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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int Dr. Seldon Bacon.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-dr-seldon-bacon.mp3 Duration: 00:41:47
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In a few moments, Dr. Bacon will have equal time to discuss his Cadillac. Before yielding the space to him, I must say that speaking as a person whose identification has been with science, it's with great humility that I experience the intuitive and direct motion to the center of an issue that Sister Mary Andrew has given. The love and the friendship that she has expressed, I'm sure, speaking for you, makes her directly one of AA in spirit, that this experiment that she visualized in her effort to experience of going on a bender is a totally unnecessary experiment.
I can say to her that some people just have to arrive at this by the hard way, and she has found a more direct route to this formula. Now, before giving Dr. Bacon his equal, or if he wants me greater time, I would like to say that he is one of the really distinguished scientific investigators in the field of alcoholism. One of the people who have pioneered in the study of it on a scientific basis before.
It was considered in science and medicine as much of a field of scientific study as it now has become. He was director of the Institute at Yale and now at Rutgers. He's professor of sociology, author of many papers on the subject, and he owns what kind of car, I don't know, Dr. Bacon. Vince, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, members of AA and guests, it's time for the stooge to strike back. No, times have changed, have changed greatly.
Yes, I have a wife. Yes, she probably does have some idea about cars, but she doesn't have a chance. But I have a young son, and the question came up about this spider. Now, I didn't know he was interested in entomology. It seems it is a car. Cadillacs are long, long past, that very old hat. So when we got the second-hand Volkswagen, and it's red, it's he who's driving it, and I got a friend to take me to the train, to take me to the bus, to take me to the plane, and so forth.
And I may see it, but Volkswagens are all right, and this is a very good second-hand Volkswagen, because I got it from, above all things, a professor from Princeton. Well, and on to education, which fortunately is such a big word and can extend so far that you can say almost anything, and I won't hesitate to extend that even further. But I'm going to start off, of course, with definitions and suggest that education is only relevant in a given social setting.
And then there are four musts. It must include a message, there must be an expositor or a proponent, and there must be a target audience. And in addition to those three, there must be the purpose or the effect of the audience being in some way changed by the message. Now, those four would be requisite for any sort of communication, and so if education is to be differentiated from announcements of train times or sales of soap or pleas for candy or love or votes, we're going to have to change it a bit.
So I'll suggest that in addition to those four musts that there will be information, and as far as the audience is concerned, probably some new information, and certainly a rearrangement of information. There also will have to be a rearrangement of motivation or a feeling tone, and hopefully an arrangement or rearrangement or variation in behavior. Furthermore, with education, the impact of the total message has a very special sort of purpose.
Following some ethic or some philosophy, the message is supposed to benefit primarily, largely, in fact almost totally, the target audience rather than the communicator. Generally, this is not for one single event but is to be, in a general sense, useful over time.
[00:05:05]
And with those modifications, we can exclude advertising and pleas, which are to benefit the proponent. We can eliminate train and plane announcements, which are for a unique event, and merely state how something is going, which everybody knew about anyway, and is not entertainment, which is to tranquilize or divert. So we're concerned with proponents, messages, target audiences, in terms of information or explication of information or stimulation, which will lead some audience to change its motivation, knowledge, feeling tone, perhaps even its behavior.
Now the message in this instance has to do with a subject which is called alcoholism, or more exactly, the alcoholisms. And that change has pretty well been agreed to by 1965 because it has become clear that there are many pathways into this loosely described condition, and there are obviously many different appearances amongst what might be called the finished product. Now although this may suggest the subject matter with which the education will deal, it doesn't state who will communicate what to whom, or what general rearrangement of ideas, motivation, behavior, feeling tone, is aimed at in whatever audience has been selected.
Now the general trend of my remarks will be as follows. Whatever was communicated between 1935 and 1950 is not and cannot be the same message today for the great majority of potential audiences in the United States and Canada. First, for this simple reason, the relevant social situation has changed. Secondly, the expositors, or the proponents, or teachers, are not only different for the same reason, situational change, and for the more obvious reason they're 20, 30 years older, but also because there's been a great increase in the numbers of expositors and indeed in the very types of expositors.
