Here is the Evansville Press story about his visit:
Ex-Drunks Laud Doctor at “Victory” Dinner Here
Ex-Drunks Laud Doctor at “Victory” Dinner Here
There was another convention in Evansville Sunday night. But it was the strangest convention in Evansville’s history. There were no badges, no resolutions were adopted, no committees were appointed, no one wanted his picture in the paper, and there was no fund raising oratory.
It was a convention of victorious ex-drunkards, who with their wives and husbands, 75 in all, from Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois, met for a banquet in the McCurdy to pay tribute to an Akron doctor who six years ago founded Alcoholics Anonymous.
The anonymous doctor, once a hopeless alcoholic himself, was greeted with a storm of applause that was almost hero-worship. Humbly, reverently he acknowledged the acclamation. And then, without gestures or after-dinner prelude, he told the simple story of how he and a New York friend found the cure for alcoholism in a bit of common sense, will power and a great amount of faith and humility.
Can’t Be Social Drinkers
He avoided the usual medical terms. “It doesn’t do us any good to worry why we’re alcoholics,” he said. “Let the psychiatrists argue the causes; we know only that we’re allergic, that drinking to us is a disease that due to the lack of something in our make-up we can never hope to be social drinkers.”
The doctor defined an alcoholic--"an alky," he called it--as one who has reached "the obsession stage of drinking."
Alcoholics Anonymous is no reform organization. It has no quarrel with anyone. It is not concerned about prohibition. Nor is it affiliated with any religion. Each member is concerned primarily with his own rescue, and in payment for it he is willing, anxious, to assist some other drunk who wants help.
Work Together
It is this working together that seems to be one of the big factors in the success of the A.A., which now has a nationwide membership of 6000 men and woman from all walks of life. Because the normal alcoholic will not heed the advice of a non-drinker. It takes someone who understands the problem of the alcoholic, who knows from experience that it is something far deeper than mere habit.
"Every alcoholic must solve his own problem," the Akron doctor warned. "You can't pay a doctor or a sanitarium or a psychoanalyst to do what only you yourself can do."
In the audience which heard the anonymous doctor Sunday night was a prominent Tri-State doctor, an engineer, a sales-manager, a prosperous small-town Hoosier merchant. There was no holier-than-thou attitude. They were men and women who recognized the truth, that they were sick.
They boasted of their own victories. And, significantly, alcoholics don't say "It's been six months since I've had a drink." They say "It's been six months since I've been drunk."
Because, being alcoholic--and once an alky, always an alky--they know from past experience that if they permit themselves one drink there'll be no stopping.
Scared of Alcoholic Tonic
One man, who prior to six months ago admitted he was consuming more than a quart of whisky a day, said that even now he was "so afraid of the stuff that I won't even take medicine or a tonic that contains alcohol."
So they regard that first drink with unspeakable horror, and avoid it--if they can.
There are slip-ups, of course, but they are comparatively few. Nothing like the futile cure-alls and sanitarium treatments of years past. Some of the younger members, especially, are optimistic and cocky enough to think that eventually they will be able to learn temperance like their friends.
No Preaching
So they relax from the A.A. program, and "slip"--and that is a word you hear often at these meetings. "I almost slipped." "I talked to him for eight hours and the next day he slipped." But after they slip, if they do, they come back to the A.A. meetings. And then there is no preaching, no threats, only help and understanding.
Anonymous Alcoholics is no longer an experiment. It works. The Evansville A.A. chapte meets every week. It has about 50 members. Professional spiritual leaders are not encouraged to take a hand in the meetings. Instead, they serve as the "bird dogs" making contacts between the A.A. and alcoholics who want help.
No dues are collected at the meetings. However, there is a "kitty" to which members contribute from 10 cents to 25 cents, or nothing if they prefer.
Anyone wishing to contact the Evansville chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous may write the organization in care of the Evansville Press.
Evansville Press, 10/27/41
