AJlantic Monthlv. Jan. 19?2

A Farewell to Alcohol by William Mcllwain

Of every three men who try to stop drinking at Butner, two fail.

Butner, North Garolina two fifteen and told the lady who I was. “Bill,” I was late getting to Butner, and they she said, “you’re late.” “l know it,” I said. “l’m wouldn’t let me in, The psychiatrist in Winston- sorry. I left late.” “Bill, you’re four hours late.” Salem had told me to be here at ten thirty, but She was beginning to annoy me by calling me he hadn’t made a special point of it; and I “Bill”–she didn’t know me, and I wasn’t a smallcouldn’t see where time made much difference. I time drunk. “l’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to got out of bed at nine o’clock, fixed a vodka and come back next week”‘ she said. “l can’t take orange juice, and drank it while reading the you.” I almost said, ‘The hell with it, lady”‘ but sports pages. I sat for a while by a window, something strong made me know I had to get thinking, and drank another vodka and orange into Butner. lf I went away, I wouldn’t come juice. Around eleven, I decided it was time to go, back. “Can I get a motel and get in tomorrow?” and I fixed a cup of black coffee and a vodka “Bill, you’ll just drink all night, and then we can’t and orange juice to drink while I shaved and let you in.” “No, ma’am, I won’t do that. I really showered. I had never been to the Alcoholic need to get in here.” “Do you have any friends in Rehabilitation Center at Butner, or any other AA you could spend the night with?” “No, institution, and I wasn’t sure what I would need. ma’am.” Finally, she said that maybe a person – Deciding it would be casual, I packed two bags scheduled to report the next day might cancel of sports clothes, my bathing suit, an alarm out. I could call her in the morning and see. I

clock, a briefcase of writing supplies, an went to the liquor store in Creedmoor, bought a unfinished magazine article that I was writing, fifth of vodka, and got a motel room beside a my typewriter, two tennis rackets, a hundred muddy pond. I had a few vodka and Sprites, and newspapers that I was supposed to study for a filled another one to carry to an outside phone publisher for $1500, and nine books– booth. I hated to do it, but I was going to callthe Slaughterhouse-Five, The Crackup by Scott woman. I told her how much I appreciated her Fitzgerald, lmmortal Poems of the English consideration and that I hoped someone would Language, Diary of a Mad Housewife, People in cancel tomorrow. I was taking a nap when the Quandaries by Wendell Johnson, Editor and motel manager came down and knocked (the Publisher Yearbook (l have been a rooms have no phones), and said, “The lady at newspaperman), The New American Webster ARC said she’ll take you in the morning.” I

Handy College Dictionary, The Penal Colony by dressed, put my vodka in the car, and decided to Kafka, and Romantic Poets in the Viking ride around Butner. It would be the last chance I Portable edition. I thought that would be all I would have to see all of it. Butner was an army would need. I wasn’t sure whether drunks camp, near Durham, North Carolina, during played tennis, but I would have an extra racket if World War ll, and now it is a vast State of North I found a drunk who did. Carolina complex that -includes the John I got to Butner at one thirty and stopped Umstead Hospital, a huge green-topped at a pool hall, drinking a tall Schlitz while structure for mental patients and bad drunks; a watching three games of eight ball. I didn’t have center for youthful offenders; a farm that the a particular feeling that this beer would be the youthful offenders maintain; and the Alcoholic last one l’d ever drink, but I mused over it. I got Rehabilitation Center. The center is one of three to the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center around in North Carolina, operated by the State

