ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS – DANGERS OF SUCCESS

By Jerome Ellison

Back in 1940, the late John D. manager is paid $18,000 a year for part-time Rockefeller, Jr., made headlines (John D. Dines services (three and a third days a week). The Tosspots) by asking 400 of his wealthy friends to rest of the money goes into sinking funds, which dine at New York’s Union League Club and hear have no specific purpose, but are nice to have, about a society of impoverished drunks called since they produce, in the form of interest, more Alcoholics Anonymous. At that time the money for sinking funds. Bill W., the movements fellowship had been struggling along for a little surviving co-founder makes around $25,000 per more than four years and had about a hundred year – a sum a grateful membership does not members. begrudge – on royalties from three books: John D. got sick at the last minute and Alcoholics Anonymous, which started it all, his son Nelson presided. About seventy-five Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and A.A. people showed up. The former drunks gave Comes of Age. For a movement that was born impressive testimony of their suffering, and grew to greatness in the face of ridicule, restitution and recovery. The assembled adversity and bitter poverty, this is indeed millionaires were impressed, and the ex-boozers wealth. Even if Nelson Rockefeller’s canny figured their society’s financial troubles were father had never suggested it, the question over. But, winding up the evening, the host would now arise whether the success will prove expressed his father’s belief that money would ruinous. not be a good thing for a movement based on The prodigies of selfless service selfless service – “it needs only our good will.” performed by members have had a stunning The millionaire went home without being asked impact on a basically me-first society. Press, to contribute. clergy and the professions have fallen all over Now, twenty-four years older and with a one another to heap praise on the drunks who membership of 300,000 A.A. is rich in its own found a way out, and for a long time it has been right. Despite bylaws prohibiting gifts larger than almost bad manners to speak of A.A. in any but $100, money pours in to national headquarters reverent terms. at the rate of more than $400,000 a year and Now, however, it is a public institution A.A. doesn’t seem to know what to do with it all. and subject to the same scrutiny accorded other Once a year it spends $20,000 or so to bring community volunteer services. There are A.A. 100 delegates in from the fifty states for a week- qroups in every crossroads and neighbourhood long, all expense paid conference at a New York 10,000 of them. They have become almost as hotel. It has leased a floor in a midtown New much a part of the community scene as the York office building, where a dozen recovered visiting nurse and the fire department, which housewives and spinsters answer letters, they somewhat resemble. In a population distribute pamphlets containing material on containing 80 million users of Alcohol and 6 alcoholism purchased from free- lance writers, million cases of active alcoholism, they perform circulate a monthly bulletin of member’s stories, as necessary a life-saving function as the Coast articles, jokes and cartoons called the Guard. Alcoholism has pressed its way into Grapevine, print and mail press releases, and go public attention as the nation’s third deadliest to meetings. disease, and A.A. has developed the only These workers receive annual salaries method yet found that produces large numbers of $7,000 to $9,000 and are backed by a staff of of enduring cures, It suddenly finds that it has stenographers and clerical employees – public responsibilities, that others besides its nonmembers. Herb M., a member with members claim a legitimate interest in how it experience as a press agent and convention conducts its affairs.

