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Source: 1975 Denver International Convention – 1975 Denver Int Conv. AA and Hospitals Panel with Jerry D, Dr Samuel Kaim, Dr NJ Bradley Part 2 of 2.mp3 File: 1975-denver-international-convention-1975-denver-int-conv-aa-and-hospitals-panel-with-jerry-d-dr-samuel-kaim-dr-nj-bradley-part-2-of-2.mp3 Duration: 00:57:08
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As you know, a very important part of these panels is the representation of our own AA speakers, and these people are not idly chosen, they're selected from various parts of the country because other people have heard them and have shared their stories. I would like to say that I've heard our next speaker. I haven't. I met her just a few minutes before this program started. At that time, when she looked out and saw how many of us there were, she expressed some apprehension. I hope by now that most of that has vanished. You are a warm and generous audience, and I'd like to give you now Barbara Gee from Minnesota.
Hi. My name is Barbara, and I am today a happy, grateful, recovering alcoholic. Thank you. The only people I've ever talked to maybe were about 50 people. And so when I looked out here and saw a couple thousand of you, I'm just going to believe there's no more than 50 out there. But today I am a happy, grateful, recovering alcoholic, and I will never again be able to use alcohol as long as I live, not because I can't, but I no longer find it necessary to do so to be the person God intended me to be.
Phil Hansen, the director of our unit in Minneapolis, my boss, talks about a room full of miracles. I am, without doubt, just that. I had a tough time in this program. For me, it was not easy. Through God, AA, and all you people, I have found a way to live comfortably without the use of alcohol or any other mood-altering drug. For this, I am eternally grateful. I think it is only fair to tell you that this is my first attempt at speaking anywhere other than explaining halfway houses to the patients in the treatment unit at Northwestern in Minneapolis. I have never before tried to put my story together, so it's a long involvement for 30 minutes because there are a lot of things I would have liked to have been able to tell you.
However, when Marv S. asked me to speak, he said he wanted to hear from someone who had made it in a hospital setting that had really had a hard time. Here I qualify as Northwestern treatment program for my alcoholism was my seventh program, plus about 30 other sessions before and in between treatments, either drying out or relapsing. I started my six-year alcoholism treatment career in September 1965. Four of the seven treatments that I went to were within the last four years. I want to tell you a little bit about what I was like.
I had a happy, good childhood. I had good, caring, but strict parents. One sister, eight years younger than myself. I had above-average grades in school, and I grew up disliking drinking and avoided the people and places it was used. Neither my husband and I drank or smoked until after we were married. But married life found us drifting into a new drinking society, and because I wanted to be like other people, I spent some horrible times actually learning to drink.
My heavy drinking began when my 13 years of marriage ended. I found myself rejected, resentful, hurting, and afraid to cope with life alone. No one chooses to be an alcoholic just like no one chooses to be a diabetic, to be white, or to be black. There was nothing I could have done to avoid it except to have never drank. When we discover how one drink, one pill, will change our feelings, first we use, then we misuse, and then become addicted.
My marriage problems introduced me to psychiatrists and psychiatric wards. I had found a place to run. Psychiatrists couldn't help me, not at this time. I wasn't honest with them. I didn't know how to be. I thought they would fix me. I hadn't become aware of my feelings. I couldn't tell anyone how I felt, not from the guts, you know, from my stomach. I always told them from my head what I thought they wanted me to hear.
[00:05:04]
Alcohol had me completely confused. I had as much of an emotional problem as an alcohol problem, which is a part of alcoholism. I feel we get sicker in different degrees, in different areas. Of course, as my drinking increased, my nerves got worse. I knew my drinking had something to do with my nerves, but I couldn't stop. Someone suggested AE. I tried it, but I didn't want to be an alcoholic. They were drunks, and I surely wasn't that.
