Drunks

by Christopher Finan

  What was happening around the United States, however, may have been even more important in encouraging new efforts to help the addicted. The problem of alcohol and drug addiction had certainly not improved in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. As this book goes to press, the United States is in the midst of an epidemic of opioid addiction that killed 29,467 people in 2014. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said that twenty-two million Americans are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Fifteen million are alcoholics; another three million are addicted to both alcohol and drugs, and four million are drug addicts.

  These numbers are daunting. But the number of people in recovery is also large and growing. In January 2016, there were more than 117,000 AA groups worldwide with over 2 million members, including 1.2 million in the United States. The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services commissioned a national poll in 2011 that asked 2,526 adults, “Did you once have a problem with alcohol and drugs, but no longer do?” Ten percent of the 2,526 adults who responded said yes. A survey of more than four hundred studies on remission rates put the number of alcoholics and addicts in recovery at between 25 million and 40 million. The ranks of the recovering are growing rapidly. There were 1.8 million in treatment in 2013.29

  But before this army could begin to march, the recovery movement had to persuade the troops to begin identifying themselves publicly. This was the challenge of the St. Paul summit in 2001, but it was not easily accomplished. People had to be willing to face the consequences of challenging a stigma that was still strong. There was good reason to fear that their honesty would cost them.

  It was also not immediately clear whether this strategy, which was largely driven by public relations, violated the traditions that guided millions of AA, NA, and Al-Anon members. AA’s tradition six opposes endorsing, financing, or lending AA’s name to any “outside enterprise.” Tradition ten says that the organization has “no opinion on outside issues” and should not be drawn into “public controversy.” Tradition eleven is potentially the most troublesome. “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films,” it says. NA and Al-Anon adopted the same language. Many members of these anonymous fellowships were bound to have questions about the wisdom of “coming out.”30

  As a practical matter, this problem was easily solved. “You can speak about your own recovery and advocate for the rights of others, as long as you do not involve the twelve-step group by name,” Faces & Voices of Recovery declared in a pamphlet, Advocacy with Anonymity. The pamphlet suggested language that made it clear that alcoholics and addicts were only speaking for themselves:

  I’m (your name) and I am in long-term recovery, which means that I have not used (insert alcohol of drugs or the name of the drugs you used) for more than (insert the number of years that you are in recovery) years. . . . I am now speaking out because long-term recovery has helped me change my life for the better, and I want to make it possible for others to do the same.

  The pamphlet appeared to settle the matter for many. Alcoholics and addicts began identifying themselves as people “in long-term recovery” in a growing number of public places, including a 2013 documentary, Anonymous People, which tells the story of the emerging recovery movement. New groups were formed to encourage the trend. Two of them, Facing Addiction and I Am Not Anonymous (IANA), feature the names and pictures of their supporters on their websites. They sell T-shirts, buttons, and other promotional items that identify the wearer as “In Recovery” and urge people to “Unite to Fight Addiction.” An IANA T-shirt reads, “IANA: If Not Us, Then Who?”31

  People in recovery began showing up at public events. SAMHSA launched Recovery Month in 1989, but it was only after the St. Paul summit that large numbers began showing up at events sponsored by local groups around the country. In 2002, more than two hundred events were listed on the Recovery Month online calendar, including the Texas Soberfest in Austin, which drew five thousand people, and Hands Across the Bridge, which involved two hundred people holding hands across the Interstate 5 bridge connecting Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. By 2008, the number of events had tripled. The highlight of that year’s celebration was a march across the Brooklyn Bridge by ten thousand people. The federal government was represented by the national drug czar.

  In 2013, it was estimated that more than 125,000 people participated in Recovery Month events, which included dances, workshops, conferences, parades, rallies, walks, and runs. Two years later, recovery advocates began organizing their biggest event yet, the Unite to Face Addiction rally and concert, which it was hoped would draw as many as a hundred thousand people to the National Mall in Washington, DC. A threatened hurricane led organizers to consider canceling the event, but the concert proceeded when the hurricane missed the city. Tens of thousands heard rock stars Steven Tyler, Joe Walsh, and Sheryl Crow perform.

  Despite the reduced turnout, the Unite to Face Addiction event was a landmark in the growth of the recovery advocacy movement. On the National Mall, surrounded by the government institutions and national monuments, formerly anonymous people in recovery asserted their right to full citizenship. One of those who spoke to the crowd expressed the thoughts of many. William Cope Moyers, the son of journalist Bill Moyers, is vice president of public affairs and community relations at the Betty Ford Hazelden Foundation. He is also an addict and alcoholic who relapsed several times before he established long-term sobriety in 1994. Moyers was well qualified to speak for the crowd:

  For too long, addiction has been an illness of isolation. For too long, addiction has been cloaked in the stigma of private shame . . . the stigma of public intolerance . . . the stigma of discriminating public policy.

