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Recovery
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September Remember (1945)
"The advantage of the present 300-page pamphlet (disguised as a pulp-style novel) over the shorter booklets distributed by AA, lies in its detailed revelations of group activity. While the formal weekly meetings are devoted to inspirational talks by ex-alcoholics, coffee is drunk in no blue-nose spirit; good fellowship abounds ("You can get that sense of abandon without liquor"). AA members feel a natural solidarity: the way they would "get up and talk at meetings, really let their hair down, made -other contacts seem thin and superficial. Other people shadowy." And while AA insists that it has no ambition to impose sobriety on the nation, its members feel a natural willingness to share their benefits with any applicant. They are "on call," so to speak, day and night, answering requests for aid or enlightenment from strangers or backsliding fellows. Each member is at once both patient and physician: only from a fellow alcoholic can they receive that acceptance, without condescension, which society has withheld. As physician, setting an example to others, they have an incentive toward sobriety, but it seems to me they gain something more valuable as well: the privilege of adult responsibility without its full rigors. They feel free to become a child—a patient--again, whenever necessary. But in practice, of course, this dual role must cause some paralyzing inter-alcoholic confusions--depending on who is treating whom at the moment. Prestige is gained primarily through one’s success in not drinking; second, through one’s talent for mutual aid. Occasionally an unregenerate member is subjected to social ostracism. ("But probably every field has it lunatic fringe.") " -- The New Republic, May 21, 1945
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