you from being a successful 4. Your uag of ltuing is a method went right downtown and got youralcoholic hermit. Let’s see how we that tlou haoe learned. You’ve told self another ftfth. You didn’t stay can put some of this great learning me, “I sure do want to staY with this sober. ability to work for you. till I have it licked. Do you think it You told me how you were cured 6. Eoerg dag you haae a cltoice. should take longer than three by taking pills that would make you This is just the opposite of rvhat you weeks?” sick if you drank liquor. You took the tell me. You tell me that every day “Well, let’s see-how long have You pills for a while, and you enjoyed you have to remember that you are been an alcoholic?” being sober. But somehow, after still an alcoholic. You have no choice. “Oh, ffve-ten-20 years.” enough weeks went by, you couldn’t You have to go on as you have in the “Then why do you think you ean resist testing out whether a drink or past, resisting alcohol, living in fear lick it in a few weeks?” two of whisky would really make of the consequences, believing that “Well, these shots they give. It’s you sick or kill you. The first shot you were born this way and can’t just a matter of me develoPing some made you dreadfully sick. But you’d change, believing that alcohol is your will power anyway, isn’t it?” been sick before. Many a morning only concern. Sometimes you take a dig at Your- after a big drunk you had to hold But every day you have a choice self. “I ve got plenty of will power. the glass with both hands to get the between continuing to practice your I’ve stayed drunk when it took real stufi down your throat. And then present method of living, and beginsmart planning and some doing to you’d vomit up several drinks before ning to learn another method. You’ve get that next fifth. If I’d spent a tenth one would stay down. When one told me yourself that when you go on of the will power on being a good whisky stayed down, you were ofi day after day tensely resisting the desire to drink, youte actually on a “dry” dmnk. Ald you tell me that a

chair, or we meet in a hall, or we take a walk. But this time let’s do something difierent. 9. ln order to learn more about people, gou haoe to gioe them a chance to learn more about gou. It’s no accident that you who call yourselves alcoholics are poorly understood. If anyone h’ies to get close to you, to understand you, to get inside your hurts and your excusesthat scares you. Like as not you have several &’inks in you before you have a chance to think much about whether it would really hurt you to have someone know your sore spots. You should by now know where you stand with me. I think you’re TODAY’S HEALTI{ people, not something special called dry drunk eventually ends up as a take criticism? Or this way of feeling “alcoholics.” I think you’re sick wet drunk. bashful when there are a lot of people people, mentally sick and’emotional- What I mean is that living every around? Or this getting sore when ly crippled. I think that in general day in holy fear of alcohol, organiz- you have to take orders? How about you are superior people who don’t ing your whole life around resistance standing adversity, when the bills know how to do anything with your to alcohol, continues for you that pile up and the kids are sick? On the superiority except hide out from the same life of the hermit you achieved other hand, how about standing pros- give-and-take of human living. I through drinking. perity, say when you get a raise or think you kid yourselves a mile a min- Your life as a dry alcoliolic is the a promotion, or somebody thinks ute with your talk about living one same as your life as a wet alcoholic. you’re wonderful? day at a time, one drink from a drunk, You are practicing the same methods At such points as those you had to born an alcoholic and allergic to alof living ivith people. cohol. have a drink. With different people I know that you tell me you are and difierent hobbies, you rvill still Last but not least, I think you indoing difierently. You are making run into criticism and praise and em- sult that God who is the Father of all more friends, meeting a “better” class b’lrrassment and all the matters that of us when you lay the burden of of people, taking up hobbies and used to throw you. People will still your alcoholism on His shoulders. recreations, staying out of bars, God helps those who help themselves be pretty much the same, and they spending more time with your family will still be face to face with you. -remember? He didn’t get you into and so on. If you are, that’s good. You haven’t changed-yet. drinking, and He doesn’t have to get Those of you who do this, and in you out. When you’re about to de- 8. To deal ui.th people d.i.fferentlg doing it practice being “just folks” cide there’s nothing Aou cat do about gou haae to leorn more about them. among other folks, are learning some- You won’t do this by reading a book your dlinking, think that over. thing nerv. You are learning to be or taking a course. You won’t do it by Now if you can take this kind of people, and to quit being “alco- reading this article unless you get straight talk from me, we’re off to a good start. lvlaybe you can see now holics.” good and sore at me. If you do that, But you and I and the statistics you may realize that I care about that you rnake me angry and hurtknow that most of you are not doing you. I think you are people, not alcoyou who are a big slice of our best much differently. In mingling with people, who won’t help the rest of us holics. Of course, I could be rvrong. people you still insist on being After all, what do I know about you? in our common job of living with and treated as an alcoholic. Most of you understanding one another, but who are not learning another method. You hure told me that only an- crawl off into a bottle. Maybe you 7. “What clo you mean bg another otl,er alcoholic can understand you can see that I’m a lot like you. I’m rnethod?” I mean a different method uneasy about people and easily hurt or understand your alcoholism. I of dealing with people. You say that agree. But then I don’t think of you by them. I’m easily misunderstood you are going to do things differently. as an alcoholic anyway, and I don’t by people and find people hard to un- You are going to hunt up another believe there is any such thing as derstand. It just so happens that class of friends, people who don’t alcoholism. We’re right back where drinking alcohol is no problem with hang out in. bars. You are going to we started. With you as a “person,” it me. Can you see by now that that stay home more with your family. takes another “person” to understand doesn’t make any important differ- But with these new friends, are you. It doesn’t matter whether there ence? you going t<> feel any di$erent? What are only the two of us involved, or a It will take some suffertng, this has happened to this in you that can’t dozen, or four million. We pull up a business of exposiug yourself to the

