Alcoholics Can Be Cured–Despite A.A.

by Dr. Arthur H. Cain

It is time we made a thorough A.A.’s 10,000 chapters. Weekly meetings, once investigation of Alcoholics Anonymous in the spontaneous and exciting, became formalized interest of our public health AA is identified in and ritualistic. Anyone who questioned A.A.’s the public mind as a God-fearing fellowship of principles or even expressed curiosity was 350,000 “arrested alcoholics” who keep one handed the slogan, UTILIZE, DON’T ANALYZE, another sober and rescue others from the and told to sit down. The desire to help others horrors of alcoholism. Unfortunately, A.A. has degenerated. As one disheartened former A.A. become a dogmatic cult whose chapters too member told me, “I felt nobody cared what often turn sobriety into slavery to A.A. Because happened to Mary W. I felt they were just of its narrow outlook, Alcoholics Anonymous interested in another alcoholic who would prevents thousands from ever being cured. become another notch in their belts. I felt as if I Moreover A.A. has retarded scientific research was being pressed into serving their cause and into one of America’s most serious health building up their oligarchy.” problems. With this growing dogmatism came a My own experience with A.A. began in Dark Ages attitude toward any scientist who 1947. As a psychologist and investigator into the might differ with official AA doctrine. According causes and cure of uncontrolled drinking, I have to -the AA litany, alcoholism is a physical attended about 500 A.A. meetings in over 40 disease which can never be cured: “Once an states and a dozen foreign countries. At first I alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” The corollary is: was tremendously impressed with A.A.’s “A reformed alcoholic must live A.A. from day to altruistic efforts in alcoholics’ behalf. Its day and never leave A.A.” members would perform prodigies of selfless Actually, there is no scientific evidence service, no matter what the hour, by meeting the that alcoholism is an incurable, physical disease. helpless and sodden in hospitals, flophouses According to current evidence, the origin of and homes, and offering their sympathy, a uncontrolled drinking is psychological. A person helping hand, and their own example that drinks to ease anxiety, depression, boredom, temptation could be withstood. At the weekly guilt, timidity, inarticulateness. An alcoholic meetings, which all A.A. members attended, learns to become one; he is not born that way. there was a true sense of humility and a devout This means that many alcoholics can return to belief in God (We “came to believe that a Power normal drinking without fear of ending up on greater than ourselves could restore us to Skid Row. Over the past 17 years I have treated sanity”) and the fellowship of man–the original more than 50 alcoholics who no longer need to tenets of A.A. New members were given the attend meetings or receive treatment. Most freedom to question A.A.’s guiding principles important, over 20 of my patients have learned codified in the Twelve Traditions and the Twelve to drink normally, to use -alcohol as a beverage, Steps of Recovery. not a psychological crutch. Over the years a disturbing change Yet when scientists have reported similar began to take place. As an increasing number of findings, A.A. members have often set out to alcoholics joined A.A. chapters, many turned out discredit them. In 1957 Doctors Melvin L. Selzer to be misfits who had rejected Christianity, and William Holloway of the University of Judaism or the Kiwanis Club. Dogmatic and Michigan came up with the then startling report opinionated in their nonbeliefs, they found in that 13 confirmed alcoholics had become social A.A. an instrument for a new kind of bigotry. drinkers. Because of the pressure of an Their only meaning in life was that they had influential A.A. member, the state agency that heroically become “arrested” alcoholics. provided the funds for the study virtually ordered Arrogant egoists, they soon dominated many of the two scientists to omit what it called these

