The alcoholic beverage industry, as well as fellow travelers of the liquor traffic, have placed great emphasis on the theory that alcoholism is a disease, that the alcoholic is a sick person, that alcoholism is not due to alcohol but rather to the psychological or pathological make-up of the individual, and that the trouble is not in the bottle but in the man. The fact that the medical profession, generally speaking, refers to alcoholism as a disease brings great comfort to the liquor interests. The alcoholic is held up as Exhibit A against the industry, not only by the drys, but by the public at large. This naturally brings great embarrassment to the industry. The disease theory, on the other hand, diverts the attention of the public from the industry to the alcoholic. Needless to say, this theory receives the endorsement and support of the liquor interests. The following statement by Max L. Simon, in the Beverage Retailer Weekly of July 24, 1950, indicates that the efforts of the liquor interests in promoting the disease theory are paying off and absolving the industry of blame: "The fact is that, whether we like it or not, the alcoholic is held up as 'Exhibit A' against the industry not only by the drys but by many well intentioned people as well. However, over the past few years the public generally is beginning to understand that the alcoholic is a sick person suffering from a disease, and as such· he is a public health problem. Acceptance of the disease theory absolves the industry of blame." My attention was called to a recent study made by the Commonwealth Club of California on alcoholism. The members of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco are not professional temperance workers or clergymen, but hard-boiled businessmen. I have had the privilege of meeting a number of these men, and of discussing the problem of alcoholism with them.
They had listened to Seldon D. Bacon, of the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, promoting the idea that alcoholism is a disease, and suggesting that the city fathers recognize alcoholism as a public health problem and erect a clinic for the rehabilitation of the alcoholics in San Francisco, which has more alcoholics per capita than any other city in the United States. After listening to this lecture they appointed various subcommittees to discuss the problem. Questionnaires were prepared, reports were rendered, live discussions took place. Space will not permit us to publish the entire report-we will include in this article only a few brief extracts from the Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California as reported in The Commonwealth, the official journal of the dub, of April 24, 1950.
The following statements will give our readers an idea of how the workers of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco reacted to Seldon Bacon's theories: "This majority report is offered to the membership of the Section on Liquor Problems because we fully believe that the other report is based on entirely wrong premises and that the limitations of its findings are unworthy of a report to the entire membership of the Commonwealth Club of California. "The Minority Report concentrates on a fragment of the entire liquor question, the down-and-out chronic alcoholic, who, while an obvious nuisance and expense to government, and a source of much grief to his or her relatives and close friends, does, after all, play a very minor role in the entire drama of evils directly chargeable to liquor. "The Minority Report chooses to dwell arbitrarily on only rehabilitation of the alcoholic and quotes with great profusion from the findings of the Yale School for Alcoholic Studies. "Doctor Bacon, of the Yale School, in his discussion of the Yale School of Alcoholic Studies before the Liquor Problems Section said, 'The Yale School is divided into five parts: first, Research Division; second, Division of Publications; third, Summer School; fourth, Clinics; fifth, National Committee on Alcoholism.' Not one part is devoted to a study for prevention. ·where else in all the annals of scientific studies of disease (they claim that alcoholism is a health problem), have they tried to cure the results and ignored the cause or prevention? With this almost incredible omission on the part of the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, the liquor industry has free sway towards making the so-called social drinker an alcoholic-40,000 additional each year-and to this program n·e offer vigorous opposition." That is a wholesome statement, coming from a group of businessmen interested in preventing the rise and spread of alcoholism. "We are not willing," continues the report, "to accept the findings of the Yale School of Alcoholic Studies as final, or incontrovertible, or unbiased. It is interesting to note that Doctor Bacon is a fatalist, who said, 'The problem of inebriety, as of poverty, is ever with us.' Doctor Bacon was raised in an environment of vigorous opposition to the 18th or Prohibition Amendment.'' And now note another interesting statement taken from that same report: "For every so-called authority on alcoholics, who says that alcoholism is a disease to which five per cent are subject (some say mental, others physical they differ amongst themselves), we are prepared to offer equally reliable authorities who definitely state that alcoholism is due only to drinking of liquor, wine or beer to which anyone may succumb, or become a victim. This is strong doctrine and blasts the popular theory that alcoholism is a disease. Here is another challenging statement: "We are not prepared to accept alcoholism as a disease, mental or physical, confined to an unfortunate. The liquor interests would have us think that the Almighty has pre-ordained or afflicted these unfortunates, and they only are liable to become alcoholics; that the other 95 per cent or so-called social drinkers are entirely immune; that to legislate against the free use of liquor in order to protect the comparative few-3,750,000 is the estimated number of probable alcoholics, with an additional 40,000 each year-is unjust and in restraint of individual liberty. "Dr. Horatio M. Pollock of the New York State Department cf Mental Hygiene says: 'The great majority of persons who develop alcoholic mental disease are average citizens who showed no marked abnormality prior to the formation of the alcohol habit. The taproot of alcoholism is not neuroticism but the drinking custom. It is not to the discredit of any person if he is neurotic-neuroticism is common among men and women of high intelligence. The stresses of our complex modern civilization uncover latent neuroticism. If no degree of neuroticism is latent in the individual psychology, the possibility is that the subject is a stupid clod, whose intelligence is dim and whose basic ganglia is reptalian.