Department of Mental Health. Across from the “Were you a wrestler?” he asked. hospital, a softball game was going on, and I I thought he meant a well-built college saw a black center fielder turn on a fly ball and wrestler, and I fett good; then I thought he take it on the run, almost at the fence. A little meant a professional wrestler with a big belly. later, the left fielder, white, did almost the same My waistline gradually got bigger as I escalated thing. I thought that these must be the crazy to keeping a half-gallon of vodka at home, a people, because drunks can’t catch fly balls. I half-gallon in my office, and a half-gallon in the could still hit when I quit playing softball, but I trunk of my car, in case I got caught away from couldn’t judge a fly ball. I was getting a little home or the office. I was drinking about seven drunk now, and I saw some significance in this– Sprites a day and also eating, which many the crazy people being able to catch the fly balls. alcoholics don’t do. I told him, no, but I had been I watched until the game ended at almost dark a football player. lt was a long examination, and and drove back to the motel. I sat in a chair and I felt ashamed of being so shaky and wet with drank all of the vodka except three drinks. I perspiration. But I left the room feeling better wanted to have them in the morning before I because he said, “You have great lungs.” went to the alcoholic center. It was hot outside, and a long way from I woke up sweating and shivering and my car to C Dorm, one of the three one-story feeling as if I were choking. ln the old days, brick buildings where patients live, about twenty drinking a fifth of vodka at night wouldn’t do this to a dorm. Sweating, I struggled with the two to me, but it does now because l’ve been bags of clothing, the typewriter, the two tennis drinking a long time. Some of the ice hadn’t rackets, the briefcase, and the hundred melted, and I thought if I could drink a vodka and newspapers. I had to make three trips. ln the Sprite I would quit sweating and shivering. I lobby of C Dorm, I saw men and women, black drank two and still felt bad when I stopped at a and white, sitting together in chairs and on a restaurant. lt wasn’t officially open, but the man couch, watching television and playing cards. A and his wife were pleasant. He said I could have beautiful black woman and a young white man-a bowl of Brunswick stew for breakfast, if I liked attendants–put my bags on a bed and went that. I ate the Brunswick stew, drinking the last through them, taking Listerine, Bufferin, nose vodka and Sprite that I had. I did wonder now if drops, and iodine. They would have taken this would be the last drink I would ever have. shaving lotion and hair tonic, but I didn’t have “You going to be around a few days?” the any. restaurant man asked. “l’m going to ARC,” I “We’ll give these back when you leave,” said. He hesitated and said, “Good luck.” I the woman attendant said. “You should go now thanked him, finished the drink, and left the and eat with the rest of them.” motel glass on his table. I am at Butner, then–“with the rest of “Well, Bill,” the lady at ARC said, “you them”–for twentytwo days. We include all sorts: look a lot better this morning. l’m glad.” I Tommy Morgan (l will not use patients’ real thanked her and said, “Yes, ma’am, I feel a lot names), who dropped out of college eighteen better today.” She filled out some forms, asked months ago because “l was drinking so much I my income, studied awhile, and said, “Bill, l’m couldn’t keep up with my studies”; a bulldozer going to have to charge you $32 a day.” lt was operator who cannot read or write; a more than I had expected, and I later learned grandmother who drinks vanilla extract; a young that many of my fellow patients were paying $4 man who writes detective stories and has written a day, some of them $1 a day, but that’s fair a good book; Tip Watson, who constructed a enough. Certainly in a program such as this a whiskey still when he was fourteen, sold its man should have to pay only what he can afford. output at a nearby sawmill, and began drinking A bearded young doctor, a good sPort, it, too; a business executive’s wife, Julie Wall, examined me, studying my retinas, pushing at who has tried three times to commit suicide; an my-liver, and seeing whether I could distinguish accountant, highly articulate; Mr. Wellington, a between sharp and dull objects when they church deacon and “secret drinker,” who lost his touched my legs. job in big industry after thirty-six years because

