Here’s an ally against the chemistry of alcoholism

Double-Barreled Hope for Alcoholics by Paul de Kruif

Jail is still our main medicine for chronic the help of a Power greater than themselves, alcoholics, though actually they’re not criminals they can overcome the craving for drink. For but sick people. That they’re not inherently chronic alcoholism is a strange disease. To wicked has been proved by Alcoholics recover from it you first have to go almost crazy Anonymous; after recovery the vast majority of or nearly die. This was the discovery of Bill, AAs turn out to be superior citizens. As to how Alcoholics Anonymous No.1. In 1934 he had alcoholics are sick, science at last has a hot been given up by his doctor as hopeless. clue. In many cases their desperate stages, Shaking and bleary-eyed, Bill was visited by an such as delirium tremens, reveal them to be old drinking crony who had got religion, gone suffering from a glandular deficiency–rapidly dry, looked as if resurrected. correctable by certain hormones which seem to “But I don’t believe in God,” Bill argued. overcome the excessive desire for alcohol. ‘Why not try your own idea of Him?” This promises to bring many more far- asked his friend “It’s only being willing to believe gone victims within reach of the spiritual in a Power greater than yourself.” medicine of Alcoholics Anonymous. Such is the Himself powerless, that hit Bill where he double-barreled hope for some 750,000 sick lived He went back to the hospital where they human beings still largely treated as pariahs and had failed to cure him, and again went through criminals as well as for the almost three million what alcoholics call the de-goofing routine. He excessive drinkers who are in danger of lay on his bed absolutely helpless, hopeless and someday becoming alcoholics. What sets these all alone. Then he said out loud: “If there’s a unfortunates off from the 48-odd million social God, let Him show Himself now.” For the first drinkers who can take it or leave it alone? time in his life Bill knew he was nothing. Many real alcoholics start off as ordinary Suddenly it was as if a horrible cloud had drinkers. Doctors have no blood test to warn lifted; it was as if he lay in warm, bright sunlight. them of deadly future danger. But sooner or later Everything was okay. It scared him. He rang for (social drinkers please note) the body chemistry his physician, Dr. William D. Silkworth of New of some people goes haywire. Then they cannot York, who had given him up. “You said I was stop. They fight it. Desperately they swear off– going to go nuts, Doc. Is this it?” The doctor for an hour, a day, a month, a year or more. looked at the new light in Bill’s eyes as he told Then they’re sure they’ve got to have a drink. the intensity of his happiness. They do not really want it, but take more and “Something’s happened to you, Bill,” he more until they’re insanely plastered. said. “I don’t understand it. But if you’re nuts, Against this sickness doctors admit that you’d better hang on to it.” until recently, they’ve been largely powerless. Dr.Silkworth was a great man who had Psychiatrists have failed to prevent it from failed with all human science and was humble causing the insanity of 10 to 25 percent of our enough to use God for a medicine. From now on hospitalized mental patients. Deaths? In addition out for Bill it was God alone. That night Bill to the thousands caused by acute alcoholism asked, “Aren’t there thousands of hopeless and DTs, thousands more masquerade as heart drunks who might be glad to have what’s been disease, pneumonia and suicide. so freely given to me?” That was 16 years ago. The most effective agency for curing Bill had been saved to start Alcoholics these sick people has been not medical but Anonymous. spiritual. Alcoholics Anonymous has shown that Miracles become medically respectable when men and women sincerely reach out for only when they pile up into big statistics,

1

scientifically authentic. By 1944 there were instruments for something beyond human. about 20,000 active AAs, all former derelicts, all Theirselves were nothing. now sober and working. What struck me then, So Earl began to get humility. He hasn’t and has since, was not so much that the AAs I had a drink for 13 years. met were dry but that they were a new kind of He was AA No. 13 when his life was human being. saved in 1937. Now there are close to 100,000 Earl, whom I’ve known intimately for ex-doomed who are active members of AA in years; is the founder of a powerful AA fellowship 3000 fellowships. Chronic alcoholism is unique in a large city. Unmarked by his years in the as a disease in that its successful doctors are gutter, he is serene and radiates reliability. Busy simply its ex-victims who have nearly died with his work, he still spends half his time themselves. That’s the secret of AA’s salvaging drunks, never refusing calls day or astonishing growth. They are only laymen, but night. He’s a kind of Sermon on the Mount, what doctors! They take their drunken patients walking. into their homes. They offer encouragement in “How did you get this way?” I asked. getting jobs and straightening out financial “It isn’t only me, we all had to get this troubles. They do not complain when saving a way to save our lives,” said Earl, smiling. souse means losing their sleep, and then Earl’s cure didn’t begin like Bill’s at all. interrupts their business next day. They comfort Earl had no blitz conversion. Beat up by years of the drunks’ frantic wives. They make incessant terrific drinking, frantic, his brain revolving, trips to police courts, jails, hospitals and sleepless, half-starved, in black despair, snarling asylums. to himself that he’d lick this thing, but now licked Of course the AAs have a secret by it and on the ropes, Earl met a man who had weapon: it’s only by curing all these others that helped Bill found AA. This man, Dr. Bob, gave they keep on saving their own lives. They know Earl no pep talk, no piety. He only told him the they themselves are only one drink from being tragicomic story of his own sickness. “That’s me, drunkards; their helping others alone insures that’s the way I drink, exactly,” said Earl. “You’re their own sobriety. It builds up their faith–which the first man I’ve ever met who really knows the they know, without works, will die. score.” Like all good doctors they’re alert to To Dr. Bob, Earl admitted for the first danger signals. The way some AAs have time that he was an alcoholic, incurable by relapsed into deadly alcoholism confirms the himself. Though he had been too big for God, faith of all AAs that they are instruments of a Earl now mumbled that a Power greater than higher Power. When an AA thinks his himself was all that might save him. Was it Dr. abstinence has taught him to handle his liquor, Bob? No, Dr. Bob was only a man who when he thinks he can run his own show, he’s a understood him. So Earl began confessing his goner. Yet AA’s record of recoveries is amazing. years of cruelty to his wife, his little girl, his Of those sincerely willing to stop drinking, 50 father. He poured out his resentments that had percent do so at once; 25 percent make solid driven all his friends away. He ruthlessly wrote recoveries after a few elapses. Failures are most down his crimes, like a dead beat who at last frequent among victims who have been forced in faces his debts. by anxious relatives or employers. Patients- Before he had half-recovered, Earl open-minded as only the dying can be–must began to work to save hopeless drunks who come in on their own. were going to die. He saw his own half-formed AA has the practically unanimous faith help to drag doomed men from asylums approval of the medical profession; thousands of and the undertaker’s physicians now send patients who are beyond doorstep. This made his alcoholic craving fade medical help. Dr. Harry M. Tiebout, noted without his fighting it; his hatred of others psychiatrist of Greenwich, Conn., explains the vanished automatically, without his battling it. Dr. character structure of alcoholics. They’re Bob, other AAs, Earl himself? They were only egocentrics. He says their truly accepting God

