Marty Mann Answers Your Questions
About Drinking And Alcoholism
Marty Mann
If some new and terrible disease were suddenly to strike us here in America--a disease of unknown cause, possibly due t noxious gas or poison in our soil, air, water--it would be treated as a national emergency, with our whole citizenry uniting as a man to fight it.
Let us suppose the disease to have so harmful an effect on the nervous system that 10 million people in our country would go insane for periods lasting from a few hours to weeks or months and recurring repetitively over periods ranging from 15 to 30 years.
Let us suppose that during these spells of insanity, acts of so destructive a nature would be committed that the material and spiritual lives of whole families would be in jeopardy, with a resultant 40 million persons cruelly affected. Work in business, industry, professions, and factories would be crippled, sabotaged, or left undone. And each year more than one and one-quarter billion dollars would need to be spent merely to patch up in some small way the effects of the disease on families whose breadwinners have been stricken.
Finally, let us imagine this poison or disease to have the peculiar property of so altering a person's judgement, so brainwashing him that he would be unable to see that he had become ill at all; actually so perverting and so distorting his view of life that he would wish with all his might to go on being ill.
Such an emergency would unquestionably be classed as a countrywide disaster, and billions of dollars and thousand of scientists would be put to work to find the cause of the disease, to treat its victims, and to prevent its spread.
The dread disease envisioned above is actually here. It is alcoholism.
pages xiii, xiv
Alcoholism has been hidden and denied for so long that no one really knows how many people are suffering from it.
page 2, a3, lines 6-8
Alcoholism has an extra hazard since the stigma surrounding it leads to concealment of the condition, not only by the alcoholic but also by families, friends, co-workers, and employers. And all too often the condition is not recognized even by those close to the sufferer, who himself goes to great lengths to conceal it.
page 2, a3, lines 12-18
A publication of the American Medical Association carried the statement that 10 percent of those who drink develop alcoholism. The estimates that have the widest acceptance are based on the Jellinek Formula, a mathematical projection using deaths from cirrhosis of the liver as a base.
page 3, a, lines 3-9
In numbers of people adversely affected it is our most serious public health problem since each alcoholic's illness affects at least four other persons--his immediate family.
page 4, a3, lines 1-4
...more than 50 per cent of our fatal traffic accidents are alcoholic related.
page 4, a3, lines 12-14
The American Medical Association officially declared alcoholism a disease and a medical responsibility in 1956.
page 5, a, lines 1-3
Studies have shown that alcoholics are seven times more likely than nonalcoholics to meet with fatal accidents, and four and a half times more likely to die in automobile accidents than nonalcoholics.
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... Alcoholics Anonymous, which makes complete abstention from drinking the core of its recovery program.
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Q. If someone get drunk every weekend is he an alcoholic?
A. Probable not, if he does not get drunk during the week. Alcoholics generally cannot limit the times they get drunk to specified days and places.
page 16, q3,a3
Q. What is the biggest myth about alcoholism?
A. That the Skid Row derelict is the alcoholic, and if someone has a job, a home, and a family, he can't be one.
page 17, q1,a1, lines 1-3
Q. Are alcoholics weak-willed?
A. No. This is the second biggest myth about alcoholism. Most alcoholics have more than their share of will power.
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Q. Why do people drink?
A. There may be a thousand answers for a thousand individuals, but the one common denominator for them all is simply: Because it makes them feel better.
page 20, q1,a1
Q. There must be other major reason, aren't there?
A. Yes, there are. Alcohol relieves tension, and many people use it for this purpose. It makes you forget your troubles--temporarily. It produces euphoria, makes you feel good, again temporarily. So people use it to escape, to relax, to have pleasure. Some people really like the taste, and drink for this reason. Others feel a social pressure to drink, and do it to conform. Still, others are inhibited people who find it difficult to make small talk; drinking lowers their inhibitions and loosens their tongues, helps them to feel comfortable with other people. But in all cases it makes them feel better than they did without the drinks.
page 20
Q. Are heavy drinking and hard drinking the same?
A. Not really. Heavy drinking means a large consumption every day or several times a week, but hard drinking means just that: going at it hard and steadily at any time all hours, often without showing drunkenness. Or drinking to saturation or near-drunkenness or every drinking occasion. Or perhaps to drunkenness on some occasions. By and large, hard drinking means constant drinking, during the day as well as night.