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“embarrassing” findings. Doctor Selzer and a wonderful, healthy program to live by and published his findings anyway. enjoy!” Implied is the distressing theory that In 1962 Dr. D. L. Davies, after a study at there is no other way of life for alcoholics except Maudsley Hospital in London, declared that that of A.A.–a life in which every waking hour is seven men who had been alcoholics were able devoted to the struggle for sobriety. to drink normally after treatment; some had been The wife of a Texas member described drinking without problems for as long as 11 some unfortunate consequences of A.A.’s creed years. Doctor Davies concluded that “the that the struggle against alcohol must be the generally accepted view that no alcohol addict most important ambition in a member’s life. This can ever again drink normally should be must be placed above wives or husbands, modified.” Some AA members branded the children, homes, or jobs. They must be ready to scientist’s report “immoral, because it might abandon these things at any time . . . . The cause some members to drink.” tragic part is, some of them while searching for Dr. E. M. Jellinek, a co-founder of the this sobriety and serenity actually do exactly Yale School of Alcohol Studies and a dean of that.” How pervasive the obsession with A.A. researchers in the field of alcoholism until his can become was poignantly demonstrated by a death in 1963, was drawing on his own patient who had come to me because of worries experiences when he declared: “. . . Alcoholics about her A.A. husband. He had proposed that Anonymous have naturally created the picture of they move their bed into the AA clubhouse so alcoholism in their own image . . . and there is they might be “available 24 hours a day just in every reason why the student of alcoholism case an alcoholic wandered in.” should emancipate himself from accepting this For many members, of course, staying exclusiveness as propounded by A.A.” sober is a fierce challenge daily. But under the Not only has A.A. interfered with A.A. program, the lives of many are so sterile scientific investigations, it has prevented medical that their growth as human beings is hindered. and psychological treatment which runs counter Taught to rely on slogans and compulsive A.A. to its own theories. At one New York City routine, some are unable to face the fact that hospital, for instance, the physicians preferred they are alcoholics because they are using paraldehyde to treat acute intoxication. psychologically sick. It is for this reason that But then A.A. members implied that they would many A.A. members never recover. stop referring patients there if paraldehyde was A New Hampshire novelist and former used. The doctors were persuaded to switch to A.A. member, who has been continuously sober another drug, chloral hydrate. As the physician for eight years, described this human waste in charge of the alcoholics’ ward explained, the when he wrote me: “I have met members who A.A. non-scientists had discovered that are actually afraid to think. They have made a paraldehyde was a form of alcohol. Actually, high fence of A.A., which shuts them out from all chloral hydrate is the more toxic drug. In fact, its pleasurable and vital aspects of life.” Indiscriminate use in another New York hospital Behind the A.A. fence the original has left some patients more intoxicated upon principle that alcoholics must be humble before discharge than when they were admitted. God has been turned into the dictum that While A.A. adherents battle scientific alcoholics are God’s chosen people. This theme inquiry that does not fit A.A.’s narrow theories, is preached in meetings and through books and its chapters often attempt to assume total control pamphlets. A typical illustration is a booklet of members’ lives. Purporting to offer everything titled, “Around the Clock With A.A.,” published needed for human fulfillment, the fellowship now recently by an A.A. group in California. One boasts of a “ladies auxiliary,” called Al-Anon, for passage declares: “God in His wisdom selected spouses of members and even a division for this group of men and women to be the members’ children called Alateen. It suggests purveyors of His goodness. . . . He went right to that the youngsters open their meetings by the drunkard, the so-called weakling of the reciting this incantation: “We will always be world. Well might He have said to us: ‘Unto your grateful to Alateen for giving us a Way of Life weak and feeble hands I have entrusted power