After 17 years at Uniroyal and Eau Claire as a bookkeeper, I took a leave of absence from my job at their request. I settled down, and I tried to drink myself well. I broke an arm, which took about nine months to heal. During this time, I began my afternoon and morning drinking. My pattern was drink, eat, and sleep. I became a fat, bloated, 160-pound, 40-year-old divorcee and a nervous wreck. I asked my psychiatrist, when I get up in the morning, I'm so nervous and shaky, but when I take a drink, it helps. But it wears off by noon, and I need another. What's wrong? Is my drinking making me nervous, or are my nerves making me drink?
He walked away. Remember, this was in 1965, and things have changed since then. Education has brought new knowledge to our doctors also. So in September of 1965, he sent me to our county hospital to work off my weight instead of giving me diet pills. I was terribly resentful at this time, because the county hospital was the last place anybody wanted to be. But it turned out I was very grateful that he showed me how to work it off and didn't get me started on the diet pill back then. But this was the beginning of my drinking career.
I stayed in the county hospital for six weeks, and this, remember, was ten years ago. My treatment for alcoholism there consisted of one A.E. meeting a week conducted by an A.E. member from our Eau Claire group. I really went to the meetings to smoke and to talk about how terrible it was there. In 1966, six months later, I was committed to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. They had a program for men just started then, but there wasn't hardly anything for women. We were only allowed to hear a lecture a day. To me, this was more of a punishment than it was help. And it's the same time that they were experimenting with LSD.
And three months later, I was back at the county hospital. This time I stayed four months, because I did lose some weight working it off. In 1968, I went to my actually first treatment unit in Racine, Wisconsin. And at that time, we had one-to-one counseling and lectures, but no groups. And we were put on tranquilizers. And I was so far out that I couldn't read the notes. I was required to write. Remember, you know, this is a while back. The only thing I can really say I remember there is my counselor there told me, remember, it takes as long as it takes. And somehow, this stayed with me and gave me, you know, the will to fight.
I left Racine with a nice bottle of pills. You know, little was known at this time about the transference of alcohols and pills. In 1969, I went back to Lutheran Hospital. And it was during this time that A.S. and Hank G. made a hundred-mile, twelve-step call and brought me to St. Paul. This was in about 1970. And this lasted a short time. They put me in St. Croix at Prescott, Wisconsin. We had some one-to-one counseling and good lectures and an introduction to my first group therapy. I had had some bad experiences there, so they told me to go home. I drank immediately, of course.
Three days later, I went to Wynott at Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin. I was there six weeks. From there, I finally did one thing they had been trying to tell me to do for a long time. I went to Minneapolis. I thought, I'll stay a week and I'll go home. This was a halfway house, Wayside Halfway House in Minneapolis for women. And I think I started to get a few things together there, although for me it wasn't enough at the time. But I drank the day I moved from Wayside and went back to Wynott. I had some more one-to-one counseling. We had three lectures a day then. And I had some good group therapy.
[00:10:10]
Someone began to help me understand about my feelings, that I had feelings, and make me aware of them. Remember, at this time, during this period, treatment programs were improving. I was picking something up from the programs. My tolerance for alcohol was almost gone, and the time between drinks was shorter. The last time I drank, I went into a two-day complete functional blackout, and that's when I ended up in Northwestern Hospital. What happened in Northwestern Hospital treatment that hadn't happened to me before? I was ready. As we say in AA, I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually bankrupt.
I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I no longer got my highs or good feelings from drinking. I no longer threw up. I did most of that learning to drink. I was just sick all of the time. I was afraid to take another drink, and I was afraid not to take it. I wanted to die, but I didn't want to die this way. Something did begin to happen. I had paid for almost all my previous treatments before. This time, my insurance company from Uniloyal, who was still carrying me, paid it. I happened to have been the first person that went through a treatment program on Uniloyal insurance policy.
So when I got out, I didn't have the financial problems I usually had. It was the first time that I was close enough to go back to the treatment center. I could keep in touch and made new friends. Instead of leaving treatment, sure I had at this time, I left scared. I got involved in AA, and I went to everything I could. For the first time, I was willing to let go of everything and ready to make some changes. They told me all I had to do was give up my whole life. In order to start a new life, I had to give up the old one, which meant people, places, and things. I did just that.