Third, the audiences are different from those of 20 or 30 years ago, also because educators and messages have decided that there are different audiences, that there are many audiences, and where they used to think of, these proponents, where they used to think of one or two people and one message, proponents, where they used to think of one or two people and one message, today they think of 30 or 40 types of audiences and 30 or 40 types of messages and various changes that they want.
Now, I don't want to, for a moment, suggest that some all-pervasive regular change has occurred. In some places, in some groups, in some individuals, there has been very little change from the status of 1925. In some instances, the situation is much like that of 1945 to 50. But in many areas, especially in the larger population centers across this country, major changes have occurred. And wherever they have occurred, education has changed.
This change is going on whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not. If any one of those essential elements of education has changed, those were the situation, the carrier of the message, the content, the audience, the intention of change. Now, I'm going to suggest that all these have changed and have changed markedly since 1945. Suppose by some miracle I can get 75% of this audience not only to listen but also to give some grudging acceptance to that idea.
What difference would it make? Who cares? What of it? I'd like to suggest that if such changes have in fact occurred, they will shed light upon some of the most frustrating and some of the most conflictful problems now facing those of us who want to do something about alcoholics and about alcoholism. I don't say that this will resolve problems, but I do say that it will cast light upon them. The problems may take on different appearance.
They may be seen as related to factors which hadn't been noted before, and they may appear as merely items in a sequence of change instead of being independent, absolute phenomena. They may even be seen to have aspects of good as well as evil. One other question. Why would members of AA be interested in a discourse on education? Whoever said they were educators, it's possible perhaps to liken them to therapists, but educators?
[00:10:01]
Well, that's a question and a pretty good one, but I'd remind you of the definition I gave. The essentials were the communicators, a message, an audience, a change, and a rearrangement. Now, the message carried by AA may have been intended only for a very small group, other alcoholics. In fact, AA stated that over and over again, but I'm not concerned with stated intentions. There are, I am told, some one-time alcoholics in the group.
They know that stated intentions don't carry much weight. I'm more concerned with reality, and in this instance, reality is pretty plain to see. A whole set of audiences, including specialists, such as doctors and temperance workers, prison wardens, sociologists, priests, newspaper reporters, they listen to the message, whether they were selected by the communicators or not. Their knowledge and sometimes their motivation and sometimes even their behavior changed.
Far beyond these specialists, there were large, large audiences, perhaps not intended, of housewives, of non-alcoholic drinkers, of parents, of voters. Maybe they weren't intentionally selected as audiences, but they listened and they read, and they somehow, some of them changed in information, motivation, finally even in behavior. A.A. may not have intended to serve a general educational function, but there isn't the slightest question of a doubt that this was indeed what happened.
And don't for a moment believe this hasn't affected A.A. Its functions, its problems, its ideas, its organization, its membership have all been affected because it served this function. And of course A.A. will continue to have effects on many, many publics. Whether it intends this or not is utterly unimportant for determining whether it in fact takes place. I would suggest then that educational aspects as I've defined them are highly pertinent to an A.A. audience, and therefore the changes in that process can be pertinent and their description can throw light on some of the conflictful and frustrating developments experienced by all of us who are working in this field.
I want to start with pre-1935. As far as you're concerned, pre-A.A. the structure and educational philosophy and its power prior to that time were extraordinarily influential for the growth of the emergent movements, including A.A., which were to take place. And I want to emphasize three characteristics of that pre-1935 period. First, it was monolithic. By this I mean there was one philosophy, one membership organization.
This is what I call the classic dry, or capital T, temperance movement. Its positions and its program dominated not only the major institutional forces, that is government, religion, health, education, research, but it also dominated the thinking and behaviors of the public, of the drinkers, of the pathologic users, and of the abstainers. You could agree to this movement or you could be opposed to this movement, but there were no other options of any significance.
