Philip Wylie Jabs A Little Needle Into Complacency Copyright © The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., September 1944 An editor of The Grapevine called on me and asked me for a piece. He asked because I recently reviewed a book about a drunk – Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend. He thought that what I’d said in the review showed I had an interest in alcoholism. I have. The editor didn’t know that I am one.

I quit solo – by which I mean that no organized group like AA was around to assist or advise. But I had plenty of assistance and expert advice, much of which curiously parallels what I know now about AA. To reach a point where I can say that I am not drinking and have not been drinking for a long time, took years. It took an unconscionable amount of energy. It left me with a few ideas that I’d like to pass along. It left me with a couple of hunches that I’d like to ask about.

The things I did are, maybe, the things that others are doing. I was psychoanalyzed twice. I studied psychology after that – Jungian, Freudian, Alderian, behavioristic. Then I read all the basic religious books. Then I read the philosophies. Then I went to insane asylums and looked at them. Here are some of the ideas that came my way: One of the “reasons” I had given myself for drinking was that I was then able to do easily a great many things other men could do sober and I could not. So I did them sober. I did everything without a drink that I had done when drunk, excepting for the destructive trouble making ones. Everything. That was useful to me.

I had jitters that there is not the literary skill to describe – though Charles Jackson has come as close as any writer ever did. Every fear, phobia and compulsion entered my head – and not so always just when I was hung over. So I got into the habit – a suggestion of a psychiatrist – of writing down in detail the nature and formidability of these mental distresses. Maybe the fact that I am a writer gave that system special merit. But I found I couldn’t endlessly retail the awfulness of my obsessions – sitting perfectly comfortably in a quiet room. On paper – they weren’t gigantic and overwhelming. They grew silly. They made me laugh at myself and do deflated themselves.

Dr. Jung himself suggested that I look at a few asylums. I don’t know why until I made the visit. Then it became evident to me that the inmates were not like me at all. Thus I got to know that my alcoholism was not the onslaught of insanity – and I got to know I had been subconsciously afraid of precisely that.

The Jungians, incidentally, give a different name to the “religious experience” which you discuss in AA. They arrive at that “experience” by different methods – methods which conform to their scientific psychological technique. They call the spiritual quantum which gives rise to the experience a “transcendent symbol.” Naturally, I haven’t room to describe the method here: it would take more than this magazine – a book perhaps. But, whether you call it a religious experience or a transcendant symbol does not matter – and it may be of interest to alcoholics who are semi-knowingly engaged in protesting formal, churchly “religions” to learn that there are thoroughly abstract, non-religious routes to the same, universal, human contact with inner integrity, truth, and the “nature of nature itself.”

Of course, I read everything about alcoholism I could find. And I became interested in the care and condition of alcoholic friends. Among them I noticed two who still make me wonder about the possible relationship of epilepsy to alcoholism in some cases. These two friends of mine had had fits. They both had the epileptic “picture” on the electroencephalogram. The new drugs that avert or postpone epileptic attacks seemed to aid these two men in stopping their alcohol addiction. I know that if I were a doctor – and an alcoholic – I’d investigate this special aspect of the puzzle thoroughly. The possible future values of chemistry should not be overlooked by any of us in the presence of the proved value of psychological and philosophical regeneration.

I also have a hunch that insanities, neuroses, and all other aberrations vary largely with the passing of centuries. Alcoholism too. I do not believe people in the main were exactly the same sort alcoholics and for the same reason in 1700 as in 1944. That is to say, I believe such conditions of the soul are “as if” epidemic – and definitely of a social causation. That is what especially interests me about AA: it represents to me the first really effective effort to deal in kind and in scale and in the right category, with alcoholism. Philip Wylie

Bill W.’s Comments on Philip Wylie’s Article Copyright © The A.A. Grapevine Inc., September 1944 Philip Wylie’s piece in this issue of the Grapevine will endear the man to every AA. And why? Because, of course, he’s so very alcoholic! Neither can anyone miss the author’s generous and self-sacrificing spirit. Forgetting his own worldly importance, he snaps his fingers at what the public may think; he discards his reputation in order to share with us his character. A traveler who has felt his own way out of the night, he tells how he discovers haven. We could ask no better spirit of anyone. Mr. Wylie can be a member of AA the very day he says so! In the tradition among us that the individual has the unlimited right to his own opinion on an y subject under the sun. He is compelled to agree with no one; if he likes, can disagree with everyone. And, indeed, when on a “dry bender,” many AAs do. Therefore, no AA should be disturbed if he cannot fully agree with all of Mr. Wylie’s truly stimulating discourse. Rather shall we reflect that the roads to recovery are many; that any story or theory of recovery from one who has trod the highway is bound to contain much truth. Mr. Wylie’s article is like an abundance of fresh fruit. Perhaps we should take the advice of the housewife who says, “We shall eat all we can, and then can what we can’t.” What caught my attention most was his reference to the spiritual experience, “a la Jung,” seemingly induced “by scientific psychological technique.” What a boon that would be to us who wrestle every day with the agnostic newcomer. If only we could give him a straight dose of that “transcendent symbol” and have it over with! We wouldn’t have to bother with that tedious business of waiting while our prospect batters himself into sufficient open-mindedness to accept the possibility of a Power greater than himself. But, as Mr. Wylie broad-mindedly observes, it doesn’t matter too much how the transforming spiritual experience is brought about so long as one gets one that works for him. Somehow the alcoholic must get enough objectivity about himself to abate his fears and collapse his false pride. If he can do all this through his intellect, and thereafter support his life structure upon a “transcendent symbol,” more power to him! Most AAs, however, would think this design for living pretty inadequate. They would consider downright humility and faith in the power of the living God a much stronger medicine. AA draws, frankly, upon emotion and faith, while the scientific intellectual would avoid these resources as much as he can. Yet the more intellectual techniques do work sometimes, reaching those who might never be able to take the stronger dose. Besides, they remind us, when overly proud of our own accomplishment, that AA has no monopoly on reviving alcoholics. In fact, it is already evident that the scientific world is becoming more appreciative of our methods than we are of theirs. In this respect they are commencing to teach us humility. Listen again, as our friend Dr. Harry Tiebout, psychiatrist, closes his paper “Basic Techniques of Alcoholics Anonymous,” before the American Psychiatric Association: “The lesson for psychiatrists is clear, it seems to me. Although we admittedly deal with emotional problems, we, as a group which tends to be intellectual, distrust emotions too much. We are self-conscious and a little ashamed when we are forced to use them, and always apologetic with our confreres if we suspect they have reason to think our methods are too emotional. In the meantime, others, less bound by tradition, go ahead to get results denied to us. It is highly imperative for us as presumably open-minded scientists to view wisely and long the efforts of others in our field of work. We may be wearing bigger blinders than we know.” And again, as he says, “A religious, or spiritual experience, is the act of giving up reliance on one’s own omnipotence.” As we AAs are people who are supposed to have given up all our own “omnipotence,” I’m sure that Mr. Wylie will be read with the attentive interest he deserves!