They told me I had become addicted to a way of life that would have killed me. Now I must become addicted to a new way of life. Turn on the sobriety. Phil says, let's try to get as well as we can before we die. Life is just a journey. The method of triumphal is my choice. Happiness to me is living as comfortably as I can. Our lives are geared towards comfort. Wearing comfortable clothes, wearing comfortable shoes. When it's hot, we turn on the air conditioners. When it's cold, we turn on the heat. They told me I must learn to be comfortable inside with my feelings.
I believe that comfortable living is what we were all searching for through the wrong methods. In the second step, where we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable, I had to realize so had my emotions become unmanageable. And I found that I had a lot of emotions, a lot of fears and guilt and anxieties, hurts, lack of confidence and so forth, and they were painful. And I found a drug, ethyl alcohol, that whenever the pain got more than I could bear, I could cover with this and I had no pain.
And each time I went back to drinking, it was because I was hurting again and I covered it up. So I had to start taking these emotions apart. My fear is finding out what I was afraid of and what I felt guilty about. And I had to start doing something about this. I started working on my program for me. There is no right way to drink and there is no wrong way to stay sober. Whatever works for one may not be right for another. I had to find my way. I had to learn how to be happy. I had to learn how to love and care and share. I had to learn not only who I was, but that I had to accept me.
And this is another big thing in the Serenity Prayer. When I started my changes, from after I had accepted myself, I started to make some progress. In order to feel good, I had to do things that made me feel good. I believe the recovery process consists of a long series of changes. We hear so much about attitudes. About Changing Attitudes. I was told that I had to change my behavior before my attitude would change, like I had to go to AA before I liked it, to give up drinking friends before I could find and like AA people. I was told I had to try something before I could say
[00:15:23]
I can't. I can't means I won't. I was told I had to change the dependencies from the bottle to God, that I had to learn to cope with my feelings. In turning my will and my life over to God, I had to turn my emotions over also, my fears and guilt. I had to change habits. I had to set up a new value system, to set up disciplines for myself. I had to put my priorities in order. I found there were also things that I couldn't change, like other people. I couldn't change them. I could only change how I reacted to them. To me, time is a key word in my program, and the process of recovery is like growing older, one day at a time.
We don't notice ourselves getting old until we get a few years older and some time in, and we look back. The same I feel about this is in gaining and feeling better and progress in AA. The most important one factor in my recovery has been in helping other people. Three months after I left treatment, Phil Hanson called me back and asked me to start a halfway house for women. I said no. I'm a bookkeeper and I know nothing about it. Second with my past, I never could do it.
He said, that's your qualifications. You should be able to identify with almost every girl who would come there. He said, can't you see how God has had a plan for you all along. When he opens doors, go through. Wow, that was the first time anyone had ever considered my past anything good. How could I say no? Someone finally had some faith in me. Either that or maybe with only three months sobriety, I was too sick to say no.
So the first of October in 1972, I opened a halfway house for women called Crossroads No. 1. August 1, 1973, I opened Crossroads No. 2 for men. And August 1, 1974, I opened the apartment, a three-quarter house for women. This July 1, I'm taking over as director of all three. We have a total of 36 beds and as far as I know, we are the only ones that are not using any federal, state, county money or grants. Phil said if only one person gets well, the house is worthwhile. That's me.
But someone had faith in me. I got out of myself and into other people's lives. And my motivation was maybe I can help someone else not have to go through what I went through. My friend Bernice D. says she compares the 12 steps to the 10 commandments. Jesus was a teacher and he simply said, if you want to be happy, follow my program. It works. In order to feel right, we must do right. Those who make it are those who quit.
In closing, I want to thank all of you out there for being. I learned everything I know from you. My AA people, the clergy, my counselors, professionals, non-professionals. I had many teachers. I thank God for all my experiences. I evidently needed them all. God dealt with me as he saw fit. I couldn't. God could. So I let him. All of us here today that are sober got our sobriety in different ways. We must allow each other the right to feel okay about the people, places, and things that help them.