2

“l was drinking beer at night and making afflictions-may get medication several times a mistakes the next morning”; a truck driver who dav.) was using amphetamines and whiskey at the 8-Breakfast. (All meals are big and high same time; and Mr. Leland, who for years would in calories, except for those patients who are put get in his boat and go across the river to buy a on special diets. Many alcoholics are half-gallon of moonshine. Mr. Leland’s words are undernourished because they quit eating when difficult to understand; he mumbles, batting his they start drinking. A taxi driver in our dorm eyes steadily, shaking so much that he can would drop consistently from 200 pounds to hardly lift a cup of coffee to his mouth. about 150, at which point he would become sick There is, perhaps, only one similarity in and be taken to a hospital.) us all: none of us thought he would ever become 8:45–Dorm meeting. (Patients elect a an alcoholic, but all of us have become dorm leader, and he presides over this meeting. alcoholics. It is attended by both patients and staff What’s it like being an alcoholic and members, offering an opportunity for living with no one but alcoholics? Would you suggestions, announcements, and complaints-suppose that a dorm full of drunks (though sober from either side.) now) would fight? Quarrel? Sulk? Withdraw? 9-Sick call and free time. (Patients who What? have no need of a doctor can do as they please. It’s the most considerate, congenial The card game “rook” is a chief diversion, but group that I have ever been a member of. That there is the choice of watching television, writing includes Sunday school classes, football teams, letters, or sitting on benches in front of the dorm college fraternities, newspaper city rooms, and and talking.) cocktail parties. Men and women hold doors 9.30 to 10:15–All patients meet in open for others to pass through; red-neck Assembly Room for movie, lecture, or countrymen sit down at dinner with black men discussion of various aspects of alcohol. with Afro haircuts, and they talk, patients see a 10:15 to 10:3O*Free time. new member coming toward the dorm and they 10:30 to 1 1 :30–GrouP theraPY with go out to help with the luggage; they help, too, group leader. (Normally, we have six or seven when a patient leaves; constantly, they inquire patients in a group, but the number varies as old about one another’s well-being–“Feeling better patients depart and new patients arrive.) this morning, Mr. Leland?” 11:45–Medicine call. But what kind of program could be put Noon–Lunch. together to deal with so disparate a group? Here 1 P.M. to 4:1S–Avocational classes is the printed schedule, with asides of my own, and/or -group therapy as scheduled. (We have a that we live by, Monday through Friday: range of choices, including woodwork, 7 A.M.–Awakening of patients. (This is metalwork, polishing stones, painting, doing no problem because many patients are up and woodcuts, or making pottery. Tip Watson, who about by six o’clock, some as early as three has been here several times, said he hopes to thirty and four. Alcoholics often don’t sleep well.) shoot basketball behind the building, if he’s Clean bedroom and prepare for breakfast. (We permitted. “Last time I was here, I worked in the have other chores, too, divided among us, such mud [pottery], and my hands broke all out.”) as sweeping the halls and lobby, polishing the S–Supper. (The Friday night fish–l don’t drinking fountains, dusting the furniture, carrying know what kind it is–stands out as the only out trash, and taking part in a mass cleanup on unpalatable meal of the week.) Saturday morning, which includes washing the 6–Medicine call. big windows in the front of our dorm.) 6–Recreation. See bulletin board for 7:45 A.M.–Medicine call. (Each of us is notice of activities. Free time. (Musical groups, required to take vitamin pills for the first two most of the time guitar pickers and country weeks. Patients who are in bad shape– singers, come on Thursday evenings; fishing sleeplessness, “nerves,” and high blood trips are made to nearby lakes and rivers on pressure seem to be the most common Friday afternoons.)

3

10-Medicine call. exactly what I had done the night before. This is 11–Lights out. Bedtime. (Actually, we common, of course, with alcoholics, and some of stay up through TV’s eleven o’clock news, them here have had a lot worse time than I did. Sunday through Thursday. On Friday and One man said he would get up in the morning Saturday nights, we watch the “Late Show,” and look quickly around the house to see if he which ends about 1:30 A.M.) had broken anything. Then he would go We may have visitors from 1 to 4 P.M. on immediately to the garage and circle his car, Saturdays and Sundays. Attendance is studying it, praying not to find that he had hit compulsory at meetings arranged each Friday something or someone the night before. evening by Alcoholics Anonymous. My own case was never that extreme, That’s our schedule, a full one. But for all but l’ve been told that it could have become so. I of the formal effort put forth by the staff, there would try to put together minute pieces of may be equal therapy in our just being together- conversations–pieces that often were of no so many alcoholics studying each other. That importance, but the inability to recall them was therapy, which comes at cafeteria tables and on frightening. lt meant, I must have sensed, that benches in the sunshine, may be as great as the sooner or later I would not be able to remember therapy provided by counselors and the big things either. psychologists. You know that nobody’s trying to l’m enjoying thinking about things while con you. You’re not talking to a doctor who may sober. lt’s like finding a new pleasure. An be trying to scare you about your liver, or a alcoholic with the slightest degree of preacher who is moralizing over you. You’re introspection wonders all the time-about himself talking to a man who’s tried it, and if he says it’s and about others. Would I have done that if I impossible to drink even half a beer unless you hadn’t been drinking? Would I have done it want to start all over again–well, if he tells you differently? Better? Am I losing my skills? At that, you can believe it. Because he will tell you least some? lf I come down hard on a point, will that he hadn’t had a drink for nine months and people say, ah, hell, he was drunk? Does was convinced that he could drink moderately anyone know what’s happening to me? Does the “like everybody else.” He was drunk for three owner of the newspaper? What does he mean, months, went into DT’s, got carried to John “How’re you this morning, Bill?” Umstead Hospital, and now is with us at ARC. When I was drinking steadily, I found that There are other benefits. One is that it’s-easier agonizing. Now, I feel able to consider an event to perceive and understand your own flaws and or comment, good or bad, in a clear light. troubles if you slip up on them indirectly–see I have started writing again*pretty well, I them first in men and women around you, believe. I had been working on a magazine wonder if yours are similar, and then conclude piece before I left home, and spending the day that they are. You see alcoholics kidding drinking vodka and Sprite while I wrote had themselves, and realize that you’ve been doing finally reduced my daily production to a halfthe same thing. Another benefit is simply that page of copy. lf I had been writing sonnets, that there are horror cases around you. You look might have been sufficient, but on a 7000-word each morning at Mr. Leland, mumbling, eye piece, it was slow going. batting, shaking, and you think, if I don’t stop How did I become an alcoholic? Why did now, l’ll get like Mr. Leland. I need to drink? What’s being done here to help That’s a negative reason for quitting me? What are my chances of being able to quit drinking; a person needs positive ones, too, and drinking? lf I do quit, will I be happy with my life? I am discovering them each day. Physically, I (The suicide rate of “recovered alcoholics” is five feel better than I have in at least ten years. I times greater than that of the general population, don’t wake up shaking, sweating, hot and cold, meaning that many who quit drinking still aren’t coughing, snuffling, and disoriented. My life in happy.) After drinking for twenty-seven years the morning is much more pleasant than it used (very little at first, increasingly more over the to be. Perhaps the biggest reason is that I don’t years), if I stop, what will I seem like to myself wake up frightened, groping to put together and to others? Stodgy? Cautious? Scared?