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Many find the fellowship of interest remarkable similar organization, The entirely apart from its practical work of sobering Washington Temperance Society, sprang up in up drunks. Though itself nonintellectual and Washington, D.C. and soon had branches in sometimes anti-intellectual, A.A. strikes both most big cities. Lincoln, concerned about therapists and theorists as being an almost alcoholism through the suffering of his law classical demonstration of the psychotherapeutic partner, Herndon, encouraged the members theories of Carl Jung. Jung believed in God and whenever he could, and even addressed them in “spirit.” He devised another vocabulary for on one occasion. The Washingtonians had all transactions with agnostic professional the main features of A.A. – alcoholics helping colleagues, but firmly used these traditional one another, weekly alcoholics meetings, shared terms in his correspondence. A good part of his experience, readily available group fellowship, life work was directed towards reconciling the reliance on “the Higher Power.” Bill W. and Bob insights of religion with those of the new S., added a spiritual regimen designed to psychiatry. Jung approved Freud’s work as far produce personal improvement, a rule of as it went, but felt that forces unsuspected by anonymity, the practice of exchanging speakers Freud could be summoned to the aid of between groups, and a membership restricted to distressed humanity. This belief is also at the those who confessed a problem with alcohol. base of A.A., commonly described by its The Twelve Steps of surrender, confession, selfmembers as a “spiritual program.” examination, restitution and service were taken This resemblance is not entirely with only slight changes from the Oxford coincidental for, though he did not know it and movement. The anonymity and alcoholics only though his contribution was inadvertent, Jung rules were innovations. had a hand in founding A.A. Early in the 1930s, AAs great expansion began with the Jung took a patient named Rolland H., a rich publication of an article by Jack Alexander in the American and chronic alcoholic frantically Saturday Evening Post of March 1, 1941. Ten seeking a cure. After an attempt at treatment, years later the membership was up to 150,000: Jung told Rolland H. that psychiatry couldn’t help in ten more years it doubled that. America was him. Then, asked the desperate patient, what suffering from the hangovers of a national binge could? Perhaps a religious conversion of some begun with the repeal of Prohibition and not yet kind, Jung said. Such an experience could never ended. By aggressive lobbying, the liquor be guaranteed, but one could seek the company industry cleared away the remaining restraints of those who had had them, and hope. Roland on the sale of booze. Saturation advertising H. went to England, joined the Oxford disfigured the approaches to the major cities movement, got sober and returned to New York. with five story whiskey bottles and bombarded There he continued his association with the the populace with reminders to drink. Oxford movement, taking particular interest in Consumption rose until it reached the present other inebriates. One of these Edwin T., carried figures of a billion quarts of spirits, 2 billion the news to Bill W., a Wall Street broker, then quarts of wine and 12 billion quarts of beer a prostrated by alcohol. After undergoing a year. The industry employs a million people and shattering subjective experience of religious pays them $5 billion a year-more than we spend enlightenment, Bill W got sober and began on the combined crude oil, natural gas, coal and looking for other alcoholics who were interested ore-mining industries, and nearly twice what we in drying out by the new method. He found one – spend on education. again through the Oxford movement – on a Trouble arose along with sales figures. business trip to Akron, Ohio. His new friend was Those who drink consume, on the average, a a down-and-out alcoholic physician, Dr. Robert quart of whiskey, two quarts of wine and four S. The two founded Alcoholics Anonymous and gallons of beer a month. Some, of course drink led the movement jointly until Robert S. died, far less than this, others-especially the 6 million sober in 1950. chronic alcoholics-much more. Excessive A.A. was not completely without drinking costs the nation $35 million annually in precedent. More than a century ago, a medical care, $30 million in jail maintenance,

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$100 million in accidents, $500 million in wage was pointed: “Now that the myth of the Goldenlosses, according to estimates based on a Hearted prostitute has been laid to rest, let’s Public Affairs Committee pamphlet. About a tackle the Omniscient Ex-Lush.” “The fanatics million people a year are admitted to be treated who prevail in some groups seem bent on for alcoholism. One in twelve drinkers becomes making AA into a hostile, fundamentalist an alcoholic: 14,000 deaths and 40,000 injuries religion.” “The movement needs to recover some a year result from the mixture of alcohol and of the good spirit it had before it became proud traffic. 21,000 people die annually from cirrhosis, of its humility.” These letters were occasioned by 6 million families are shadowed by alcohol and an article in which Arthur Cain pointed out 12 million children suffer from their parents tendencies toward cultism and narrow orthodoxy excessive drinking. that limited the fellowship’s therapeutic In the light of such figures, it is not effectiveness. surprising that A.A. seemed an answer to prayer My own experience with AA dates back in hundreds of thousands of families. A more than 10 years. While writing a series of household devastated by booze is an isolated articles for a national magazine, I attended unit, plagued by debt, ridden by internal strife, hundreds of AA local meetings and a number of with little hope, few friends, many enemies and a state and regional affairs, and developed a wide skeleton grown too big for the closet. AA acquaintanceship in the movement. My articles replaces despair with hope. The family has aroused the interest of Bill W., and I was invited friends again, understanding friends, people who to evaluate, as a paid consultant, some of AAs have been through the mill, ready at any time for publications and activities. a cup of coffee and a chat. The necessity of total This chore consumed a number of abstinence, and the means for attaining it, are months in 1962 and 1963, and afforded an made clear. The transformations are so intimate view of the organization’s national impressive, and so often enduring, that the word headquarters and policy making boards. Since “miracle” is frequently and understandably my recommendations were not confidential-“AA employed. Even physicians and psychiatrists, has no secrets but the names of its members” is conditioned by occupation to disregard the a hallowed tenet-they can be disclosed. They claims of laymen, sought to learn from AAs contained little more that had not been said source of clinical information on the before, some of it by Arthur Cain. Anyone else management of a syndrome that had baffled undertaking a similar survey would, I think, have their professions. reached the same conclusions. Alcoholics, even sober ones, are only At headquarters, I missed almost human, and can tolerate only limited amounts of completely the bubbling good will, the creative adulation without becoming dizzy. Effective open-mindedness, the open and stimulating speakers were in great demand to tell their swapping of ideas that made so many of the “stories,” not only at AA weekly meetings in weekly neighborhood meetings memorable. distant places, but at convocations of Everybody was an expert, with a cluster of ideas professional groups, civic associations and closed to amendment. Bill W., The movement’s service clubs. Big city groups stage annual traditional leader and a main source of the banquets drawing up to a thousand people and spiritual inspiration, had lost out in committee costing up to $10 a plate. Resort hotels are maneuvering to a policy of “putting the thing on taken over for State and regional conventions. a business basis.” Committee politics took up All this has gone to the head of many a reformed half the working day; gossip was venomous. In booze fighter, and a type of paragon known in quick succession I was told that the co-founder the local groups as “Mr. AA” pushed himself into (in my opinion still sharp-witted at seventy) was key positions in the committee structure. senile, that a staff worker was a hypochondriac As AA became more prominent this and a committeeman a homosexual. The tendency was noted outside the organization, accused were at pains to assure me, separately and drew comment. A group of letters and without encouragement, that the accusers addressed last year to the editor of Harper’s, were a nymphomaniac, a schizophrenic and a