The past six weeks I traveled from Minneapolis to California, New York, Arkansas, and now Denver. I found the EE meetings were conducted a little differently in places, but they all had the same basic big bug. But there were a room full of miracles wherever I went. So people all over are getting weller.
[00:20:09]
We've come a long way since I first came to you in 1965. At the roundup in Palm Springs, a gal from Texas said, remember the old timer. If not for him, it never would have been. That's right. But for me also, if it were not for the new, I would be dead. The way we got sober may change, but the way we stay sober will not. That's with EE. Alcoholic Anonymous. Keep it as was. Let this start to begin with me. Four years ago, I couldn't talk in a group, and here I am talking to you all at an international convention. I tried.
I thank God for what he has given me. I thank him for what he has taken from me. I thank God for what he's left me. God bless, and thank you for listening to me. Well, Barbara, we know now why you were asked to share your message with us, and it was very moving, very warm sharing, and we thank you so much. Also, I'm sure those of us here would like to wish you the very best as you take over all the roles now in your venture, and I think that you too may have, I had not realized, and I apologize, but Barbara and I met just briefly for a moment before this panel started, that she is a professional in the sense of running these three facilities now, or about to, and you may have some questions that you would like to ask her as well.
We have some time. May I ask that you put your questions, so we all get a shot at this fairly briefly, and identify which doctor, or if it's Barbara, you would like to ask the question, or if it's both doctors, or all three, we'll go from there. I'll start with this gentleman here, and we'll kind of work around. Yes, please. And you're going to have to talk up, I think, because I unfortunately have this thing, but you don't.
Let me see whether I got that question right. With all the five million pills on the market, how do we know that our own doctor isn't giving us garbage? Who wants to take the last one? All right, Dr. King. That's a tough question to answer. It involves choosing a doctor wisely, and that is a very difficult task. However, most of you, I'm sure, have had a doctor or more during your days struggling with alcoholism.
If you have found one who has helped you and whom you have confidence, you can work with them. And if you have a new doctor who doesn't know of your alcoholic past, tell him frankly about it, and tell him that you don't want to get hooked again on another drug. Because alcohol is the worst drug of them all, but some of the newer ones are pretty bad, too. And lay your cards on the table. Tell him, please avoid any drug that may get you started on an addictive path again. Thank you.
Dr. Bradley, would you like to comment on that? Tell him you're an alcoholic, and make sure that he labels your prescription, too. Tell him you want the prescription with the name of the thing. And you've got lots of friends to ask. All right, we'll take one from the other side. This gentleman over here, please. I have a recent experience, because I think it might be of interest to many people. I do a talk about an alcoholic counselor, and I'll eliminate the 20-year history of the incident.
[00:25:03]
He ended up one morning in the hospital with a broken sock or a tooth, and his liver was damaged, and he was suffering from malnutrition, and he was anemic, and they had to operate on him. He was in surgery over five hours. He was in intensive care over eight days, and the doctor let him out of the hospital. All he gave him was some medicine for water. He had swollen up a leg. All the time, I was trying to have him ask the doctor if there was some vitamins or some minerals or something that he needed to rebuild his system.
He told the doctor, he was taking Geritol, and the doctor said, well, that's all right, continue on that. Now, this was not in the forests of Upper Michigan. This was near the Detroit area. Now, as a 12-step worker, what can I do in a situation like this to put in the patient's mind questions that he can ask the doctor when the family is dealing with a doctor who does not know very little about alcoholism?
Well, you'd just have to go to another doctor. That doesn't work. In the first place, the man was taken on an emergency. He came to a hospital, so there was no time to educate the doctors and get them all together. I'm asking you a question that I can be confronted with some day, maybe next week. I don't have time to educate the doctors, so what can I say to this patient when he's coming out of recovery and he's not sent to a rehabilitation center?