4

It’s important that I find answers to those boy wonder, breaking the newspaper business questions, at least partial answers, and I spend wide-open, and I liked to drink whiskey. I could much of each day reflecting. ln arriving at drink more than almost anyone else, and my conclusions, I am helped by a number of work never suffered. lf anything, it got better. persons, one of them Dr. Norman A. Desrosiers, Yes, indeed. the director of ARC. He is a man with impressive Looking back at it, I believe I understand credentials: he has been a theologian, medical some of what was happening. I was doing my doctor, and psychiatrist; he built an airplane and work well, but I seldom felt at ease, inside or flies it; he built an organ, composes music, and outside of the newspaper. Whiskey brought plays it; he designed a house and now is ease, at least some. I drank, and I continued to building it. I give weight to what he says. And work well. For a long while. one of the things he says goes to the core of the From Camp Lejeune to Butner, twenty- ARC philosophy: “We’re not drying out drunks seven years, my career as a drinkerhere. We’re treating persons who are using newspaperman was this: Attending college after alcohol as a coping mechanism. We must treat World War ll, I went for long periods without the emotional needs.” lt’s his contention that the even thinking about whiskey. But on occasion I majority of Americans who drink arc trying drank a great deal, the occasion being a themselves to treat emotional needs, using midwinter dance or a mock trial in which a alcohol as a handy drug to deal with anxiety, student was sentenced to be hanged. (A law tension, fear, grief, depression, frustration, and student loosened the bathrobe cord before the inhibition. “The term ‘social drinker’ is boy was strangled.) I wrote steadily for meaningless,” he says. “lf it has any validity at newspapers, covering sports events during the all, it describes a minority of the people who use college year and working fulltime during the alcohol strictly at social functions and at social summer. I was able to do that because I had got functions alone. And in minimal amounts of one off to a good start in the newspaper business as to two drinks.” Statistics on drinking vary, but a seventeen-year-old high school senior. I was these rounded-off figures will serve: 90 million not concerned about how real my talents were, American adults drink; of these, 10 million are and certainly not concerned about whiskey ever alcoholics or bad-problem drinkers; that leaves becoming a problem. That pattern held true for 80 million who might be considered social several years after college, but in Richmond, drinkers. That’s the figure Dr. Desrosiers won’t Virginia, I began to feel an uneasiness. I recall a accept. “lt is far more likely that the majority of night driving fast through a countryside, close on persons who are not yet what we call alcoholics, deadline, going to cover a triple murder fifty but who drink, are in reality not true social miles away, and thinking for an instant, lf I hit drinkers but rather persons who use alcohol to that bridge abutment I won’t have to cover it. treat their underlying emotional disorders. lt is That didn’t make sense: I was being acclaimed this population from which the alcoholic in that city, and I could read my stories and tell population is drawn, and which constitutes a that they were good. lt had begun, an almost vast body of persons who adjust to life with the mystical process in which I would always aid of a chemical means.” succeed, but at terrible cost–seeing the success l’ll accept that–whether or not my friends but wondering how I had brought it about, will (about me or about themselves)*and put wondering if I could do it again. But I never went myself in that group. Not that when I drank my to my apartment and thought, l’ve got to have a first beer as an eighteen-year-old Marine, drink. A fifth of bourbon would last for weeks. My standing beside Frank Dassori at Camp work and life at Newsday on Long lsland were Lejeune, North Carolina, I thought, Well, Bill, much as they has been in Richmond. At least for you’re joining the chemical-means group. And I many years. I succeeded: chief copy editor, day wouldn’t have put up with that kind of pseudo- news editor, city editor, assistant managing psychologicaljunk for a minute if an employer or editor, managing editor, editor. I felt many days a fellow next to me in a bar had raised the point and nights, though, as if I were doing it all with during the following twenty-odd years. I was a mirrors: not using the realskills of a professional

