December 1947
You don’t know what lonesome is until you have taken your first slip after being exposed to the Alcoholics Anonymous program. You thought you were lonely beforeyou ever attended an AA meeting. Sure, the alcoholic is the loneliest person in the world—isolated, ignored, scorned. You can admit no one to your little twilight world.
Then you are exposed to AA. Dozens of friendly hands are extended to you, dozens of warm voices say, “Hello, pal. Have a cup of coffee.” You start to tell them your story and they say, “Sure, we know. We’ve been there, too. We know what you’re talking about.”
So you bask in the cheerful warmth of their friendship, you listen to their talk, you study the program and try to clear the fog out of your brain. Pretty soon things begin to look rosy. Why, say, this is peaches and cream; this is the life you’ve been looking for. Somebody gave you a dollar and a clean shirt. Maybe they even got you a job. The program is easy.
All you have to do is follow it, and that’s a simple matter when you’re traveling with people who are struggling toward the same goal you are. Life is a bed of roses, and someone has kindly removed all the thorns. That’s what youthink.
Then comes the first bump. The boss says something that hurts your feelings. Or you see a girl you want, but she doesn’t want you. Or maybe it rains, or the sun shines too much. Whatever the reason, the old despair comes into your heart, the old glaze dulls your eyes, and you head for the nearest tavern.
So you start pouring it down. You could quit after the first one. Then you remember that it doesn’t matter now; you’ve already taken the first one. There’s a meeting tonight, but you can’t go. You may be a heel, but you’re not that much of a heel. You’ve shut yourself away from those people, and you sit there crying in your beer, remembering how good they were to you, how they tried to help you.
So the sun goes down, and twilight comes on, and the tavern fills up, and you’re beginning to understand what lonesome is. That bleary blonde over there is watching you, and the look in her eye makes your stomach churn a little. The tavern is full of loud, hoarse voices, and there is no sense in what they are saying. And the juke box is playing “When You Were Sweet Sixteen” and you try to think back to a girl you knew who was sweet sixteen, but you can’t remember her name, and she’s probably dead anyway, and life is a pretty sad mess, so you cry a little more and call for another beer.
The meeting will be starting just about now, but you can’t go. Everybody is standing, someone is reading the Twelve Steps. “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.” The words of those Steps are written on your heart, and the first thing you know you are repeating them out loud, and the guy next to you gives you a fishy look and goes over and whispers to the bartender.
Remember how you looked when you were drunk—like an old sick cat that has been left out in the rain too long? Remember how you felt—like the frazzled end of a misspent life? Remember what went through your mind—the bells and birds and bees, and the little slithering things that nobody could see but you? But you didn’t remember soon enough. You struck a blow at your last hope, you tried to tramp it to death in a senseless frenzy for one more drink. And those friends you had made—you struck a blow at their defense as well as your own.
And the great beacon light burns on, trying to light your way through the fog. And you know that it will always be there, burning bright when your eyes become clear enough to see it. But you’re sitting there, and at last you really know what lonesome is.
I.S., Portland, Ore.
Slips and Human Nature
by William Duncan Silkworth, MD
January 1947
The mystery of slips is not so deep as it may appear. While it does seem odd that an alcoholic, who has restored himself to a dignified place among his fellowmen and continued dry for years, should suddenly throw all his happiness overboard and find himself again in mortal peril of drowning in liquor, often the reason is simple.
People are inclined to say, “There is something peculiar about alcoholics. They seem to be well, yet at any moment they may turn back to their old ways. You can never be sure.”
This is largely twaddle. The alcoholic is a sick person. Under the techniques of Alcoholics Anonymous, he gets well—that is to say, his disease is arrested. There is nothing unpredictable about him any more than there is anything weird about a person who has arrested diabetes.
Let’s get it clear, once and for all, that alcoholics are human beings. Then we can safeguard ourselves intelligently against most slips.
In both professional and lay circles, there is a tendency to label everything that an alcoholic may do as “alcoholic behavior.” The truth is, it is simply human nature.
It is very wrong to consider many of the personality traits observed in liquor addicts as peculiar to the alcoholic. Emotional and mental quirks are classified as symptoms of alcoholism merely because alcoholics have them, yet those same quirks can be found among nonalcoholics, too. Actually, they are symptoms of mankind!
Of course, the alcoholic himself tends to think of himself as different, somebody special, with unique tendencies and reactions. Many psychiatrists, doctors, and therapists carry the same idea to extremes in their analyses and treatment of alcoholics. Sometimes, they make a complicated mystery of a condition which is found in all human beings, whether they drink whiskey or buttermilk.
To be sure, alcoholism, like every other disease, does manifest itself in some unique ways. It does have a number of baffling peculiarities which differ from those of all other diseases.
At the same time, many of the symptoms and much of the behavior of alcoholism are closely paralleled and even duplicated in other diseases.
The slip is a relapse! It is a relapse that occurs after the alcoholic has stopped drinking and started on the AA program of recovery. Slips usually occur in the early stages of the alcoholic’s AA indoctrination, before he has had time to learn enough of the AA technique and AA philosophy to give him a solid footing. But slips may also occur after an alcoholic has been a member of AA for many months or even several years, and it is in this kind, above all, that one finds a marked similarity between the alcoholic’s behavior and that of “normal” victims of other diseases.
It happens this way: When a tubercular patient recovers sufficiently to be released from the sanitarium, the doctor gives him careful instructions for the way he is to live when he gets home. He must drink plenty of milk. He must refrain from smoking. He must obey other stringent rules.
For the first several months, perhaps for several years, the patient follows directions. But as his strength increases and he feels fully recovered, he becomes slack. There may come the night when he decides he can stay up until ten o’clock. When he does this, nothing untoward happens. Soon, he is disregarding the directions given him when he left the sanitarium. Eventually, he has a relapse!
The same tragedy can be found in cardiac cases. After the heart attack, the patient is put on a strict rest schedule. Frightened, he naturally follows directions obediently for a long time. He, too, goes to bed early, avoids exercise such as walking upstairs, quits smoking, and leads a Spartan life. Eventually, though, there comes a day, after he has been feeling good for months or several years, when he feels he has regained his strength, and has also recovered from his fright. If the elevator is out of repair one day, he walks up the three flights of stairs. Or he decides to go to a party—or do just a little smoking—or take a cocktail or two. If no serious aftereffects follow the first departure from the rigorous schedule prescribed, he may try it again, until he suffers a relapse.
In both cardiac and tubercular cases, the acts which led to the relapses were preceded by wrong thinking. The patient in each case rationalized himself out of a sense of his own perilous reality. He deliberately turned away from his knowledge of the fact that he had been the victim