This doctor probably is a magnificent doctor to have done what he did in the seven or eight hours. There's not a great deal you can do while he is a patient in the hospital. And the best you can do when he… Well, then tell him about Geritol and the percentage of alcohol in Geritol, and then it's up to the patient to decide. Oh, I have no idea. Possibly folic acid. It sounds like it could be anemic. There's a lot of things you would need.
What about Dr. Williams, the biochemist, and he said that alcohol can tend to make the patient do magnesium and various other things. And he had developed a vitamin that was said to be for alcohol. All of Dr. Williams' pills are available in three square meals a day. All right, we'll take a lady. I'd like some suggestions from Dr. Bradley in dealing as a 12-step worker with an alcoholic who's post-withdrawal, four, five, six, nine months, who is still strongly urged by the physician to continue the use of Valium and Library.
And they're afraid that this continues. On his advice. Well, the federal government, who I'm aligned, have now made Valium, Librium, and Equinol much more difficult for that doctor to prescribe. Then you're going to have to put your program against his relationship with the physician. Then you're going to have to put your program against his relationship with the physician. And that's all you can do.
And so you get very rabid and you turn against folic acid or whatever this other patient probably needed and should have had. You'll notice I didn't include coffee in my list today. Very little doubt in my mind that lithium is less dangerous to use than coffee. So you must approach, and in my 25 years of working with physicians and AA, I expect AA to have a lot more common sense and a lot more equanimity and a lot more concern for this person than the physician.
So just mount your battle and something as destructive as Valium and Librium, I would ask him to leave the doctor. Any physician today in the United States who orders Valium or Librium or Equinol for an alcoholic, for anybody's record, outside of a hospital setting. There are other reasons for using Valium. Outside of a hospital setting is practicing poor medicine. is practicing poor medicine, but not for long, they are being told in very big letters now
[00:30:08]
these are very serious drugs, we use it in psychiatry as an aid to psychotherapy, psychiatrists aren't classically in favor of medication, they take more pride in their great skills, but they use Valium and Librium now, they used Mepribanate before, and there's no… Mind that Lithium is less dangerous to use than coffee, so you must approach, in my 25 years of working with physicians and AA, I expect AA to have a lot more common sense and a lot more equanimity and a lot more concern for this person than the physician, so just mount your battle, and something as destructive as Valium and Librium, I would ask him to leave the doctor.
Any physician today in the United States who orders Valium or Librium or Equinol for an alcoholic, outside of a hospital setting, I would ask him to leave the hospital setting, I would ask him to leave the hospital setting, they take more pride in their great skills, but they use Valium and Librium now, they used Mepribanate before, and there's no question in my mind, we just have to come up with the scientific explanation of how this would work, that anybody using Valium or Librium precludes any possibility of them learning anything new, and there's no question in my mind.
Drawing an alcoholic with Valium, and in a hospital setting, the average person who is admitted to a hospital nowadays, it's hard to get in, as I said, Valium is probably life-saving in some cases, we don't expect them to learn anything the first three or four days, but with enough alcohol in the system, they're not going to learn anything, and it precludes, any good counselor knows he's not getting anywhere with a patient fogged down with Valium.
You can get more and more vicious in your attack now on Valium, Librium, and Equinol. But I said you've got to approach this with some caution, you know, you realize that AA is against everything, you're against Oran-A, you're against high blood pressure pills, you're against vitamins, you're against everything. I would predict that about 30% of the patients we admit to our hospital should probably be discharged on Thorazine and Lithium.
Now those are serious, powerful drugs. They do not interfere with your ability to think. If they do, take them at night, you don't have to take them like you do Valium. The trouble with them is that the patients won't keep using them. There's no recorded case of an alcoholic abusing Lithium or Thorazine. And yet, as a profession, we refuse to use them. We used Amphetamine, we're entirely responsible for the Amphetamine epidemic, and there are very valid tests to show that Amphetamine under no circumstances reduces the appetite.
And yet, billions of pills we sold on that. Yes, Barbara, something you'd like to say.
