Twenty-six terrified children are riding with you this spring as their school bus careens wildly over the steep and winding road near Ironton, Ohio, and you jump as they jump in wide-eyed one's and two's when the bus slows crazily at every curve. The driver is intoxicated, a problem drinker.
You stand beside the bleary-eyed executive in his locked Manhattan office, while he bangs down a rubber-stamped facsimile signature, which, he hopes, will excuse him from the scrawl which is a dead give-away to the shakes. Liquor is his boss.
Smell the breath of that Texas salesman as he stops his car to fortify himself with a swig of rum. Catch the Wisconsin logger's wife when he knocks her across the room in a bourbon rage. Look through the apartment window of a San Francisco typist staying in with a headache while she solitarily starts an all-day gin binge.
This is alcoholism, a complex disease that prompts the unthinking to joke about drunks but can leave families homeless and penniless, a massive medical puzzler which is no less soluble because it is also a major sociological and economic problem, a public cancer that can turn some men against themselves but to which others are singularly resistant, a blight so human that the Bible warns against it, Shakespeare diagnoses it. and Tennessee Williams writes a prize-winning play around it.
Drink has taken 5,000,000 men and women in the United States, taken them as the master takes slaves, and new acquisitions are going on at the rate of 200,000 a year.
Where does all this information come from? It sounds like good temperance literature to you? Well, it is from the Journal of the American Medical Association, July 19, 1958, and the article is entitled "Robber of Five Million Brains."
You may wonder why we are talking about alcoholism. We are not going to talk about the evils of Demon Rum. We are not going to talk about drinking and driving. We're talking only about alcoholism. Why? Because this is primarily the church's responsibility, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Methodist Bishop Cushman a few years ago wrote, "The liquor problem is supremely the job of the church, and I really believe that the very life of the church in America is at stake on the solution of the liquor problem." This isn't to minimize the fine work being done by many organizations, but they are essentially but arms of the Christian church in whatever work they do to tackle this particular problem. Jesus said, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). And none are more lost than the victims of alcoholism.
Is the Alcoholic Our Responsibility?
The problem arises at once: What business does a total-abstinence church have in dealing with the problem of alcohol? There are many of our people who feel that this really isn't our problem because Seventh-day Adventists don't drink. And there really are very few Seventh-day Adventist ministers who have any idea of what to do to help a drinker. Furthermore, I am ashamed to say, there are many who don't care. I have been told bluntly by Seventh-day Adventist ministers that it is none of their business.
Two years ago there was a Master's thesis accepted at our Seminary dealing with the counseling problems of Seventh-day Adventist pastors. It was made by surveying the ordained ministers of the Columbia Union on the assumption that this was a typical cross section of Adventist ministers. A long list of counseling problems were suggested, and others were provided for on the basis of writing in. The teacher and the student were both amazed to discover that aside from the immediate problems of theology, the problem most frequently met by the Seventh-day Adventist minister was the problem of alcoholism. Specifically, 86 per cent of the ministers of the Columbia Union said that they had faced the problem of alcoholism in the past year.
So you see, on the one hand we have a non-drinking church; we have no drinking problems, using the term loosely, in the church.
But on the other hand, we have Adventists who have left the church because drinking is a problem. We have husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters of Adventists who are battling this problem, who came to Adventist ministers, many of whom hadn't the faintest idea what they were dealing with, and were utterly incapable of making the first approaches to help. This is our basic problem.
I am even more concerned when I discover that what we like to call the popular churches are far ahead of us in their recognition of the problem and in their attempt to do something about it. Here are a few sentences from a publication of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, dated March 25, 1957:
The churches share a pastoral concern for alcoholism, problem drinkers, and their families. We recognize that once drinking has passed a certain point it becomes alcoholism, an affliction which cannot be met effectively by the unaided efforts of the victim. Alcoholics are persons in need of diagnosis, understanding, guidance, and treatment. They are especially in need of pastoral care and the divine love which only the church can bring them. There need be no condoning of their behavior, but neither should a church permit its antagonism to alcohol to prevent its offering an effective ministry to alcoholics and their families. Ministers and churches should not be content merely to direct alcoholics to treatment centers. The churches should disseminate such sound information as is now available on the understanding and counseling of persons with alcohol problems. The churches have a special responsibility to assist pastors to become more effective counselors in this field. They also should encourage and undertake new work, looking toward the more effective use of the resources of the Christian faith to reclaim problem drinkers and alcoholics. We recognize the complex origins of alcoholism and excessive drinking in social pressures, emotional instability, bodily functioning and the nature of alcohol itself. We accept the fact that alcoholism is an affliction which requires treatment. We assert our conviction that the ethical aspects of the use of alcoholic beverages should be of deep concern to the churches and the community as they seek to help the victims of alcoholism.