but skills less concrete, even less admirable, thinking, before I began my ride home. perhaps little more than the native cunning and Bill Moyers, then publisher of Newsday, charm of a Southerner who could praise, humor, spoke to me about drinking so much-gently at pamper, and reason men and women above and first, sometimes in a kidding way, but later in a beneath him into doing, finally, what he wanted more concerned fashion. I paid little attention to done. I rarely “ordered” anyone to do anything. him, thinking that he simply had been around And I rarely made it known when anyone–again, more conventional people during his years as above or beneath me-hurt me or caused me Press Secretary and Special Assistant to difficulty with a thoughtless act. I told myself that President Johnson. I felt Bill would have to I acted this way because it was effective and accept my drinking and my brilliance; I had because I was a good-natured person. For at helped make Newsday one of the finest least ten years, I did not drink much each day. I newspapers in the world, and I had done it while would have a cocktail, maybe two, before meals. drinking. I believe now–but didn’t then-that I But on occasion, as in college, I would drink for was becoming paralyzed in my job, a drunk hours, great amounts, the “occasion” being figurehead who no longer was making great either business or social. lt might be a dinner contributions to the newspaper. Gradually, meeting with other editors to work out a tough though, that fear was creeping into my mind. I

problem or make some great change at would entertain it long enough to feel concern, Newsday. Or it might be an editors’ convention remorse, depression-{hen reject it with great in San Francisco or Washington, where I had resentment. The hell with Bill Moyers and Bloody Marys at breakfast, cocktails throughout anybody else who thinks l’m still not one of the the day, and whiskey, gin, or vodka far into the two or three best newspaper editors in the night. Always, I behaved well, was articulate United States. But I was frightened, also growing (more articulate, actually, than when I was tired of the struggle, and I grasped at the sober), and recalled the next day precisely what opportunity when Bill arranged what amounted had been said and done, by myself and anyone to an ultra-white-collar firing: my becoming around me. Maybe if I had got sick or done writer-in-residence at Wake Forest University on something really stupid during those years, I full salary. My year there (1 970-1971) turned out would have become alarmed. I didn’t. I went on no better than the latter days at Newsday. I

drinking, gradually more because it was drank steadily, beginning most days when I

accepted on my newspaper, remaining the man awoke around noon, made false starts on two who could hold whiskey, a good-natured editor novels, and succeeded in writing an Esquire who didn’t rebuke anyone–but wishing, too, that article only because it was write it or admit total I had rebuked someone, this thought coming as collapse. That–and the great concern of I drove twenty miles at night to my home, Esquire’s editor, Harold Hayes, who worked wishing I had said to a news editor: Look, you’re more carefully with me than any editor should getting paid to do your job the same way l’m ever have to with a professional writer. I was at getting paid to do mine. Don’t sit there like a kid the end of the string. I would wake up in the resisting everything in sight. I told you to quit morning shivering and sweating, frightened, jumping so many stories, and I goddamn well knowing where my life was headed. I would expect you to do it. But I never said that. The drink to ease those terrible feelings, never next day there would be five jumps (continued totally, and begin the next day the same way. stories) when I had wanted no more than two. I Except when asleep, I could not go an hour had a refrigerator put into my office, would play without drinking. My clothes had been outgrown tennis at lunchtime, come back and eat a can of because of fat; I had hit myself in the forehead cold tuna fish and drink vodka and tonic. I would twice with a steel racket, playing tennis while lay off the vodka for a few hours and start again, drunk; I was accomplishing nothing as a writer. shortly before the 7 P.M. new conference in my At forty-five, my life had become worthless. office. Later, I quit laying off the couple of hours; I came to Butner to see if I could turn it I would begin after tennis, drink through the all around. news conference, and then sit and drink awhile,