Alcoholism, in the majority of cases, has many basic social roots. The best way to 'cure' it is to prevent it. The way to prevent it is to stop the use of alcohol as a beverage. If it cannot be prevented, it can be reduced in extent by reducing the consumption of alcohol and probably in no other way. 'Teaching moderation' won't do it, and we know this because it never has done it-teaching abstinence will help. "They, the liquor interests, would also have us believe that the down-and-out alcoholic, the skid road bum, for whom the other report pleads, is the only liability chargeable to the use of alcohol, and that, after all, they are not responsible for even his or her miserable condition. Is not he or she, they would have us reason, a predestined victim, doomed by his or her Creator to become a bum and a disgrace to society? "Let's look at the facts. These so-called authorities have a bad habit of confusing the casual drinker and his misdeeds with the actions of the alcoholics with charging the poor old alcoholic, the down-andouter, with all the crimes and misdeeds that are chargeable to the use of liquor. This is a preposterous attempt to get public attention away from the real, criminal, results of the use of liquor. "If, as is concluded by Yale and other authorities, alcoholism is a disease, then it should be treated in all respects as a disease. Its studies should not minimize, discount nor by-pass the vital phase of prevention. No other disease is regarded so triflingly." I will conclude my discussion on alcoholism as a sickness with the following statement by Dr. Haven Emerson, distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health, Columbia University, and a member of the New York Board of Health: "In speaking of alcoholism as a sickness, we have Jed into a slovenly cutting of corners in language and are deceiving ourselves as to the truth.
"The currently popular theory that alcoholism is simply a sickness and hence that no one is responsible for excessive drinking, is misleading and mischievous. "A great deal of muddied thinking and writing and lack of clear definition has resulted, with frequently unhappy effects. "The use of the statement, 'alcoholism is a sickness,' came out of the Yale School of Alcohol Studies. Such a position tends to remove all sense of personal responsibility, choice, or even participation. "This attitude is welcomed by the liquor industries because with it to build on they appear before the public as blameless, claiming merely to 'serve the universal needs of the people,' a few of whom are found to be unfortunate in respect to personality and emotional development and become medical and social problems as chronic alcoholics. "Misjudgment as to the facts about alcoholism based on the sickness idea has done much harm to the educational campaign to teach people self-restraint, choice, and intelligent abstinence. "True it is that some people are prone to resort to alcohol as a means of self-deception, as an escape from their own inadequacies and frustations, and as a social custom that they find gives them a temporary but deceptive escape from their inferiorities and anxieties. "Acceptance of alcoholism as merely one other kind of sickness, which society is troubled with and must provide for, has had some probable useful effects. There has been an enormous increase in provision for ambulatory and bed-care, rehabilitation, and other services at the taxpayers' expense, so that human and medically adequate care of the 'sick,' i.e., the alcoholic, can be had. "The cause of alcoholism is, of course, the excessive and persistent drinking of beverage alcohol. Probable use of alcohol without any physical, mental, or personality deviation from normal. "This group became abnormal chiefly because of their excessive and in the first place 'moderate' and socially acceptable use of alcohol, which created for them many problems similar in character to those seen in psychoneurotics who make up somewhat less than half of the chronic alcoholics. "The susceptible, weak, willing, selfish or otherwise devious and deviate person is not an alcoholic until after he succumbs to example, repetition, and the habit of alcoholic excess. "True, an alcoholic, acute or chronic, occasional, continuous, compulsive, habitual, or as a victim of his addiction is a sick person. Alcoholism is a form of intoxication due to the presence of ethyl alcohol in the body. . "The state of alcoholism, a sickness, is self-induced and so different from the common conception of a sickness as not to be properly described as such, but as a self-induced poisoning by a narcotic drug." If alcoholism is a disease, then those who produce the germs have been given a free hand to perpetuate the disease and do their work under the protection of the government.
Laws are passed that permit the organization of a great industry that manufactures germs that breed a disease. The germs are bottled up in attractive containers, and are then placed on sale in groceries, supermarkets, and other stores. The labels on the containers deceive and mislead the public, as they do not indicate the dangers inherent in the product in the container. Millions are expended to advertise these products over the radio and television, in the newspapers and magazines, and on the billboards along the highways. Every man, woman, and child is urged to purchase these goods that contain the germs that breed the disease of alcoholism. It just doesn't make sense! If alcoholism is a disease, why not tackle alcoholism in the same manner as we have tackled typhoid, malaria, or yellow fever? Do they isolate the patient from the germs that breed the disease. The trend in modern medicine is toward prevention and not merely cure. The men that are lying around the streets and alleys on skid row were once normal men, in the possession of wealth and holding important positions, but they started to drink. One drink led to another, and before long they were helpless to resist temptation.
They lost their jobs, their homes, and finally wound up in suffering, misery, and physical disease. Alcohol is a vice that leads to many diseases. It is a self-inflicted disease. Men may not be able to cure themselves of typhoid, smallpox, or yellow fever without the aid of a physician, but they can cure themselves of alcoholism with the aid of the Great Physician. "When temperance is presented as a part of the gospel, many will see their need of reform. They will see the evil of intoxicating liquors and that total abstinence is the only platform on which God's people can conscientiously stand."-Temperance, p. 238. All the alcoholic needs to do to get well is to stop drinking-to stop taking in the germs that make him sick. "Press home the temperance question with all the force of the Holy Spirit's unction. Show the need of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquor."Evangelism, p. 534. According to the Connecticut Review on Alcoholism there is no basis for the claim that anyone, apart from total abstainers, is safe from the dread condition of alcoholism.
"If the work of temperance were carried forward by us as it was begun ... years ago; if at our camp meetings we presented before the people the evils of intemperance in eating and drinking, and especially the evil of liquor drinking; if these things were presented in connection with the evidences of Christ's soon coming, there would be a shaking among the people. If we showed a zeal in proportion to the importance of the truths we are handling, we might be instrumental in rescuing hundreds, yea thousands, from ruin."-Temperance, p. 257.