  But today . . . today TOO LONG . . . IS NO LONGER. Because today . . . HERE WE ARE!

  Today on this national mall we stand TOGETHER as the antidote to addiction. . . .

  WE unite to face addiction. WE unite to prove with our faces and our voices and our lives that addiction does not discriminate. . . . And to prove that recovery should not discriminate either. Because WE are the fortunate ones. The ones who got well. And it is our responsibility, our opportunity . . . to come together as one, for the sake of those who still suffer. . . . WE unite to let them know, that they are not alone. WE unite to reassure them—that it is okay to ask for help. WE unite to tell their families that there is hope. WE unite, to keep the doors of treatment open . . . and open wide, no matter how often those who suffer need to walk through them again.

  NO longer do we simply dream on about the promise and possibility of recovery. Today we live on, in our reality that recovery is real. Because it sounds and looks and lives like us. All of us. United.32

  There is a long way to go before the recovery advocacy movement achieves all of its goals. The latest victory is the passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) of 2016. It took several years of hard work by advocacy leaders and strong support from their clean and sober supporters to pass the bill, which creates new policies and additional funds to improve prevention, treatment, and recovery support. Even as they expressed satisfaction at the passage of the bill, however, recovery leaders acknowledged that it did not go as far as they hoped. CARA will authorize only a million dollars a year for the vital support services provided by RCOs. The fact that CARA passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of a bitterly divided Congress is not evidence that our elected representatives have suddenly recognized the importance of recovery. It is a response to the crisis caused by opioid addiction. CARA is an important step forward, but the fight for recovery will go on.

  Sobriety has always come in waves that carried us forward and then receded. At times, we seemed in danger of losing all of our gains. The Washingtonians faded quickly. Prohibition sent the country in the wrong direction in its search for a solution. When interest
in alcoholism as a medical problem revived after the repeal of Prohibition, no one remembered the work of J. Edward Turner, Albert Day, and the American Association for the Cure of Inebriety. Even after the importance of treatment was widely recognized in the second half of the twentieth century, drug addicts were sent to prison instead of treatment.

  But the search for sobriety never ended. Handsome Lake’s Good Word was being read at Iroquois religious ceremonies more than 150 years after his death. Many Washingtonians joined the sober fraternities, which provided a home until the rise of the ribbon clubs. Leslie Keeley got rich claiming he had a gold cure for alcoholism, but he also helped tens of thousands get sober and provided the spark for a national league of sober men. Religion was a powerful force for recovery that worked through Jerry McAuley and the Salvation Army. The discoveries of science inspired Elwood Worcester and Courtenay Baylor.

  In 1935, a new wave began to form. AA proved again that drunks could get sober, and as it prospered, it showed that they could stay sober for a lifetime. Sober alcoholics believed in the importance of treatment, and they convinced political leaders that it was important for the country. This argument lost ground during the 1980s and 1990s, but the treatment advocates won the war. Today, the US government recognizes that medical treatment for alcoholics and addicts is a basic human right.

  There is always a possibility that this latest wave will recede. But it seems unlikely that people in recovery will allow it to happen. There are too many of them, and there has been a significant change in the way they think about themselves. For many years, AA members believed they were different from addicts. This attitude is waning as younger alcoholics join. Alcoholics and addicts in recovery are beginning to understand that what they are addicted to is less important than addiction itself and are working together to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to recover. Throughout American history, people who have survived addiction have carried the promise of recovery to fellow sufferers. Today, they are speaking directly to their fellow Americans.

  EPILOGUE

  MY FATHER TOLD ME the same story many times when I was growing up. My grandfather Mike sat him down at the kitchen table of their modest home in a hard-drinking steel town in western Pennsylvania. I don’t know how old my dad was at the time—maybe a navy recruit on leave during the last days of World War II or a theater student attending college on the GI Bill. He may even have been a disk jockey by then. Mike was not much of a talker, but he was determined to make an impression on his son. His father was an alcoholic who died young, leaving Mike to raise two brothers and a sister. All three were heavy drinkers.

  So was Mike. He put a bottle of Kessler’s whiskey on the table and poured two large drinks. Raising his glass, he looked my dad in the eye.

  “You drink too much,” he said.

  Mike was right about my dad, and if he had lived long enough, he would have seen right through me. When he died, my dad and I got drunk on shots and beers in a dark neighborhood bar around the corner from the funeral home.

  So my grandfather never knew that he had started something. My father continued to drink, often having his first martini of the day at 10 a.m. following his radio show. But he was haunted by what alcoholism had done to his family, and the stories he told me were warnings. I wasn’t completely surprised when he finally quit drinking.

  That decision changed his life. He was not a bad man, but he was a selfish one. Then he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and started to repair the damage that he had done to his wife and children. He tried to help others. He was like Scrooge on Christmas morning. In his own words, he took his head out of his ass.