Medicine and Alcohol
Now, what relationship is there between medicine and alcohol? In the Journal of the American Medical Association for July 19, 1958, page 1501, an attempt is made to show the relationship between medicine and religion: "Perhaps this is as much a moral principle [talking about alcoholism] as it is a concept of medicine. In fact, with the possible exception of mental illness, no single bodily disease is receiving so much concurrent attention from medicine and religion as is alcoholism. The extraordinarily close rapport of clergymen and physicians in the United States has brought about a beneficial interchange of attitude and action toward the alcoholic." I wish I could claim that for our church. We haven't established this rapport. I think the only place this has been discussed on any broad basis is at Worthington, Ohio. As far as I know, no meeting of ministers and medical men has occurred within the groundwork of this denomination at any other place or at any other time.
Doctors now refer many of these patients to religious counselors, and also have deepened their own compassion during treatment. More and more ministers, meanwhile, are realizing that the moral implications of alcoholism are primarily effects rather than causes of the disease. As a result, what once had been a predominant church attitude of condemnation of alcoholics as sinners is now being overshadowed by a larger view, a view that faith in the promise of a better life through-complete abstinence is an integral part of total medical care.
What can the physician do with the alcoholic? A Seventh-day Adventist doctor, unidentified as such, is quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The physician can refer the alcoholic to someone who will reassure his patient that God is a loving, forgiving Father who is willing to blot out and forgive any sins if the alcoholic is only contrite and repentant. An alcoholic already is suffering truly excruciating physical and mental anguish. Portraying God as a stern, unrelenting Deity who inexorably demands His pound of flesh for each sin committed will often load down the alcoholic with what he feels is an insupportable burden that only further drinking can ease for him.
Now, just how big is the problem? We have talked about these figures of 5 million alcoholics. Where do we get these figures? Somebody always raises the question: "Whose guess is this and how educated is it?" Well, it's as educated a guess as we have on any other disease. All disease is estimated by counting something. It is not done by a head-to-head count of everybody who has it. All estimates of disease in the United States are "of estimates." They are based on figures from hospitals and morgues. They are usually based on formulae worked out through the years, so that one can say, if we get this many figures from this many hospitals, there are probably this many cases. The figure for alcoholism is obtained by securing the figures on deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. The very complicated formula worked out by Dr. E. N. Jellinek, formerly of Yale, is the one used to make the estimates. Many people question these figures. They say, "Five million alcoholics! That's fantastic. There can't possibly be that many."
Dr. Stephen Seymour, of Long Beach, California, operates a clinic. He is a medical doctor, and his hospital is the only one I know in the United States that treats alcoholics exclusively by means fitted to the patient. Almost all treatment of alcoholics is done by a specific method in a specific place. And if that method doesn't happen to help a patient, it's too bad. Dr. Seymour follows an entirely different process: he suits the treatment to the patient. As a result, he has an excellent recovery rate. He decided that the Jellinek formula should be tested, and so for the past ten years, with the help of all the doctors in Long Beach, he has been recording every alcoholic who has asked for treatment who would give his name and address, whether he showed up for treatment or not. The Jellinek formula says that in Long Beach there should be 7,002 alcoholics. Dr. Seymour has the names and addresses of 14,500. If the Jellinek formula is inaccurate and if the Seymour figure is any indication, it errs on the side of conservatism. There are certainly at least 5 million alcoholics.
The number of women in proportion to men is not quite determinable. It may be one in three; it may be one in five. There are more hidden alcoholics among women than among men. From 90 to 95 per cent of alcoholics are not on skid row; they are not discernible; 90 per cent of them are working and holding jobs. These are the hidden alcoholics. An example: the fellow who has in his desk drawer a bottle of whisky from which he drinks sparingly all day long, and as soon as he gets home at night gets drunk within an hour. He does this for weeks, and nobody but his wife knows it. He may do it for years, and nobody but his wife may know it. These are hidden alcoholics—millions of them.
If there are 5 million alcoholics, how many people are affected directly by the problem of alcoholism? Answer: not fewer than 25 million; because careful studies indicate that not fewer than four other people are directly affected by every alcoholic. The immediate members of the family or the immediate working companions are intimately and continuously affected by the alcoholic and his problems. There are up to 25 million people (and this is a conservative estimate—you will find estimates as high as seven people for every alcoholic) who are affected every day, and almost every hour of the day, with this problem.
At a camp meeting two years ago, not in a public session but in a private one, I asked some 250 Seventh-day Adventists whether they had an alcoholic in their immediate family, and 75 hands were raised.
What does alcoholism cost? Nobody knows. You can find figures by the millions, all kinds of figures from one billion dollars to 20 billion dollars a year, and they are all guesses. Certainly it costs a fantastic, incalculable sum. I will give you one illustration. The relief funds paid to support the families of alcoholics who are in jail amount to S2,600,000 a year in New York City alone.