Secondly, that movement had a definition of the nature and of the causes of the problem. Note that it was the problem, not problems. That problem was alcohol. There were subsidiary problems, particularly the industry, which was called the traffic, and, of course, there was the inherent evil of man. But the problem was alcohol, or use of alcohol, which was sometimes called drinking. Drink was the problem.
The third aspect. Although all drink and drinking was a problem, it was recognized that some parts or manifestations were more advanced than others, and one of these was the common drunk. In him, it was the combination of, first, the alcohol, plus an especially strong inherent evil, weakness of will, and general immorality, which explain the extremity of the case. But this was only a difference in degree between him and anybody else who used the poison.
Fourth, there was one great way to overcome the problem, abolish alcohol. And fifth, to ensure achievement of this goal, all other viewpoints were to be smashed by law, by ridicule, by ostracism, by evasion, or by any other attack. And it was at this point the movement had its great success. Certainly in the United States, for years and years before 1930, probably back to 1830, there was little, if any, research, therapy, teaching, law, or ethical training about alcohol and its use, which wasn't dominated or eliminated by the movement.
And ordinary users of alcohol beverage became secretive, aggressive, embarrassed, guilty, evasive. Embarrassed, Guilty, Evasive, and in many ways quite immature about their use of alcohol
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and about their handing of this custom on down to the next generation. And very importantly for our purposes, they were immature, evasive, and guilty about responding effectively to what regular social drinkers might feel to be deviant. That is, it was this monolithic, negativistic movement which resulted in the frequent and widespread inability of controlled, socially acceptable drinkers to label others who were deviant drinkers and to take steps to control, change, or minimize the deviations.
Quite unaware, even saying they were opposed to that approach, these drinkers were caught in the monolithic approach. And to avoid being dries, they pretended there were no deviations. They avoided and evaded being responsible carriers of a custom. And when individuals were finally so extreme that even they couldn't stand them, the philosophy and attitude of the dry movement was accepted by these social drinkers and applied to the problem drinkers. And they characterized them, these are the non-dries, characterized the problem ones as weak-willed, evil, and of most importance, hopeless.
Now this interpretation was used only at the last moment, after one had gone ten years into the progression of alcoholism or more. No ordinary social sanctions or changes or warnings occurred in the long development up to that time. And so a social setting was present which greatly favored the gradual development of pathologic drinking. Now for reasons I won't go into, this monolithic movement was losing its battle to control problems of or related to drinking. And by 1928, it was clear it was to suffer a major political legislative defeat. And the monolithic power began to crumble at that moment. And it was in that crumbling that we see the long, long delayed emergence of new ideas, new treatment, new association, and new practice.
Between 35 and 45, they were born. Now I've expanded on this environment for this very direct reason. The structure and the membership and the ideas of the new movements were enormously influenced by that monolithic past. I want to speak of two of these groups. One, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the other what I will call Academic Research on Alcohol, including its problems. My first emphasis is this. They were both just as much aggressive rebellion against the past monolith as they were of a positive movement to cope with ignorance and pain. Now naturally, both groups emphasize their positive humanitarian and mature characteristics. You know, even college professors are human. But the slightest observation of an objective sort will show the aggressive and rebellious characteristics were of equal importance.
And they were of key importance in the message, in the proponents, and in the audiences attracted, and in the sorts of changes achieved. And this very militancy can be seen as a major factor in many of the frustrations and conflicts in the world of do something about alcoholics and alcoholism. I'll try to describe some of these. Now both these groups tried to avoid a head-on conflict with the old monolith, especially one that would be across the board. They were either lucky or smart or both. They followed a policy of divide the field and pursue a limited attack, and they selected one area of the problems and proceeded to the best of their not inconsiderable abilities to separate it from all the other problems. In fact, from the whole field of alcohol use and related phenomena, their subject, of course, was alcoholism or the alcoholic.