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I feelings of others and letting them This is merely common-sense talk. Isee yours stlaight across the board. It’s another way of expressing the Itt *itt take a lot of practice befole it ancient wisdom that actions speak begins to pay off. But then, learning louder than words, that what a man how to be as good a drunk as you does is more important than what he have been took a lot of practice, too. says he is going to do. L0. You ancl I con learn togetlter I may say to myself, “I like Joe. I rpl’tat n,eitlter cat’t leorn separotelq. shouldn’t get upset when he speaks There are good factual reasons rvhy I out so frankly.” trIeanwhile you may don’t believe there’s any such thing be snying to yourself, “Dick’s just a as “alcoliolism.” For one thing, the shy fellorv. I shouldn’t keep telling physiologists still haven’t discovered him he’s afraid of me.” a speciffc physical reason for your When we get together and have it craving for alcohol. For another out, vou knorv that I’m afraid of you thing, there h:rs never been discov- because you keep hitting my sore ered a speciffc physiological cure. spots, and I knorv that you know that \Iany remedies help, btrt ahvavs in I don’t really like you no matter how conjunction with some emotiutal or I try to convince myself. But we social condition. Finally, no one has have a chance now to be friends on ever cut you open and found in you a realistie basis. anxiety or fear or bashfulness. Ll. The important things we haae Hate, jealousv, feelings of inferior- to learn about one another ate ity-you name the feeling-none of matters of “entotional truth.” I don’t them exists in you. Neither do they care how you look, how many times exist in me, You can sit and think you’ve been married, how much time :rbout me all day rvithout learning you spent in jail, how much you anything about me. Same with me drank or rvhat your childhood was about you. But vrhen we get together, like. What counts is how you and I some lelationship comes into being can get along together. This is uhat between Lrs. We have an equal you clon’t tru out. When rve don’t get chance to learn what it is. along too well, you grab a drink be-

NOVEMBEN T957 55

fore you even have time to ffgure out at last to refuse to fall for your tears. things you need. How people feel why. The truth about what can be Get to work and try to learn some- about you, and how you feel about important between you and me never thing. It won’t be any harder for you &em. RememberP This is where you can be put in factual terms. It maY than it will be to continue to live the came in. We live in a great nation, change from day to day, week to way you’ve been livingt” and there are a lot of us. We need week, or year to year. It should And still I know that you have AA, pills, psychiatry, God and one change, because you and I change. questions and more questions. “Shall another. Whatever you do, try to do That’s why our job of learning about I continue with AA?” “What about something for yourself. Try to live as one another is a continual job. We’lI these pills I’ve been taking?” “Do I deeply and meaningfully with your never ffnd out all there is to know. need psychiatry?” “You sound inter- fellow human beings as it is possible L2. Emotional truths come uP be- esting-will you see me an hour a for you to live. Once we get deep into tueen us uheneaer rae take a good day?” that kind of living, we get all we look at one another. All I’m asking of No, I'[ turn you to tJre comPanY of need from one another, and that is you is that we start taking those close other people who need the same where God is with us. looks, and keep on taking them. First thing you tell me is that You don’t lrrow how. Sure you don’t. But if You even start asking yourself the question, “How am I going to get closer to people?” you’re on your way to ff”di”g out. No one can answer that question for you. But if you want the answer badly enough, you ll ffnd it’ Anywhere but in a bottle. You always ask me indignantlY, “Well, do you think I can be a social drinker?” And I answer, “I don’t give a hang whether you drink or not, so long as you’re working on this job of understanding people through ffrsthand dealing with them.” Then you say, “But one drink will ruin me.” Now don’t give me that gu$. Youve ruined yourself before you ever take that ffrst drink, and you know it. You’ve decided you can’t face up to this job of trying to live more honestly with people. Somewhere deep inside you, you’ve decided that. Then you take the drink, dive ofi the deep end, and blame it on the drink. With real tears in your eyes, you say, “I just cant do it. I’m too far gone. I can’t do any different. Isn’t there any hope for me?”

I *rrr you could believe that these are real tears in my eyes, too. But they are tears of anger. And I’m telling you, “You can do difierently. There sure is hope for you. Right up to the day they nail that lid down, it’s not too late. But you’ve used that excuse for so long to get sympathyand you’ve always gotten it. People like me are to blame because we’ve always given you sympathy-and pills and crutches-and let you blaspheme your God by claiming it was up to Him. Well, I know enough