The old picture of the saloon with three ragged children standing in front of the door singing, "Father, oh, father, come home with me now," is completely out of date. As a matter of fact, the children are probably playing over in the park, well dressed, and mother is at home hoping they keep him locked up for another thirty days, because they are living better than they ever lived before. This is the truth! And we're supporting them—out of tax funds. Families of alcoholics in Los Angeles County receive excellent support. With four children they get about $260 a month. Now this isn't a lot of money, but if it comes gratis, and if father doesn't get his hands on it, they are far better off than when father was working and making $600 a month down at Douglas Aircraft. And, incidentally, in the Long Beach area there is a whole sector (about two miles square) made up of workers at Douglas Aircraft, between twenty and thirty years of age, where the alcoholism rate is higher than in any other sector of Long Beach, including skid row.
This is part of the cancer, part of the problem. None of this touches the misery of broken homes, warped personalities, dulled minds, the cost of which cannot be estimated. More than these are the cultural costs. When you think of the might-have-been, what the world has lost from the cultural cost of alcoholism alone, it's a staggering thing. For example, there was a man who wrote in his balmy youth: "All the world is sad and dreary everywhere I roam." That wasn't the haunting refrain of Negroes in the South, although it appears in that kind of song; that was the haunting refrain of the innermost fears of the alcoholic. And when that fellow died at thirty-eight in an alcoholic ward in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, the world lost the greatest singer of folk tunes in American history, the man who touched America's heart—and still touches it—Stephen Foster. I could go on and recite to you names of artists, painters, sculptors, whose lives have been ruined and destroyed. This cultural loss alone is incalculable.
Kinds of Alcoholism
There are many definitions, and there are many kinds of alcoholism. Let's name some simple ones first. There is acute alcoholism and chronic alcoholism. We're talking about chronic alcoholism and not acute alcoholism. Acute alcoholism is being under the influence of alcohol, and anybody who has drunk at all is to some degree suffering from acute alcoholism. As a matter of fact, it is quite correct to say scientifically that you are one-beer drunk or two-beers drunk. You are suffering to some degree because there is some impairment of your faculties. Whenever there is impairment of your faculties, you are under the influence of alcohol, and therefore suffering to some degree from acute alcoholism. The staggering drunk who goes down the street, of course, is in very serious condition because of acute alcoholism. This is not what we are talking about.
We're talking, rather, about chronic alcoholism. Chronic alcoholism is best defined as existing when a person is more or less constantly under the influence of alcohol most of the day and night, and has been so for a relatively long period of time, whether this is done periodically or continuously. There are two basic types of alcoholics—the periodic drinker and the continuous drinker. The continuous drinker is under the influence almost all his waking hours. The periodic drinker, on the other hand, may be sober for days or even weeks, and then he goes on a binge in which he literally obliterates everything for days and sometimes weeks. These are two quite different types, but both suffer from the same problem.
An alcoholic is any person whose drinking interferes, frequently or continuously, with any of his important life adjustments and interpersonal relationships. He may not be apparently drunk; he need not be apparently drunk. Moreover, there is a factor involved with this condition that is not well known. His drinking is compulsive. You will find much in the ancient literature about alcoholism, about the weak-willed individual. The alcoholic is not weak-willed! The alcoholic unaided cannot help himself, and it is utter folly in counseling the alcoholic to tell him to straighten up, be a man, get a hold on himself. He's been telling himself that for a long time, and he can tell himself that far better than you can. This has nothing to do with the will, as such. If there was any will, it has been destroyed. There's some question whether there was any. This is not the problem at all.
But I would point out to you that frequent drunkenness is not a sign of alcoholism; there cannot be alcoholism without drunkenness, but there can be lots of drunkenness without alcoholism. You will remember in your American history the rough recreational drinking of the frontiers in which everybody came together to put up a barn and got roaring drunk—everybody, that is, except the women, who did not generally drink in those days. But all the men got drunk, and we hear stories of how they would shoot tin cups off one another's heads and do other foolish and dangerous things. Such stories are true, but those men of the frontier were not alcoholics. There is still much rough, recreational drunkenness in America today among people who are not alcoholics. One does not necessarily become an alcoholic simply by drinking.
There was a doctor in New York City two years ago who decided that he was going to find out whether he could become an alcoholic. He had been helping alcoholics and working with alcoholics. A minister told him that the cause of alcoholism was drinking; if one drank long enough and hard enough, he would become an alcoholic. So the doctor went up to a cabin in Maine and stayed drunk thirty consecutive days. The only result was that ever since he has hated liquor. He has not had another drink from that day to this.
(To be continued)
