Aorit 1964

referred an alcoholic to me saying, me. He had joined the company in “He’s one of our best people, but the very early days of the color SHARING RECOVERY he’s always missing at a critical photography process and had grown time.” Or, “Can’t you do something rapidly with the organization. Three by John L. Norris, M.D. about him? We don’t want to let college graduates and a Ph.D. him go. He’s been with us a long worked under him. He had lost time, but we can’t take it any three months from work because of Chairman of AA’s General Service Board since 1961, Dr. Norris more.” I tried, but for several years “stomach trouble.” He complained has been a nonalcoholic Trustee of AA since 1951. He is Asso- my batting average was one large ciate Medical Director of the Eastman Kodak Company, and of “butterflies,” and all the sympgoose egg. toms of a stomach ulcer. Careful serves as President of the Industrial Medicine Association. Over Then one day, Hank, who’d many years Dr. Norris has made a great personal contribution to X-ray examination revealed no ulthe rehabilitation of alcoholics, and to the improved understanding been an absentee problem, stopped cer. We thought this was a nervous of alcoholism and its treatment which he discusses in this article. by to see me. I’d spent a lot of time problem brought on in a sensitive, trying unsuccessfully to keep him intelligent man, as a result of reon the job. When he came in I said, sponsibility for directing the work BEGAN medical practice in a covered from the neuritis while they “Hank, I haven’t seen you in a long of people who had much more I small New Hampshire town. While1 there I tried to help a few were on intensive treatment and unable to get alcohol. But they time. What’s gone wrong, what happened?” formal education than he. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when our people who were drinking too couldn’t stop drinking once they He smiled and dropped a pam- visiting nurse called me to say that much. I particularly recall two pa- were on their feet. Both died as phlet on my desk and said, “Here’s she now knew that Burt’s was a tients who were parti-ally paralyzed active alcoholics not long after I how!” It was an AA pamphlet. drinking problem, that his wife had due to neuritis caused by too much moved away from the region. A little later, Burt, the leader of taken their two little boys and gone alcohol and too little food. Med- When I first went to work for Ko- one of our Kodak groups came to back to her mother. She said, “I ically, I was able to help: they re- dak, one of the bosses occasionally

‘Peoeoob have three bottoms: economic, ~ocialand psychloguaal”

alize that AA had a program that anyone, alcoholic or not, can live by and profit from. After we began to develop a think you will be hearing from an baby-food factory. He also took AA community program on alcoholism I AA member who has been seeing seriously, and he came to see me in Rochester, I became acquainted I Burt.” once a month. Three months later with some AAs from other cities Later that day I had a call from he returned to Kodak. From that and as a result was invited to speak chological bottom.” It seems there a man who introduced himself as day until he died a year ago last in Chicago at the First Industrial must be the admission, at some Bob, said that he was a member of summer (of a malignancy), Burt Conference on Alcoholism. On the level, that they have a problem. AA and that he had been trying to had no difficulty with alcohol. same program was Dr. George In industry we’re trying to eduhelp Burt. Although Burt was very I went to several AA meetings Gehrman, Medical Director for the cate those in authority to recognize sick and shaky, Bob thought he with him. I heard Bill W. talk a Dupont Company. Neither of us the early symptoms of alcoholism would be able to get back to work couple of times in Rochester. It had any idea that the other was any and to face the issue when they first on Monday. Monday morning Burt was a tremendous thrill to see more interested in alcoholism than detect the signs in their fellow came to the office with his superin- people who had been in the depths in the other phases of our industrial workers. If they have to pour them tendent, whom he had already told of physical and emotional misery work. As it turned out, he preceded into bed after a company party, about his problem. The superin- restored to mental and spiritual me on the program and said every- they shouldn’t just pass over it, fortendent advised him that he still had health. It is from seeing such res- thing about alcoholism that I in- get about it. Such workers should be his job, but that any further trouble toration that my love for AA has tended to say! AA was his enthusi- urged to take positive action. They would not be tolerated. Three weeks come. A doctor’s greatest frustra- asm too. may not have to lose their jobs and later he slipped; he was fired. But tion is to be unable to help those In more recent years many in- homes, if they can be convinced before he left the plant he was who suffer. Conversely, his greatest dustrial physicians have become in- that their lives are becoming unurged to really work at AA, to satisfaction comes in being a part terested in AA, and are now deeply manageable. Maybe we can learn keep in touch with me, and to get of the recovery process. In AA, re- involved in learning and under- how to help them at this stage, prea job somewhere else. He did get covery was indeed dramatic; my standing the problem of alcoholism. vent thousands of new people from a job, loading freight cars at a enthusiasm mounted. I began to re- My greatest interest is to find becoming alcoholics each year. T o means, if we can, to prevent disease. do this doesn’t seem to me to be Must we wait until people hit bot- within the province of AA. Yet as I tom befog they will accept treat- try to help men and women face ment, before they can accept help? their problem in its very early stage, It’s difficult to sit on the sidelines before many would be likely to see and see alcoholics punish them- that AA could apply to them, I feel selves, their bosses, their friends, a little sorry that they may be deand lose their families and their prived of the joy and satisfaction jobs. A doctor who was one of the AAs have. early members of AA in Rochester There are those who look at AA used to say, “People have three and even though they need it, they bottoms: economic, social and psy- don’t like it. What do we do about chological. Some have to hit all them? Is the trouble that their inthree; everybody must hit the psy- troduction to AA hasn’t been good?

Is it because they don’t feel really not just one meeting but several. A welcome at a meeting? Is it because completely uninitiated person will a sponsor didn’t care enough? Are need time to understand and apprethese perhaps .some of the reasons? ciate the part the nonalcoholic can What about those who try, are take. But this sort of education is successful for a little while, then absoluteIy necessary. I’m sure it drop out? Why does this happen? Is will work. there something that those who are We doctors spend a lot of time receiving life from AA haven’t yet acquiring a lot of notions about allearned how to pass on? cohol which aren’t very useful- Some of us in the medical pro- certainly the picture I had acquired fession lack the understanding that of the alcoholic in medical school we need: understanding of how to and afterward in my early experiuse AA, and understanding of the ences was all wrong. The same alcoholic. How may we create this thing is true, I think, of most docunderstanding in doctors, in the tors. Be patient with us; stand by; clergy, in judges? I think that per- it’ll get through. sonal experience is always the best A11 of us at times are discouraged teacher. Typically, a number of at the apparent slowness in getting people -a clergyman, or a doctor, the message to other people. Rea policeman or two, or perhaps member that thirty years in the hissome social workers -will have tory of the human race isn’t a very been affected by the disease of al- long time, although it is a long time coholism in the course of the career in the lives of people who need AA of an active alcoholic. It would and haven’t got it. But in fact much create great progress in their under- has happened in the thirty years standing of alcoholism if the alco- since Bill and Doctor Bob met in holic, after he has sobered up, Akron! would go back to that clergyman, Remember the joy of your own or doctor, or social worker, and say, recovery, and remember, too, that “Remember me? Well, here’s how some alcoholics get well through I am today and here’s how I got other means than AA. Accept this, this way. Won’t you come with me as well as the need for patience, to an AA meeting?’Take them to with serenity!