[00:35:03]
I would just like to say that I think, you know, as an alcoholic, I think, like I said in my talk, that it's not the use of things, but we misuse. And I think there are many drugs that are needed, you know, for different things. I think that it's time that we too take the responsibility for the drugs that we put in our mouth. I think we keep blaming doctors and people, you know, for what it is, but I think once, this is what education is about, once we've been through treatment programs and that we have learned what it can do, I think we need to take this responsibility ourselves.
Thank you. I'm Jim, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to ask you, Dr. Bradley, do you have any information on the success of the application of Encarbonate for the peculiar type of a chronic alcoholic who's emotionally unstable or psychologically sick of a wrong alcohol range? You said they stopped taking the lithium. I've had more dramatic success giving lithium carbonate to friends of mine who are in the recovered category or arrested category of alcoholism.
Yeah, we find it a very exciting drug, not like you're reading that it's a new miracle or answer, but we've said that for years that alcoholics are moody, compulsive, perfectionistic people and there ain't really such a thing as what an alcoholic, but a personality, but yeah, it's a very exciting drug and almost a miracle in 24 hours, 12 hours, a person will feel like an all together different person.
Now you're taking a salt there and a salt is a dangerous thing, sodium chloride, ordinary salt is dangerous. Incidentally, this is the powerfulness of alcohol is that it acts like a salt and alcohol breaks down into the carboxyl group, which is a big thing and so it acts exactly like a salt and this is why you get a glow in 10 minutes that's for real because it's a salt. After you use it for a prolonged time, the toxic effects of alcohol is that it's also a fat solvent or an aliphatic drug and that's a different thing and it gets into the cells and starts to change the structure so it has two actions, acute, so its immediate action is a salt reaction and lithium is very much tied up with alcohol's capacity to act as a salt, so we're very concerned about the potassium, that's why a person is delirious and the magnesium that he mentioned and lithium is in that field is also a salt, so it's a very effective drug, it's not a miracle, it is a miracle with some people and as we know it's going to be fairly non-toxic but quite contraindicated in some people and there's some indication that it's going to be very dangerous mixed with a few drugs, any medicine we take nowadays, the dicuminin that thins your blood, the birth pill, the oral diabetic pills, they're all dangerous drugs mixed with other drugs, so your doctor now has got to become a pharmacologist and you've got to have the backbone to tell this doctor what am I taking this for, what are the odds, why am I taking it, can I get along without it and it is the responsibility of the patient to say.
It's too early yet to say, Other than alcoholism, say from a criminal type of mind, does this have any effect on alimony or other controls that he would have any control of his own self? I cut that out of my speech to get down to the 30 minutes, I personally am not a fan of the addictive personality, I don't think alcoholics are prone to be addicted to any other chemical just because they're addicted to alcohol, that's a complete myth as far as I'm concerned, it's a comfortable myth
[00:40:01]
if you're not willing to give up alcohol, you just jump to something else. Now, alcoholics who are not willing to face the facts of life and do something about it, obviously are going to be hooked on anything they take, even trouble or feeling sorry for themselves. And of course the best way of not doing anything, of avoiding problems is not to worry, not to be anxious and of course by far the best non-worry drug is alcohol and its closest competitor is equinol and now librium and valium, I don't know why people use librium, valium, equinol is still a better tranquilizer than valium or librium, it's just not fashionable anymore.
You see, lithium does not alter your ability to think, thorazine will in large doses and so that we very quickly put the person we think has to be on thorazine because their thinking just won't straighten out, I'm sure this is organic, and we very quickly put them on a 1-3 so they take 3 at night and you're going to be as dopey as you want as long as you're sleeping and the effect that we're looking for, if you think of the very specific metabolic effect chemically pure now is what you want during the waking hours.
Lithium looks like a very safe drug that way, addictive ways, very dangerous drug but your doctor is well informed on that. See, it was a salt substitute in the 20s and that's why it got this reputation for being dangerous but people had it on the table and were whapping it on everything they ate so they were eating a pail of it. They figured that cancer, that saccharin or whatever it was, the good one, causes cancer but then some wise guy figured out that the cause would have you have to eat a pail of that stuff a day and I figured out that's exactly what I was using a day.
