1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer Articles - Part 3
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
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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.
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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
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Reprinted from the October 24, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer with
permission Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here Part 3
By Elrick B. Davis
In two previous articles, Mr. Davis told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an
organization of former drinkers, banded to overcome their craving for
liquor and to help others to forego the habit. This is the third of a
series.
Help
The ex-drunks cured of their medically incurable alcoholism by membership
in Alcoholic Anonymous, know that the way to keep themselves from
backsliding is to find another pathological alcoholic to help. Or to
start a new man toward cure. That is the way that the Akron chapter of
the society, and from that, the Cleveland fellowship was begun.
One of the earliest of the cured rummies had talked a New York securities
house into taking a chance that he was really through with liquor. He was
commissioned to do a stock promotion chore in Akron. If he should
succeed, his economic troubles also would be cured. Years of alcoholism
had left him bankrupt as well as a physical and social wreck before
Alcoholics Anonymous had saved him.
His Akron project failed. Here he was on a Saturday afternoon in a
strange hotel in a town where he did not know a soul, business hopes
blasted, and with scarcely money enough to get him back to New York with
a report that would leave him without the last job he knew of for him in
the world. If ever disappointment deserved drowning, that seemed the
time. A bunch of happy folk were being gay at the bar.
At the other end of the lobby the Akron church directory was framed in
glass. He looked up the name of a clergyman. The cleric told him of a
woman who was worried about a physician who was a nightly solitary drunk.
The doctor had been trying to break himself of alcoholism for twenty
years. He had tried all of the dodges: Never anything but light wines or
beer; never a drink alone; never a drink before his work was done; a
certain few number of drinks and then stop; never drink in a strange
place; never drink in a familiar place; never mix the drinks; always mix
the drinks; never drink before eating; drink only while eating; drink and
then eat heavily to stop the craving — and all of the rest.
Every alcoholic knows all of the dodges. Every alcoholic has tried them
all. That is why an uncured alcoholic thinks someone must have been
following him around to learn his private self-invented devices, when a
member of Alcoholics Anonymous talks to him. Time comeswhen any alcoholic
has tried them all, and found that none of them work.
Support
The doctor had just taken his first evening drink when the rubber baron's
wife telephoned to ask him to come to her house to meet a friend from New
York. He dared not, his wife would not, offend her by refusing. He agreed
to go on his wife's promise that they would leave after 15 minutes. His
evening jitters were pretty bad.
He met the New Yorker at 5 o'clock. They talked until 11:15. After that
he stayed "dry" for three weeks. Then he went to a convention in Atlantic
City. That was a bender. The cured New Yorker was at his bedside when he
came to. That was June 10, 1935. The doctor hasn't had a drink since.
Every Akron and Cleveland cure by Alcoholics Anonymous is a result.
The point the society illustrates by that bit of history is that only an
alcoholic can talk turkey to an alcoholic. The doctor knew all of the
"medicine" of his disease. He knew all of the psychiatry. One of his
patients had "taken the cure" 72 times. Now he is cured, by fellowship in
Alcoholics Anonymous. Orthodox science left the physician licked. He also
knew all of the excuses, as well as the dodges, and the deep and fatal
shame that makes a true alcoholic sure at last that he can't win.
Alcoholic death or the bughouse will get him in time.
The cured member of Alcoholics Anonymous likes to catch a prospective
member when he is at the bottom of the depths. When he wakes up of a
morning with his first clear thought regret that he is not dead before he
hears where he has been and what he has done. When he whispers to
himself: "Am I crazy?" and the only answer he can think of is: "Yes."
Even when the bright-eyed green snakes are crawling up his arms.
Then the pathological drinker is willing to talk. Even eager to talk to
someone who really understands, from experience, what he means when he
says: "I can't understand myself."
Contact:
The Legacy Group of Alcoholics Anonymous © 2005