6

Simply not drinking for a few daYs “No I didn’t. She has a terrible helped. The remorse and depression eased, and temper, and she doesn’t like anyone to tell her I was able to think more clearly. For the first time what to do. But I spoke to my wife.” in many years, I was engaged in an honest effort I told Mr. Wellington that he must speak to help myself, and that produced a euphoric to his daughter–realizing that in the past l, too, effect. I was in a good frame of mind, then, to might have let it slide by. receive anything that Butner could give. “Do you feel you’re being used?” Bayliss The most important thing that have I asked Mr. Wellington. come to accept is that quitting drinking is not “To a ce(ain extent, Yes.” enough. The ARC regards abstention as a “Do you feel inadequate to handle minimum requirement. A patient also must learn things?” Bayliss asked. “Here’s a social situation new ways of behavior. That point is made again that screams for action. Do you feel you can’t and again in group therapy sessions; often it handle it?” deals with a chronic failing of many alcoholics: “Yes, I guess so.” lack of assertiveness. “Does anybody listen to You, Mr. “All of us must learn to express anger.” Wellington? You’ve been pushed around, Weldon Bayliss, our counselor, said one haven’t you? You’ve tried appeasement, and morning recently. “lf we don’t, the anger comes that doesn’t work. You wind up with resentment out in some other form. Like depression. Some and depression, and you get drunk. You’ve got morning you feel extreme depression and you to experiment with new methods. So you bungle don’t know why . . . but if you think back, you things-it’s not the end of the world. Try may find that a couple days before, you didn’t something new.” stand up for your rights.” Not all of our group therapy sessions Several of us conceded that we hadn’t explode with sudden insights and wisdom, the enjoyed much middle ground–it was almost say way they do on television. But there is a nothing or fight. “l broke a cop’s jaw with a cumulative effect, a good one, as we discuss our hammer once,” Coley Thompson said. “Another own lives and listen to other alcoholics discuss time, I drove my arm through a window.” He theirs. Certainly in my own case it has been showed the scars. “l just couldn’t say anything helpful to be around Mr. Wellington. I see clearly when somebody made me mad.” the similarities in our behavior, even if his “That’s it,” BaYliss said. “And You unassertiveness is far more pronounced than probably wouldn’t have anything wrong with your my own. At first, I was reluctant to admit that; it stomach today [Coley has had much of his was not to my taste to sit in a room and tell six stomach removedl if you had been able to persons that I was a lot like poor, gentle, broken express anger.” Mr. Wellington. Or like Coley Thompson. Or Tip Bayliss turned to Mr. Wellington, the Watson, who jokes all the time. But I said it. church deacon and “secret drinker.” “You seem I have made progress, and I believe that like a passive man, Mr. Wellington.” I will be able to live happily without drinking. The “Well, yes, sir,” Mr. Wellington said’ “l statistics on alcoholism, however, are grim. A am.” counselor, discussing my chances of success, “Have people been pushing you around put it this way: of three patients who leave allyour life, Mr. Wellington?” Butner, two fail and must return. He said a “Yes, sir,” Mr. Wellington said. “You patient’s chances increased sharply if he could say that, yes, sir.” became actively involved with Alcoholics “That’s got to stoP,” BaYliss said. Anonymous after leaving here. Mr. Wellington said that his married My own dislike of meetings in general daughter often dropped her children off at his would lead me not to join AA, but I do know that house, and they messed up the place’ lt its work is sound. At a meeting last Friday night, bothered him. a speaker made a point that I won’t forget. He “Did you speak to her about it?” Bayliss was a tanned, handsome man who is a asked. dispatcher for a trucking company. “Maybe I can