Dr. Kamm, you've got comments. About lithium, it was in a VA hospital in Maine that the first studies were done with lithium. Now, I do want to caution you about lithium a little. Don't expect your doctor to be current about it. It's still a very experimental use of the drug. It hasn't been used by many people. It is, as Dr. Bardia said, a very dangerous drug. It has to be monitored in the blood to make sure that you haven't gotten excess because it is a killing drug in excess.
And don't expect your doctor to know much about it. There are very few doctors who do. It's still in the very early experimental stage. What is high blood pressure? What is high blood pressure? I don't know that it would be contraindicated unless you're taking a drug, a hypotensive drug that might interact with lithium. No, I don't think it will be contraindicated on the basis of salt, no. Is there anybody who has a question that doesn't deal with pharmacology or drugs at the moment?
We'll take that lady there. Barb, I'd like to address you just for a minute. Barb and I have been cousins before our days in AA, we were distant cousins. And I do think for the strength and the courage it is just a perfect position. Thank you very much. Gentleman with the glasses by the door. Excuse me, could you repeat that because the applause is going, I'm not sure. I would like to make a question for my doctor.
For many years I have had tendencies to suffer from migraine headaches. I have sued I went through all the tests and they can't find anything. They seem to think it's a nerve extension. I feel no tension, but I also know that there's probably something that's causing it, that's under the surface.
[00:45:05]
And I've even found that she's become a part of my program, helping with certain headaches. As far as the psychiatry is concerned, could you tell me anything that, could you suggest anything? Because they have recommended that you would be able to go to the psychiatrist. Could I make a suggestion on that, if the doctors are willing, that you talk to them after this session, is that agreeable? If you'd come up there and chat with them, because yours is a personal problem.
This gentleman here, please, the yellow shirt. Yes, my name is Regan, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to ask the doctors, just as a specific thing, when they were first involved with the AA program as a part of their treatment, what was the presentation that convinced you that this program could be helpful to alcoholic patients? And I ask that for a reason, because I come from a place where I think the mail must be a little slow, because a lot of the physicians that we come in contact with are not only, they don't know too much about the AA program, but some of them are actually quite volatile in their reaction against it, for various reasons.
In fact, just three weeks ago, one doctor said to me that he didn't like the AA program because it is a Christian program. That is kind of, I'm wondering, what is it that we tell these guys? How could we, you know, apart from presenting ourselves as recovered alcoholics, what goes over, what convinces a doctor that the AA program could be helpful? Well, I really covered that in my speech there. You've got to be patient and kind, and one day at a time, and easy does it.
There but for the grace of God go I. You've got to respect the doctor for what he's able to do. None of us could do what this doctor did in the surgery for seven or eight or eleven hours. Now we were impressed because the AA were more than willing to teach us and to talk. You can imagine Lynn and Pat and some of those clowns, they talk all night, and we listened all night. But they backed up their things with a great deal of energy, a great deal of patience.
They blew their stack once in a while, but the only way to do it is by example. And your own sobriety is the single largest weapon you have. Single largest weapon you have. I don't know whether we were peculiarly blessed in Minnesota or not. We always attributed the success in Minneapolis to the fact that the best-known drunk and the most frequently arrested skid row character in Minneapolis became sober.
The first alcoholic I seriously worked with was a priest. And we had a new drug then, an antispasmodic drug to get rid of tremors, something like Valium was supposed to now. So we ran an IV on him, Fred and I, and he was impressed as a dickens. This guy, about four hours, drank tomato juice. And Fred informed me that this is a good sign when an alcoholic will take something by mouth. And then Fred was a good civil servant.
He went on a weekend pass, and I was left with a priest. So he was fine, the drug. We did a miracle job on him. He was feeling fine. And then he told me that he was a priest and he had to run a mass the next day. Well, who in the hell ever associated mass and church and religion with drinking? So I thought it was perfectly fine to let him go. So he fed right back about Sunday, 4 o'clock, a little apprehensive about how physically well this guy was, and he wasn't there.