It was postulated and argued and demonstrated and illustrated and screamed, to anyone who would listen, that this thing called alcoholism was unique, was isolated, practically a new discovery. Actually, said these proponents, it had very little to do with alcohol. You know, alcohol only appears once in the steps and so on. And they insisted it had no relationship at all to the other problems of alcohol. This was a smart tactical move. Secondly, to buttress that first step and develop their own philosophy, they proposed a nature of the problem entirely different from that picked by the monolith. The old nature had been immorality or weak will.
The new movements, especially AA, without challenging that old philosophy at all for the other alcohol problems, threw the conception out for their own selected problem. They not only threw it out to make it more binding, they selected a new substitute nature. Now, there are lots of possible substitutes lying around, believe it or not, but they opted for one,
[00:20:00]
disease. And because of the surrounding social environment, this turned out also, for the most part, for those years, to be a smart tactical move. Now, as often proves the case in all sorts of similar societal situations, the early signs of crumbling resulted in a lot of groups rushing into what looked like an attractive power vacuum. Ministers and movie producers and businessmen and reformers and dissident members of the old, everybody was in on the act. In answer to this, both these groups decided to opt for purity, that is, purity of the organization. They declared for autonomy, for sharp distinction from all other movements, and for an independent philosophy, structure, leadership, language, and public image. This occurred in AA, this occurred with the academic researchers. I think it was an essential tactical step in the 1940-50 period.
On the academic side, there developed alcoholism journals, alcoholism schools, alcoholism research groups, alcoholism clinics, independent alcoholism commissions. And AA, despite its conscious and conscientious avoidance of formal organizational policy and structure, on this level was quite explicit as a total movement. There were to be no entangling alliances with any other group, no matter how much an individual AA might like some of these other groups, or even if the majority of AAs liked them. This included churches, this included voluntary anti-disease associations, therapeutic professions, and academic research groups, as well as political parties, government agencies, temperance organizations, and the like. The anonymity provision, useful and developed for other purposes, buttressed this point. It's very difficult to have a contractual relationship with a group which doesn't exist. Now, these three positions, the problems of alcoholism, are one and separate from all others, especially others dealing with alcohol.
The nature of the problem is disease, and three, the movements are separate and autonomous from all other movements. These are the tactical steps of that period I want to emphasize. Very similar steps occurred in alcohol and traffic problems, in training of youth about alcohol, and, of course, completely in the field of the control of alcohol through the distribution systems, at least in the United States. They were absolutely isolated and never heard of any of the others. Now, these three policies are like what I call the message, and they were matched by a type of leadership, which is the usual concomitant of rebellious changes if they're to survive.
1935 to 50 or 55 was the period of the charismatic leaders, of giants in the field, of extraordinary innovators and inventors, magnificent orators. And these enormous figures, sometimes almost sanctified, were part of an enthusiastic, excited, dedicated, and rapidly growing group. This is first youth. This is the honeymoon period. This is the time of flexing of muscles, of bold adventures, of promising brave new worlds. And it's also the glorious time of thumbing the nose with increasing gaiety and confidence, sometimes even with cruelty, at the old folks, at the old crumbling monoliths, and all those who haven't joined the bandwagon.
Now, these positions became imbued with sanctity. They also were of a temporary omnipotence character. And these tactics, because that's what they were, became principles and became viewed as holy writ. What about the audiences? They too were of a particular character. They were people who were hurting because of the immediate problem, who were victims or families and friends of victims, or who had responsibilities for dealing with the victims and took those responsibilities seriously and had no means to cope with them. They were, so to speak, the hungry individuals. These were the groups we hit between 1940, 1945, and in wider segments of the community, 45 to 50, and that lasted five or six years. These same audiences, as the message spread across the continent, were the leading audience those first five and six years.
And what was the set of changes in attitude and behavior wanted? Well, I've already stated what the first three are. See, this is a separate, unique problem. It is a disease. We have an answer to it and one that works. There is hope. Note the obvious, the adverse of those three. The drives were wrong in saying it was all the same. They were wrong in saying it was just one degree of the drink problem. They were wrong when they said it was morality and weak will.