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beyond estimate. To you has been given that Yale conducted 18 years ago in a small which has been denied the most learned of your community; he thought he had found that three fellows. Not to scientists or statesmen, not to percent of the population were alcoholics. wives or mothers, not even to my priests or N.C.A. applied this percentage to the whole ministers have I given this gift of helping other nation. Doctor Jellinek, a great physiologist but alcoholics which I entrust to you.“ Such idolatry no statistician, repudiated his own formula in causes the believer to see himself as all 1956. The five-million figure is only a guess, for knowing, and turns the missionary into the no scientific count of alcoholics has ever been zealot. made. A.A.’s creeds not only infect its own While N.C.A. issues well-intended but members but pervade public education. Most of sometimes questionable facts and theories, A.A. what we hear or read about alcoholism is officials, when pressed, often hide behind the inspired by A.A. adherents spouting A.A. famous Tenth Tradition, which states that dogmas. City, state and private agencies “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion or frequently fill all key posts with A.A. members. outside issues, hence the A.A. name ought One western state actually requires that never be drawn into public controversy.” This personnel assigned to its alcoholism program be device enables members of A.A. to make A.A. members for at least two years. No outrageous assertions which A.A.’s professional experience is needed. The A.A. headquarters promptly disavows when philosophy also dominates the National Council challenged. “Many people I have tried to help,” on Alcoholism, the only nation-wide public- said one Chicago member, “have abandoned information agency on alcoholism. N.C.A., which the program because they couldn’t take the ex is supported by public donations, has over 60 cathedra homilies on drugs, alcohol, psychiatry, affiliated information committees scattered medicine, sociology, biology, to name a few throughout the country. Although both N.C.A. subjects on which they speak with authority.” and A.A. deny that they are officially connected, Much of the A.A.’s failure can be blamed many members of N.C.A.’s staff and some on a lack of forward-looking, constructive directors are A.A. members. A.A. members leadership. Writer Jerome Ellison recently spent serve as directors in eight out of ten N.C.A. several months as a paid consultant to A.A. information centers in the largest cities in the evaluating the fellowship’s publications and United States. activities. At national headquarters in New York Thus, it is not surprising that N.C.A. City, Ellison declared, committee politics took up continues to parrot the A.A. line that alcoholism half the working day, and gossip was venomous. is a “progressive disease for which there is no Everybody was an expert, Ellison went on, “with known cure, but which can only be arrested.” a cluster of ideas closed to amendment.” He Further, N.C.A. in a series of radio and TV related how one member had submitted to the commercials actually stated that the American A.A. monthly bulletin an article which showed Medical Association has declared alcoholism to that nearly all southern and a great many be a disease, although the A.M.A. has restricted northern A.A. chapters were racially segregated, itself to general statements that the alcoholic is and that AA. had failed to keep pace with the “sick.” Time and again, I have heard public growing problem of Negro alcoholism. The figures recite A.A.-N.C.A. myths and article was turned down on the ground that it propaganda as if they were gospel. “might disrupt A.A. unity.” I once heard Arthur Flemming, former Ellison’s most damning indictment Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, concerned the rule made by A.A.’s non-alcoholic read verbatim a pronouncement on alcoholism board of trustees that no change can be made in which I knew had been prepared a year earlier A.A.’s theories on alcoholism even though they by N.C.A.’s public-relations firm. Flemming are nearly a quarter of a century old. “Despite offered the now familiar “statistic” that there are the fact that the rank and file teems with five million alcoholics in the United States. This exciting, relevant, informed and up-to-the-minute figure is based on a study Doctor Jellinek of experience,” Ellison declared, “none of it is

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permitted to appear in book form. To publish taught that he must remain forever crippled and such literature, it is felt, would be to risk heresy.” bound by the paralyzing concept “Once an Needless to say, I do not suggest that alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” It is at this point A.A. be abolished or that a single member quit. that the patient needs a different kind of That A.A. helps many thousands stay sober is understanding: an objective, dispassionate, obvious. But Alcoholics Anonymous should clinical understanding that physicians, return to its original purpose of being a much- psychologists and pastoral counselors, not A.A. needed first-aid station. The “arrest” of members, are trained to give. Only after he has uncontrolled drinking is the essential first stop in undergone a rigorous and lengthy revision of his becoming a recovered or cured alcoholic. During personality should he attempt to drink normally this critical period, the alcoholic needs the again, and then only if he desires to do so. sympathy and understanding that only another After all, sobriety in itself is not a way of alcoholic can give. But after three months or so, life. It is simply the absence of intoxication. It is when the shakes have subsided and the what one does with his sobriety and his life that cobwebs are beginning to clear, the recovering is important. alcoholic should go ahead. He should not be

Source: Saturday Evening Post, September 19, 1964

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