And he blew his stack because he found out I had given him permission to leave. And he knew he was dealing with a real baby. I explained to him that it's perfectly all right, Fred, don't worry.
[00:50:01]
He's going to say a mass. So you have to be kind and persistent. I don't think it's worthwhile using clout. I think you've got to learn to discipline yourself. A lot of you get out of hand in an institution. I say now you've got the question of Valium Limb, just tell them what the hell you ought to know better than that. Get some literature. There's another good trick. Way back then, Fred had all the copies of the Quarterly Journal.
And I'm sure he was the only one in the state of Minnesota that had copies of the Quarterly Journal. So keep trying. I don't have any other trick for you. As soon as you get a good one, then he is your best friend. Then he is your best advocate of the thing. We have time for just about two more questions. Charles? A question for Dr. Bradley. Occasionally in listening to other disciplines, I still hear professional people talking about treating alcoholism from the point of view of the underlying symptoms.
In other words, why is he an alcoholic? After all, he's a recovered alcoholic. I personally don't believe that. I think my alcoholism is an inside out illness. The outside circumstances are not the reason for my drinking. Is there still a tendency in the profession, the medical profession, to look at the underlying symptoms and try and treat emotional problems instead of getting the drug head on? Oh, I don't think so.
I would suppose about 85% of psychiatrists still think that's the answer to treat the underlying psychosis or whatever the hell they got. And you know, it's really, doctors are in some states by law now have to treat and they're doing with all their miracle drugs and routines. They bring people back from liver coma now. They're absolutely shocked that you return to drinking. Now, you still have the same problem as the fellow in the yellow shirt has.
And I don't know. So most of the referrals today you're still getting are really slough-offs. And you're getting them from psychiatrists because they are treatment failures. I don't know when they're going to accept. So you're asking us to make a big decision, a big step. You're trying to tell me that my 10 years of psychiatric training really doesn't apply to the 10 million people who have an alcohol problem and the 50 million people who are overweight and the 40 million people who smoke cigarettes and the 9, 5 billion Valium users.
I don't think a single one of these people are going to solve their problem by looking for some vague, abstract psychological explanation. You better attack what's bothering you now and do it the 12-step way. The lady there in the yellow blouse, please. Dr. Bradley, could you comment please on the awful token idea of taking on heavy sweets when you quit drinking and substituting refined sugar addition for the sugar and alcohol?
I don't know what's the most treacherous part of our diet. We don't really know the fats or the carbohydrates. It's about the best substitute I know. It looks like we're going to have to give up this coffee business one of these days, but let's hope by that time the Sanka will be more palatable. We now serve all through the institution, Sanka, including the staff. We've got to drink the damn stuff too.
We have decaffeinated coffee in the treatment center. And after three days, it'll be terrible going back, but after three days it tastes just as bad as the old coffee used to taste. It's the good stuff. So just be aware that you're functioning out of control. So when you have your hard candy and eat one every half hour, that's fine,
[00:55:02]
but when you eat half a pound every half hour, then you say to yourself, and you still are able to think, so you work on this and on yourself. And this is what we like to think, and we did innocently get involved with equinol, really, thinking this is certainly a lesser. But remember the damn EAs in Minnesota that thought that equinol and Embutol were better than alcohol. They used to carry them around their pockets all the time, and the masks.
So just count your blessings and say, I'm hooked on something now that at least is not so seriously affecting my ability to think. But my God, that's an awful routine I'm advocating, but I think that's where we're headed, really. The nutritionist who worked with our hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, says that there are soups of soups that will give you that great sugar that are not the same kind of candy and ice cream.
Oh, I don't know. These are real. Fructose may cause cancer now, for all we know. I think time is up. I'm sure that you join me in expressing thanks to Dr. Kayham, Dr. Bradley, and Barbara. And for those of you who would like to, would you join me in the Lord's Prayer, please? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.