They were wrong when these people said it was helpless and hopeless. This was a rebellious, aggressive movement. The other three things I would mention were this, of the message. You or your friend can be helped. Next. Come to us. Six. All you others send cases to us
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and spread the word, but I use the word us. Now the message of the academics and the AAs spread, there came to be other uses out in the field beyond AAs and academics. And although these differing groups could join in lambasting their mutual enemies, it was true they were all on the isolation plus purity side. And so some signs of the breakup of the honeymoon were seen on the horizon. And the giant charismatic leaders, for the most part, tried to join or heal or cover up these minor cracks. And what brought on a great change in events? It was growth. Growth. I will speak of the pre-1945 period in three parts. The old monolithic movement, dominant throughout.
Up to 35, there was nothing to take its place, although it had its enemies. It was steadily crumbling after 25. Between 35 and 40, the substitutes were in the making, but nobody had ever heard of them. Certainly the old monolith and the public were unaware of their existence. Between 1940 and 45, the academic and the AA groups, utterly unknown to each other, burst upon the scene. And they were going to take over. They were well established by 45 and by 50, if you like to see it in terms of a game, they were in first place. Clearly they were in publicity, in health activity, in legislation, in formal education, and in their very numbers they had arrived. The old monolith was reacting and changing to this new competitor who had taken over. And what happened then? Well, it's a pity to speak of it, I suppose.
Like all successful rebellious and innovating movements, it did have some unique features, but it was like all the others in that it grew and it showed maturation. And these changes have been bewildering and frustrating and often conflictful for many of us who have been involved. The changes can be seen in those essentials I spoke of. The setting change. First, the old monolith. The organization and message and audience and leaders and requisite changes in attitude and information were terribly influenced by that awe-inspiring, all-powerful, unique, and single group for a hundred years. And now it was weak and folding.
And just as our armies, so to speak, came into full power and were ready to go to the attack, there wasn't any enemy. It was gone. What a shock! What kind of a rebellion is this when there's no one to rebel against? So the organizational enemy or bad father figure is gone. Now what about the great policy decisions, which were in large part tactics to fend off and then attack this old group? Did they disappear? No. And as the academics, who are terribly interested in theories and principles and tactics as such, began to suspect quite early, and as the AAs began to discover through unpleasant experience, these positions, fine as they had been in those glorious early days of growth, were somewhat less than wonderful for mature and responsible growth. Look at those three positions. Not as rebellious adolescents, but as increasingly adult and responsible citizens. Is alcoholism unrelated to alcohol, to drinking customs, to the way churches and schools teach about alcohol, to legislation about alcohol sales, to automobile accidents affected by alcohol? Well, the answer is pretty clear. It always was. It stands out in even the most charismatic, wild, wonderful speeches of the early giant AA leaders. They even blamed the law and the temperance people for the very fact that they were alcoholics. They spoke of their experiences with doctors, with hospitals, with ministers and others. True, they spoke about them in a pretty negative fashion.
But if they were important enough to speak about, they had had influence, that the influence was unfortunate. Perhaps only indicated how influential it was. Just because an event or a group or a situation or a custom is disliked or even malevolent, doesn't mean it's irrelevant or unrelated. The more influential it is, the more relevant and related it must have been. And the academicians in their ways were noting not the dissimilarities and separateness and uniqueness, but the similarities, the overlapping and the commonality of the problem manifestations and of the means for their alleviation. As early as 1948, it was discovered that alcoholics are people.
