April 1951

rich. He has already sketched out a rough parallel between the pre- The man who ten years ago dared to give a tentative layout. Instead of us- sobriety stage of :he A A and the AA its first big journalistic boost believes.. . ing the customary picture of a male model wearing a white coat and conduct of American foreign relations. In both cases, tragic erfestooned with stethoscope and rors were made time and time again forehead mirror, he will have photo- under the influence of a beautiful graphs of actual satisfied custo- and persistent optimistic delusion. mers, just a s in those “switched” The drunk thought that he could get whisky ads. For example, one along with the bottle by embracing glorified customer may be Oscar it; and, a s a nation, we thought the Rlotz, a motorman on the Cherokee same of good old Joe. Drunks are line. He will be depicted in uni- not the only ones who can get high form, with a balloon carrying these and black out, apparently. words and sound effects: “For 52 But there i s always hope, and years I felt lousy, tired and grippy 100,000 AA’s(or is it 120,000 by all the time,and was I nasty to the now?) furnish convincing backing wife and kids! Rut now I /eel good, for this statement. Moreover, now because I take Feel-Gud pills! that we have come out of our po- THE FAITH THAT MOVES DRUNKS (Dang! Dang! Out of the way, road hog!)My home i s happy, I eat plenlitical daze (if we actually have ) there is hope that we have- found a CAN MOVE THE WORLD! ty; I work overtime because now I love my work; so I’m using the workable policy for standing off good old Joe and all the other good by JACK ALEXANDER overtime dough to buy a television. old Joes, including the Chinese. Associate Editor I really feel p o d And why, friend ? But, a s any AA could tell us, this The Saturday Evening Post Because I take those old reliable, end won’t be accomplished through

vertisements — a claim, stated or upsy-daisy, rootin’tootin* Feel-Gud pills! Yessir, Feel Gud Pills-the medium of any diplomatic or military eel-Gud pill. There will A FRIEND of mine in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who has a scholarly talent for simplifying implied, that each brahd of pill will make the sufferer from some specifthat’s misery spelled backwards!,’ My Doylestown friend has got be, a s there is in K’orea right now, much suffering, and there will be abstruse matters, has been study- ic form of ailment, or “misery,” everything figured out -everything, plenty of inconvenience, privation ing the vitamin-pill segment of the henceforth feel good. that is, except a workable formula and expense at home. And there for his magical pills. He says that must be, a s there i s in AA,a basic pharmaceutical field. This neglected corner of science (retail) has My friend wants everybody to feel good. So, he has lately come he can hire a graduate chemist to ingredient — faith. been in one awful mess, with sen- up with an idea for a pill that will dope this out, but I doubt it, and sational claims being made fa var- make anyone feel good — a kind probably every member of Alcoholics Anonymous in good standing Faith has a more important function than moving mountains. It can ious kinds of “miracle” boluses, of universal “feel good” pill. Being practical a s well a s scholarly, will be doubtful, too. move men’s (and women’s) minds, and the public i s befuddled. My scholarly friend, using the old Ger- he has officially dubbed it the Every AA has tried his own ver- willsand souls. To a skeptic, such man-university method of scientific Feel-Gud pill, misspelling “good” sion of the Feel-Gud pill, at least talk may sound fanciful, but if you study,has detected a common note in order to get the trade-name reg- in its liquid form; and if you look- scratch even a skeptic hard enough running through all the vitamin ad- istered and, ultimately, become ed hard, you might be able to find you will find at least a trace of it..