The Unbeliever
A Personal Story from one of the Pioneer
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous
DULL . . . listless . . . semicomatose .
. . I lay on my bed in a famous hospital for alcoholics.
Death or worse had been my sentence.
What was the
difference? What difference did anything make? Why think of
those things which were gone-why worry about the results of my
drunken escapades? What the hell were the odds if my wife had
discovered the mistress situation? Two swell boys . . . sure .
. . but what difference would a corpse or an asylum imprisoned
father make to them? . . . thoughts stop whirling in my head .
. . that's the worst of this sobering-up process . . . the old
think tank is geared in high-high . . . what do I mean
high-high . . . where did that come from . . . oh yes, that
first Cadillac I had, it had four speeds . . . had a high-high
gear . . . insane asylum . . . how that bus could scamper . . .
yes . . . even then liquor probably poisoned me. What had the
little doctor said this morning . . . thoughts hesitate a
moment . . . stop your mad turning . . . what was I thinking
about . . . oh yes, the doctor.
This morning I
reminded Doc this was my tenth visit. I had spent a couple of
thousand dollars on these trips and those I had financed for
the plastered play girls who also couldn't sober up. Jackie was
a honey until she got plastered and then she was a hellion.
Wonder what gutter she's in now. Where was I? Oh . . . I asked
the doctor to tell me the truth. He owed it to me for the
amount of money I had spent. He faltered. Said I'd been drunk
that's all. God! Didn't I know that?
But Doc, you're
evading. Tell me honestly what is the matter with me. I'll be
all right did you say? But Doc, you've said that before. You
said once that if I stopped for a year I would be over the
habit and would never drink again. I didn't drink for over a
year, but I did start to drink again.
Tell me what is the
matter with me. I'm an alcoholic? Ha ha and ho ho! As if I
didn't know that! But aside from your fancy name for a plain
drunk, tell me why I drink. You say a true alcoholic is
something different from a plain drunk? What do you mean . . .
let me have it cold . . . brief and with no trimmings.
An alcoholic is a
person who has an allergy to alcohol? Is poisoned by it? One
drink does something to the chemical make-up of the body? That
drink affects the nerves and in a certain number of hours
another drink is medically demanded? And so the vicious cycle
is started? An ever smaller amount of time between drinks to
stop those screaming, twitching, invisible wires called
nerves?
I know that history
Doc . . . how the spiral tightens . . . a drink . . .
unconscious . . . awake . . . drink . . . unconscious . . .
poured into the hospital . . . suffer the agonies of hell . . .
the shakes . . . thoughts running wild . . . brain unleashed .
. . engine without a governor. But hell Doc, I don't want to
drink! I've got one of the stubbornest will powers known in
business. I stick at things. I get them done. I've stuck on the
wagon for months. And not been bothered by it . . . and then
suddenly, incomprehensibly, an empty glass in my hand and
another spiral started. How did the Doc explain that one?
He couldn't. That
was one of the mysteries of true alcoholism. A famous medical
foundation had spent a fortune trying to segregate the reasons
for the alcoholic as compared to the plain hard, heavy drinker.
Had tried to find the cause. And all they had been able to
determine as a fact was that practically all of the alcohol in
every drink taken by the alcoholic went to the fluid in which
the brain floated. Why a man every started when he knew those
things was one of the things that could not be fathomed. Only
the damn fool public believed it a matter of weak will power.
Fear . . . ostracism . . . loss of family . . . loss of
position . . . the gutter . . . nothing stopped the
alcoholic.
Doc! What do you
mean-nothing! What! An incurable disease? Doc, you' re kidding
me! You're trying to scare me into stopping! What's that you
say? You wish you were? What are those tears in your eyes Doc?
What's that? Forty years you've spent at this alcoholic
business and you have yet to see a true alcoholic cured? Your
life defeated and wasted? Oh, come, come Doc . . . what would
some of us do without you? If even to only sober up. But Doc .
. . let's have it. What is going to be my history from here on
out? Some vital organ will stop or the mad house with a wet
brain? How soon? Within two years? But, Doc, I've got to do
something about it! I'll see doctors . . . I'll go to
sanitariums. Surely the medical profession knows something
about it. So little, you say? But why? Messy. Yes, I'll admit
there is nothing messier than an alcoholic
drunk.
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