Now, what about the second position? Some of you can now leave. That this is a disease phenomenon. Now, that was a tremendous tool to get rid of the monolithic, negative, punitive and hopeless definition of the past. It was wonderful for that purpose. Definition of the Past. It was wonderful for that purpose, but was it also a satisfactory and sufficient
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explanation and classification device for alcoholism? Well, it helped, but the AAs were saying, at least by 1950, and the academics equally early, that for this purpose, alcoholism, definitions of disease would have to be changed, and changed quite radically. They noted, for instance, that this was a disease of the soul, not usually a category in Materia Medica. They and the academics noted this was a disorder of social and behavioral and occupational and family interaction. Those are peculiar labels for a disease. The crowning blow came with widespread claim that doctors, by and large, would not treat the condition, didn't know how, and gave medical students no training in the area. And since one definition of disease is that it refers to conditions which commonly and appropriately are attended to by doctors, that just about ends the definition. What about the organizational purity? Unfortunately, necessary as it was for survival in the early days, it is in other ways than a complete denial of central purposes of both AA and of the academics. AAs want hospitals and doctors to play certain roles. They want all sorts of groups to refer cases to AA. They want favorable, hopeful, and compatible responses to their program from families, employers, religious and welfare figures who are directly, crucially, sometimes continuously involved. How can you get favorable, meaningful, understanding relationships for these activities when you're in an austere, understood, and mystical driver's seat?
How can you project the AA message into a hospital, a penal setting, an industrial setting, and other places where alcoholics desperately need the AA message and at the same time remain isolated, austere, and autonomous? How can the academics forswear the major developments of the past three centuries in their field and set up a series of alcoholologies and separate alcohol education, separate alcohol training, and still say they're academics? It's impossible. Now, does this mean that all of the three positions are wrong? It means nothing of the sort. In many ways, alcoholism is different from the other alcohol problem. In many ways, it is a disease. And in many ways, alcohol research and alcoholism therapies require separate structure and procedure.
What is meant that the absolute character and the emotional fervor of these statements are understandable as tactics in one period of growth but are not necessarily absolute in fact and don't require emotionally rigid adherence in other contexts. Seeing them as tactical steps in one stage of development rather than as absolute truth may help to cast light. A far more basic truth, for example, was the message that the alcoholic could recover, that he could be helped, and that hope, not defeat, ridicule was a realistic outlook. What about the leaders?
Have they changed? They surely have. And leaders in all radical, rebellious movements show the same sorts of change if the movements grow and are accepted and adapted into the society. The innovating giants, the charismatic leaders, the fantastic personalities, the extraordinary speakers of the early years. So often the lament is heard, where are they nowadays? Their likes will not soon be seen again. Of course they won't be seen again, at least not till there is a situation of uncertainty, vacillation, breakdown of an old system, terrible need, and conflict. And if they should appear before then, they will be viewed as screwballs, troublemakers, violators of the tradition, and enemies of the movement.
Who needs charismatic leaders and genius inventors when the enemies disappear, when the movement is growing larger, when harmony and peace with other organizations and within the now large movement is the obvious order of the day? The price of success is considerable. The AA giants and the academic giants of the 30s and 40s are unlikely to be duplicated in the next 10 years. I might add the academics need them more than the AAs because we still haven't achieved a firm foothold.
But they won't appear as large as Haggard and Jelinek and Silkworth and Thiebaud and so on. Why not? Because today there are 100 or 200 or 300 men of almost similar stature and so none of them stand out the way they did at the start when there were five or six. And have the audiences changed? They've changed radically. From over in my corner, the academics, I can speak of those who attended our summer school of alcohol studies in 1943, four and five, and compare them to those of 53, four and five, and 63 and four, and those there today. They're a different breed of cats.
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If we were to present the information given in 1945 at this year's class, it would be greeted with yawns and followed by dropouts. If we were to present the emotionality and excitement of 46 and 47 and 48 and what classes those were, by 90% of the students this year would think we were off our rocker. The techniques suggested to probation offices and community organizers and nurses in 1953 are today either self-evident or old hat or proven false and irrelevant. The audiences of public lectures and one-day conferences in New York, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco are not the audiences of 1945 or 55. Not only are they different people, they're different types of people. The old hecklers are almost gone.
Marty and I used to have a regular tour following us around the country of WCTU and the like, all over the audience, snapping through with questions. You can't find one today, they won't come to those meetings. Today, physicians and personnel directors from industry and at long last even insurance people, judges, so on, are there. They're not only there, they've already heard what you had to say in 1949, and they want more and they want better.