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megalomaniac, I observed nothing to with alcohol addiction, much progress has lately substantiate any of these charges. However, been made, and the AA “Big Book” is beginning there was no inclination toward the “fearless and to have an Out-of-date, early century, historical searching moral inventory” recommended by sound. The Board, however, has ruled that no AAs Twelve Suggested Steps. further word shall be spoken. Despite the fact The non-alcoholic Board of Trustees that the rank and file teems with exciting, responsible for national policy was ultraconser- relevant, informed and up-to-the-minute vative (one member, Archibald Roosevelt, had experience, none of it is permitted to appear in furnished literature for distribution by the John book form. To publish such literature, it is felt, Birch Society) and this, I reported, had served would be to risk heresy. As a result, AAs official the movement poorly. The board’s rigid books, unfertilized by fresh documentation, tend conservatism was reflected in a number of to sound more archaic each year. unfortunate policies, the most odious of which I concluded that AAs headquarters had was a tact endorsement of racial segregation been captured by an ultraconservative clique within the branches. When a member submitted that was doing the society appreciable harm. an article for the monthly bulletin pointing out This finding, was, of course, received by that that nearly all Southern AA groups and a great clique without thanks and, despite the efforts of many Northern ones were racially segregated, a small free-speech party, was prevented from and that AAs Negro membership had failed to reaching the delegates of the rank and file for keep pace with the growing problem of Negro whom it was intended. AA, at least in its national alcoholism, the article was turned down on the offices, bears heavily the marks of its culture in grounds that it “might disrupt AA unity.” Local AA its time-affluence and the shortsighted groups are free from any national control other conservatism that affluence begets. than moral suasion. That even this influence Fortunately for future generations, the should be withheld on so fundamental point influence of headquarters on local groups is not seemed to me a serious error. It is, however, in decisive. “Oh, those guys!”, is a typical reaction keeping with the fact that there are no Negroes from a local group secretary. “We send ‘em their on the headquarters staff or on any of the three bucks a year per member and forget about numerous AA national boards and committees. ‘em.” Many groups make no contributions to “the The policy on publications, I reported, is national.” In the neighborhoods and at the likely to cost AA its once acknowledged crossroads will surely be preserved in living leadership in its field. When Alcoholics practice those ideas that give mankind new Anonymous was first published a quarter of a hope whenever they achieve a renaissancecentury ago, it won universal acknowledgement candor, humility, friendliness, enlightened that AA was well in advance of the field. But understanding, a good-natured readiness to though the medical and psychiatric professions pitch in at any hour in any way to help a baffled have been remarkably slow in coming to terms human being.

Source: The Nation, March 2, 1964

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