2

changes their deep inner brain pattern and report at the annual meeting of the Medical brings sobriety. Society of the State of New York. Even so, AAs admit they’ve only Meanwhile, Dr. John W. Tintera of scratched the surface of alcohol’s mass tragedy. Yonkers, N.Y., and Dr. Harold W. Lovell of New They can tell of many heartbreaking failures. York, after an independent investigation, had Here medical science bids fair to come to reported in 1949 that ACE practically eliminates the rescue. While Dr. James J. Smith was the agonizing drying-out period that baffles studying thousands of alcoholics brought for alcoholics who are fighting to keep from drinking emergency treatment (not cure) to Bellevue again In victims who had been alcoholic for ten Hospital, New York, he spied a chemical hope and even 20 years, injections of ACE magically against delirium tremens. What threatens the cut down the craving that is the Gethsemane of lives of DTs? Not merely their seeing snakes or these sufferers. purple crocodiles. Dr. Smith found the blood of The ACE treatment of alcoholism may be DTs dangerously thick, their blood sugar a two-edged weapon. It may threaten Alcoholics perilously low. About to die, they breathe Anonymous, who with their nearly 100,000 extremely fast, have a feeble, super-rapid pulse active members are right now the most and a fever that may shoot up as high as 110. successful doctors of chronic alcoholism Shots It dawned on Dr. Smith that these of ACE seem so much easier than the AA’s ominous signs somewhat resembled the often search for God. fatal crisis of Addison’s disease. In this disease But Drs. Tintera and Lovell urge all their there is a failure of the adrenal glands just over hormone-treated patients to join AA And Dr. the kidneys, mysterious little hormone factories Smith does not consider ACE a cure for absolutely essential to human life. Not so long alcoholism “Even with this treatment,” he says, ago victims lived for only a short while. But now “the alcoholic cannot drink” (i.e., without a they can be kept in pretty fair health, even relapse). The hormone treatment is still new and working, by injections of hormones from the experimental, while scores of thousands of AAs cortex, or outer layer, of the adrenal glands of have been dry for years. slaughtered cattle. Actually, the AAs have a powerful ally in Jim Smith put two and two together. He the adrenal hormones. They know they are shot big doses of adrenal cortical extract (ACE) bodily sick. They’re the first to admit that the into DT victims in their terminal stages. It was new AA will fare better if doctors put him in such resurrection. Within 24 hours they lost the physical condition that he can think straight and nightmare visions that often drive DTs to suicide. no longer crave liquor. Their shakes disappeared and their hearts again What of the 25 percent of Alcoholics beat strongly and slowly. Their fevers rapidly Anonymous who fail to keep dry? What of the cooled to normal. Dr. Smith then shot ACE into hundreds of thousands of chronic alcoholics who victims of alcoholic insanity who suffer neuritis will not admit their deadly peril and who refuse and incessantly invent tall stories. Within 24 to go to AA for help? They are inaccessible hours their pain, their crazy confabulations and because they are not thinking straight, the AAs their wild excitement were down to zero. say. ACE can begin to transform them. Injections of ACE soothed the hang-over Here’s the power of the adrenal cortex heebie-jeebies that drive chronic alcoholics to hormones–they clear the fog out of alcoholic take a hair of the dog that bit them It calmed the brains. Then the straight-thinking upper brain fearful tension that comes on before the new has a chance to send its messages to the lower binges of periodic alcoholics. In 1947, Dr. Smith brain This part controls the pituitary gland, which reported the good news that, in general, in turn by its hormone secretion governs the alcoholism seems chemical. By last May Dr. wonderful life-boosting little adrenals. Mens Smith, as Director of Research on Alcoholism at sana in corpore sano–a sound mind in a healthy the New York University-Bellevue Medical body. This slogan of the ancient philosophers is Center, was able to confirm his findings in a now the joint battle cry of the hormone doctors and the AAs.

3

Although ACE is safe in the hands of and expensive. But an AA will tell you that God any competent physician, it is limited in amount is always on hand and will help for the asking.

Source: Reader’s Digest, October 1950

4