Now there are still some who are naive and excited, ready for the honeymoon stage, but instead of 65% of the audience, perhaps they're 30% of the audience. And the representatives of the old monolith in most parts of the continent are not at these meetings. Don't believe the old monolith is gone, it is not. What many of you, I think, are blissfully unaware of is that the old monolith has changed enormously and that there is a great new temperance movement developing. Most of you have never even heard of it. I think it's one of the most significant movements of our time. No, the messages, the proponents, the audiences, and the proposed ways of changing behaviors have changed, and the setting has changed, and change is often uncomfortable. Think of those wonderful speeches that I gave in the 1940s.
They always pleased me, and once in a while the audience. But I've looked at one or two of them, see, I keep pieces of paper with these turkey tracks on them, and they even seem sad to me now. The programs of cities and states in 1946 and 52, which were once so original, so brilliant, now seem rather dull and quite misdirected. Isn't change uncomfortable? But this is growth, and this is life, and this is development. Of course the audiences and messages and attempted changes are different, and of course the leaders and teachers are different. If they weren't, it would mean that all the work and all the dedication of 20 years had been for nothing.
Much of the discomfort and anxiety and frustration is little more than the pains of growing up. Arguments about the diseased nature, about working with other groups, about isolation and uniqueness, are often the complaints of the old-timers, and they're really complaining that they, 20 years ago, were successful. They're complaining because their techniques of rebellion and innovation were so successful that need for them today is smaller and smaller. Does that mean that all the old techniques are gone? That the movement is dead? Good lord, no.
Does this mean that AA philosophy and procedures for helping alcoholics are out of date or unneeded? No, and again, no. What it means is that AA and some of the other groups are trying to do something and are doing so as they grow up, and they're moving from rebellion to responsibility. Their work may be more demanding now, in that some of the romantic excitement is gone. I've talked a lot about the change. I want to close by saying something about the unchanged.
I'd hate to have anyone feel the problems were solved and the victory was won. We've made great strides, but that's a relative statement. From 1925 to 40, perhaps 2,000 alcoholics were helped, maybe 200 a year. Between 40 and 50, AA alone was helping 10 or 20,000 a year, perhaps 40,000 a year. The clinics were helping their tens of thousands. Those are giant strides. But in the United States alone, we estimate about 5 million alcoholics.
If 15 to 20 years is the ordinary span of an alcoholic career, that means 250 to 400,000 new cases every year. And no one in his right mind dreams we're helping 250,000 new cases every year. Dreams we're helping 250,000 new cases every year. We aren't even keeping up to the average annual new crop, and that includes every method and every group ever heard of. This means we must have a more favorable setting for recovery efforts, more effective means for attracting cases, more widespread, more available, and more numerous and more realistic means for helping recoveries, and above all, more useful tested and communicated means for catching them early and slowing down the tens of thousands who every year are entering this dark pathway.
[00:40:02]
We won't do this by repeating old activities. We can't do it by lone and isolated attacks. We need better tools, we need all the energy and dedication we can muster, and we need many, many, many friends in our lives. We're no longer adolescent rebels. We're approaching a more mature adulthood, and we face an enormous task. Education, as I have defined that process, will be a major, major part in attaining those tools in our lives. It will not be the educational process of 35 to 55, wonderful as that was. That will change, and we must change with it, and this won't be comfortable. Now we must no longer emphasize we can help an alcoholic.
We must attack the alcoholisms as such, and for that we need friends and growth. We can do this. I think we will do it. I hope that the academics and the AAs and many more will join in carrying this message. AA has borne the brunt so far. May they continue to lead, to cooperate, and to serve. Thank you very much. I simply want to express the thanks on behalf of AA to the speakers for coming this distance and carrying to us their message and their points of view. Certainly the last speaker is exhibited, but promised we'd make still the young rebel, obviously. Thank you very much, all the speakers, on behalf of AA.