7

save some of you some time,” he said. “lf you’re of a newspaper chain and then, a week later, to wondering whether you’ll ever be able to drink editors of the same chain. I have been to many again, don’t bother. You can’t. Do you know newspaper gatherings, and none was dry. what one of the greatest dangers is? You leave The Virginia meetings will mark the first here, and you get along just fine. I did for three time in four or five years that I have spoken years. You start saying to yourself, ‘Maybe I while totally sober. Not long before I left New never was an alcoholic after all. I never did drink York, I interviewed a black activist on television all that weird stuff that those real alcoholics did.’ after drinking six martinis. l’m not proud of it; it’s You think you can drink again–and this time just a fact. Now, I’ll have to see how well I can control it. You can’t. I tried it.” do business without gin. I believe that if I hadn’t heard that man, I As Luther Moore, Mr. Wellington, and I may have come to feel exactly as he did-and stood together this afternoon, talking, I

tried it. Quite likely, as he said, he saved me wondered how each of us would fare. I recalled some time. the statistics: of three men who leave Butner, Weldon Bayliss has told me that I can two fail and must return. One succeeds. To leave tomorrow. Actually, a patient is free to myself, I wished us all luck, but if numbers dog leave when he chooses, unless he has been us, I want to be the one of three. committed to the ARC under coud order (a minority). Some patients get homesick or Atlantic Beach, North Carolina troubled by business affairs and just pack up and go. But the accepted procedure is for the It has been seventythree days since I

group counselor to approve a patient’s drove west on lnterstate 40, taking Luther Moore departure. The counselor and patient agree on a and Mr. Wellington home. All the days have date, hold a final conference, and the counselor interested me. The two newspaper gatherings in fills out a report for Dr. Desrosiers, offering an Virginia went well. I arrived at the first one during opinion on how he thinks the patient will get the cocktail hour, necessitating an explanation, it along. I went this afternoon to see Bayliss for seemed to me, of why I did not have on a our final conference. necktie or suit and why I wanted only a Sprite. I “l’ll tell you what l’m going to say about had just got out of Butner, I said, a center for you in the report,” Bayliss said. “You’re highly alcoholics. No one seemed to care much, one motivated, highly intelligent. I would say your way or the other, except the owner of the chain chances of not drinking are quite good. But of newspapers. He stayed to drink with me, you’ve got a tough row to hoe; no job, personal having five ginger ales and explaining that it had problems, possible depression if your writing been almost a year since he got out of a private doesn’t go well.” clinic in Tennessee. “You’ll find that you drink a I thanked him and told him that I had hell of a lot of ginger ale,” he said. enjoyed the days I had spent in his group. Soon after the Virginia trip, I went to a As I was about to leave, he said, ‘There’s party attended largely by young Marine Corps something you hear around AA-that you have to fliers. The room was dark except for flashing put sobriety ahead of everything. Everything’ lights and psychedelic posters; hard rock filled Family, job, everything. If that sounds selfish, the room like layers of wool rug. The men, if not what it means is that AA men have learned that all handsome, were well built, the women young if they lose sobriety, they, in time, will lose and pretty. Cold Duck was pressed towards me, everything.” and a pilot, drunk, not truculent but puzzled, Mr. Wellington and Luther Moore, a quiet shouted above the stereo that he didn’t quite sawmill worker, will leave with me tomorrow. understand this business of being an alcoholic. Neither has a car here. I will drop them off at Was I trying to cut back, lay off a while, or what? their homes and go to Virginia, where I will get a Wine’s OK, isn’t it? And why had I settled into solid first taste of what it’s like to be in a room this godforsaken place? (l’m living now at with everyone drinking whiskey except me. That Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, writing a book.) experience will come when I speak to publishers

8

There’s no future for the whole Southeast, he Well, maybe I wasn’t a real alcoholic, said. Dead. Backward. California’s the place. maybe I can drink again. I felt at ease all evening. The beach is a pleasant place to work I A week later, went to a “gourmet and live. I write seven days a week, and I feel dinner,” as it was described–gin and tonics, that -it’s going well. I swim, play tennis, fish, cucumber salad, red wine and sauerbraten, crab, and dig clams. Each day I do one of those followed by cigars and cognac. Spending things, even in rainstorms. I feel good and I don’t evenings that way, without drinking, there might drink. be a I danger, suppose, of becoming I overconfident. But keep in mind the AA speaker who cautioned against ever thinking,

Source: Atlantic Monthly, January 1972

I