  I watched his progress without understanding it because I was struggling with my own alcoholism. Then I quit drinking, too.

  And it all began with a story. Mike introduced my father to the family ghosts, and he passed them along to me. Later I told our story so often that my sons begged for mercy.

  But stories can inspire as well as warn.

  From the time of Handsome Lake and the Washingtonians, sober drunks have shared their stories with people like my dad and me. They have shown us that we are not alone and introduced us to a worldwide community of people who are living happily without drugs or alcohol. They have told us how their lives were saved.

  Today, we number in the millions, and our story grows louder with every retelling.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, my adviser in graduate school, Walter P. Metzger, suggested that I write this book. I had just told him that I was a recovering alcoholic. He replied with his customary enthusiasm that the history of recovery would make a great subject for someone who had actually experienced it. Professor Metzger died earlier this year. I remain very grateful for his encouragement.

  Every writer on the history of addiction and recovery stands on the shoulders of William L. White, author of Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America. Published in 1998 and revised in 2014, Slaying the Dragon is a comprehensive history of the subject told by someone who has been personally involved in the recovery movement since the 1960s. Bill has worn many hats during his career: counselor, clinical director, researcher, trainer, and consultant. He has authored or coauthored eighteen books and more than four hundred articles, monographs, research reports, and book chapters. I am grateful to Bill for offering advice at key points in my research and for introducing me to Patty McCarthy Metcalf at Faces & Voices of Recovery and Greg Williams at Facing Addiction, who provided information about recent developments in the recovery movement.

  Early in my research, I was fortunate to participate in the Addiction Studies Program for Journalists that was sponsored by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and National Families in Action. The program brought together science reporters and other people writing about addiction and recovery for a two-day program in Washington, DC, which included presentations by experts on the physiology of alcoholism, drug prevention, and treatment for alcohol, and drug addiction. I want to thank the program director, Professor David Friedman of Wake Forest, and codirector Sue Rusche, the president and chief executive officer of National Families in Action.

  Several libraries provided invaluable assistance. The Center for Alcohol Studies Library at Rutgers University is a gold mine for researchers. The Rutgers School of Alcohol Studies is the successor of the pioneering alcohol studies program established at Yale University in the 1940s, and its library inherited and expanded the collection of books, magazines, and other material started at Yale. The Rutgers library is headed by the expert and accommodating Judit H. Ward. Like so many other researchers, I have benefited from a temporary home in the Wertheim Room of the New York Public Library, which has been ably administered by Jay Barksdale and Melanie Locay. I also want to thank the librarians at the Syracuse University Library and the Illinois State Library as well as the General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous.

  One of the pleasures of writing this book is that it has given me another opportunity to work with Beacon Press. Helene Atwan, the director, showed enthusiasm for the subject even before there was a formal proposal, and the manuscript has benefited enormously from her rigorous editing. I am delighted to be working again with my friends Tom Hallock and Pam MacColl, and with the rest of the wonderful staff at Beacon.

  I am also grateful to Jill Marr at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency for championing the book and for her expert shepherding.

  Finally, I want to express my love and appreciation to Dan Cullen and Mary Chris Welch, who listened to years of talking and complaining about the book. Of course, the top prize in this category goes to my wife, Pat Willard, who told me to shut up and keep writing.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 529.

  2. Paul C. Nagel, Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 79; McCullough,
John Adams, 548.

  3. Nagel, Descent from Glory, 80; McCullough, John Adams, 555.

  4. Increase Mather, Wo to Drunkards: Two Sermons Testifying Against the Sin of Drunkenness (Boston: Printed and Sold by Timothy Green, 1712), 7.

  5. Seneca, quoted in ibid, 18, 23, 24; Nathan Crosby, Inebriate Asylums: Remarks in Opposition to Them Before the Committee on Charitable Institutions (Boston: Nation Press, 1871), 3, 4, 5, 10.

  CHAPTER ONE: MOUNTAIN OF BONES

  1. Arthur C. Parker, The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet (Albany: State University of New York, 1913), 20, 22. Handsome Lake’s descriptions of himself, his journey home, and its consequences are contained in the Gaiwiio, a record of his teachings that became the foundation of a new religion. The Gaiwiio (Good Word) was translated and published by Parker, an archeologist.

  2. Ibid., 20–21. The language used to refer to indigenous people is often contested. I have used tribal names when possible. I use “Indian” to refer to indigenous people as a whole or to describe multiple tribes collectively.

  3. Ibid., 21–22.

  4. Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 240–41; Parker, The Code of Handsome Lake, 24.

  5. Parker, The Code of Handsome Lake, 24, 27.

  6. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, 242.

  7. Ibid., 260, 307.

  8. Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 786.

  9. Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 43–44.