1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer Articles - Part 4
The first extensive publicity of the newly-formed AA Fellowship.
These articles are reprinted from the Cleveland Plain Dealer with
permission The Elrick B. Davis Articles From The Cleveland Plain Dealer
October - November 1939
===========================================================================
These articles appeared in the main Cleveland newspaper, the Plain
Dealer, just five months after the first A.A. group was formed in
Cleveland. The articles resulted in hundreds of calls for help from
suffering alcoholics who reached out for the hope that the fledgling
Alcoholics Anonymous offered.
The thirteen reliable members of the Cleveland group handled as many as
500 calls in the first month following the appearance of Davis' articles.
The following year Cleveland could boast 20 to 30 groups with hundreds of
members.
===========================================================================
October 21, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 1
October 23, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 2
October 24, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 3
October 25, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 4
October 26, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 5
November 2, 1939, A Noted Divine Reviews "Alcoholics Anonymous"
November 4, 1939, A Physician Looks Upon Alcoholics Anonymous
===========================================================================
Reprinted from the October 25, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer with
permission
Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
Part 4
By Elrick B. Davis
In three previous articles, Mr. Davis has told of Alcoholics Anonymous,
an organization of former drinkers banded to break the liquor habit and
to save others from over drinking. This is the fourth of a series.
Understanding
What gets the pathological drinker who finally has reached such state
that he is willing to listen to a cured rummy member of Alcoholics
Anonymous, is that the retrieved alcoholic not only understands what only
another alcoholic can understand, but a great deal that the unreformed
drunk thinks no one else could know because he has never told anyone, and
his difficulties or escapades must be private to his own history.
Fact is the history of all alcoholics is the same; some have been addicts
longer than others, and some have painted brighter red patches around the
town — that is all. What they have heard in the "cure" hospitals
they have frequented, or from the psychoanalysts they have consulted, or
the physicians who have tapered them off one bender or another at home,
has convinced them that alcoholism is a disease. But they are sure (a)
that their version of the disease differs from everyone else's and (b)
that in them it hasn't reached the incurable stage anyway.
Head of the "cure" told them: "If you ever take another drink, you'll be
back." Psychoanalyst said "Psychologically, you have never been weaned.
Your subconscious is still trying to get even with your mother for some
forgotten slight." Family or hotel physician said "If you don't quite
drinking, you'll die."
Reproof
Lawyers, ministers, business partners and employers, parents and wives,
also are professionally dedicated to listening to confidences and
accepting confessions without undue complaint. But the clergyman may say:
"Your drinking is a sin." And partner or employer: "You'll have to quit
this monkey business or get out." And wife or parent: "This drinking is
breaking my heart." And everyone: "Why don't you exercise some will power
and straighten up and be a man."
"But," the alcoholic whispers in his heart. "No one but I can know that I
must drink to kill suffering too great to stand."
He presents his excuses to the retrieved alcoholic who has come to talk.
Can't sleep without liquor. Worry. Business troubles. Debt. Alimentary
pains. Overwork. Nerves too high strung. Grief. Disappointment. Deep dark
phobic fears. Fatigue. Family difficulties. Loneliness.
The catalog has got no farther than that when the member of Alcoholics
Anonymous begins rattling off an additional list.
"Hogwash," he says. "Don't try those alibis on me. I have used them all
myself."
Understanding
And then he tells his own alcoholic history, certainly as bad, perhaps
far worse than the uncured rummy's. They match experiences. Before he
knows it the prospect for cure has told his new friend things he had
never admitted even to himself. A rough and ready psychiatry, that, but
it works, as the cured members of the Cleveland Chapter of Alcoholics
Anonymous all are restored to society to testify. And that is the reason
for the fellowship's weekly gatherings. They are testimonial meetings.
The members meet to find new victims to cure, and to buck each other up.
For years their social and emotional life has all been elbow-bending. Now
they provide each other a richer society to replace the old. Hence, the
fellowship's family parties and picnics.
Never for a moment do they forget that a practicing alcoholic is a very
sick person. Never for a moment can they forget that even medical men who
know the nature of the disease are apt to feel that failure to recover is
a proof of moral perversity in the patient. If a man is dying of cancer,
no one says: "Why doesn't he exercise some will power and kill that
cancer off." If he is coughing his lungs out with tuberculosis, no one
says: "Buck up and quit coughing; be a man." They may say to the first:
"Submit to surgery before it is too late;" to the second: "Take a cure
before you are dead."
Religion
Retrieved alcoholics talk in that fashion to their uncured fellows. They
say: "You are a very sick man. Physically sick — you have an
allergy to alcohol. We can put you in a hospital that will sweat that
poison out. Mentally sick. We know how to cure that. And spiritually sick.
"To cure your spiritual illness you will have to admit God. Name your own
God, or define Him to suit yourself. But if you are really willing to 'do
anything' to get well, and if it is really true — and we know it is
— that you drink when you don't want to and that you don't know why
you get drunk, you'll have to quit lying to yourself and adopt a
spiritual way of life. Are you ready to accept help?"
And the miracle is that, for alcoholics brought to agreement by pure
desperation, so simple a scheme works.
Cleveland alone has 50 alcoholics, all former notorious drunks, now
members of Alcoholics Anonymous to prove it. None is a fanatic
prohibitionist. None has a quarrel with liquor legitimately used by
people physically, nervously, and spiritually equipped to use it. They
simply know that alcoholics can't drink and live, and that their
"incurable" disease has been conquered.
Contact:
The Legacy Group of Alcoholics Anonymous © 2005