It was a hot night in the midsummer of 1934. I found myself at
a noted address in Central Park West New York City. It was in
Charlie Towns hospital for drying out alcoholics.
Sobering and sweltering out a fearful hangover I laid abed in
an upstairs room. Downstairs the doctor looked across his desk at
my wife Lois.
She was saying, "Doctor, why can't Bill stop drinking? He
always had great willpower. Yet here he is, facing ruin again,
and still he can't stop. The more he struggles, the worse he gets.
I
am scared, heartbroken and confused I know he is, too. He'd do
anything-anything at all to stop. Tell me, Doctor, why can't
be?"
Lois was asking the same terrible question that uncounted
women bad asked before. Her's was a riddle quite as old as mans
first discovery that alcohol could he made from grapes and grains.
Again she said, "Please tell me the truth doctor. Why can't Bill
stop?"
In his long experience with serious drinkers the good doctor
Had faced that terrible heartbreaker a thousand times. By nature
compassionate, he never failed to wince whenever a distraught
wife husband or friend of a sufferer had profounded anew the
burdened riddle of alcoholism. Bill's dilemma bad interested and
moved him deeply. How could he now bring himself to tell Lois
the truth?
The benign little doctors face turned grave as [he] began to
speak. "When Bill first came to this hospital three years ago, I felt
that he might be one of those rare cases who might recover. I
hoped that when be better understood himself and the nature of
his illness, he might win out. In spite of his several severe relapses
since then, I have gone on hoping. For, as you say, he desperately
wants to quit and his will to do so is very great. But now I'm
discouraged. I'm afraid he's going to be like nearly all the other
alcoholics who come my way.
"Well Doctor" cried Lois just what do you mean by that. Won't
he ever get better?"
I'm a low Gently, some the Doctor went on, "As you already understand,
your
husband is a sick man. I think the time is here to tell you more
about his illness and how really serious his condition now is.
Gently, the Doctor went on "Mrs W - said he, you already know
that your husband is a sick man. But I've never told you just how
sick an alcoholic can be, nor have I ever explained this illness to
you as I understand it from my long observation. There are a lot
of theories about the underlying causes of compulsive drinking
like Bill? Of these we can take our pick. But there are some solid
facts, too, which no one who has watched many alcoholics could
well dispute.
Fact one is that innumerable alcoholic men and women really
want to control their destructive drinking and then find, to their
dismay, that they cannot. They cannot moderate their drinking
as other people do. Nor, even when faced with the most terrible
consequences, can they stop altogether, no matter how desperate
their plight. Never do the excuses they make for their sprees justify
their self destruction pattern of continuous self destruction. Their
behavior
becomes completely illogical and irrational—it really verges on
insanity. And even when they well understand all this, they go
on as before. Where alcohol is concerned, their minds no longer
rule their emotions. The
A new spree can be started upon the [slightest of] excuses or
rationalizations. And when Sometimes when the provocations
seems great, May seems great then but its
always very small when the certain destructive results are considered
When for example life gives the average man a heavy
bump, he doesn't seize a hammer and beat himself into [insensibility].
Yet, in effect, that? what the sick alcoholic does, over and
over. All reason, all incentive, even the greatest desire to stop,
seems to be swamped when the craving for alcohol takes bold
"Therefore the biggest fact about alcoholism is its obsessional
nature. It is one of the most subtle yet most powerful compulsions
known. Once it's grip is firm, the chance for recovery is diminished.
How to help the alcoholic to expel his obsession is the problem.
But we doctors have had little success: I've seldom helped
even one case in a hundred."
"Nor is the drinkers obsession the whole story: alcoholism is a
physical malady too. In nearly all cases the bodies of problem
drinkers become painfully sensitive to alcohol. In the early stages
of their malady some alcoholics can drink quantities of liquor
without serious physical reaction. But continued excesses finally
cause them to lose that ability; they seem to get allergic to the
stuff; so much so that hangovers produce great physical agony and
sometimes delirium tremens or convulsions too often followed by
brain damage and mental deterioration that can be permanent.