Q. What is alcoholic drinking?
A. It differs from all other kinds of drinking in a number of ways. The alcoholic drinks very fast--is always ready for a refill long before anyone else. The alcoholic gets all the drinks he can politely get, and then, if at all possible, sneaks a few extra. He gets drunker than anyone else, quicker than anyone else, even at a hard-drinking party. And even after a few drinks his personality changes: he often becomes argumentative, contentious, difficult, boisterous, or noisy. He is apt to stick out like a sore thumb in a group, behaving differently from the others, and apparently quite unaware of this.
Q. What is the difference between heavy drinking and alcoholic drinking?
A. The major difference is loss of control: the alcoholic consistently drinks more than he intended to, and gets drunk at the wrong time and place. But to the casual eye there is no difference in the earlier years of his drinking, because the differences are still largely within the drinker. However there are a few overt signs even then: gulping drinks, which leads to regularly drinking more than the rest of the group, with an ability not to show any sings of drunkenness; eagerness to serve as bartender at a party (he can sneak a few) many absences from the room, and obvious personality change after a few drinks.
page 22, Q3,A3, page 23, A2, lines 1-12
Q. What is normal drinking?
A. So-called "normal" drinking varies enormously--from moderate to heavy--because it mens simply the same kind of drinking as that of the others in your group, whatever that may be.
page 24, q1,a1
Q. Is alcoholism a painful illness?
A. In my opinion the most painful of all. Alcoholism hurts in every department of your life. Physically, the alcoholic always feels sick--very sick--except of course when he's had enough drinks not to feel anything. Mentally, the suffering is acute, because you can't stay high or drunk all the time, and at sober moments--especially about three o'clock in the morning--you know exactly what's happening to you, you see your life going down the drain, and you don't know why or what to do about it. Emotionally, it hurts terribly, since you are losing all you value and love, you are hurting those who love you, and you seem powerless to do anything about it. Socially, your life is a shambles, your friends begin to disappear, son one wants to come to see you, and they no longer invite you out. So far as your career is concerned, it's appalling because your ability to function is gradually dwindling: whatever you do, you can no longer do it well. And financially it's a disaster. It costs so much money to drink the amount an alcoholic must have to function at all. Ask any alcoholic whether his alcoholism was painful, and I think he will agree with me.
page 36, q2,a2
Q. What is "the alcoholic"?
A. Anyone whose drinking causes a continuing problem in any department of his or her life. The word "continuing" is the key word. Many people may have problems because of their drinking at one time or another in their lives. In order to get rid of the
problems they will do something about the drinking--either cutting it down or cutting it out. They can do this, and they do. That's what the alcoholic tries to do--but he can't. He has lost control.
Q. How did they come to be called alcoholics?
A. The word alcoholic and its companion word alcoholism were coined in 1848 by a Swedish scientist named Dr. Magnus Huss. Prior to that time the condition was referred to as chronic or continual drunkenness, and the victim of the condition as a drunkard. These terms were more descriptive than scientific, and Dr. Huss apparently felt the need for scientific terminology; at any rate he coined the terms and they gradually came to replace all others. In the United States they were slower to gain acceptance than in Europe, and for many years, until well after the turn of the century, the favored terms were inebriate and inebriety. Dipsomania an dipsomaniac were also widely used then. Today alcoholism and alcoholic are the near-universal choice, although industry and some therapist prefer another descriptive term--problem drinker.
Q. Is the alcoholic a particular type of person?
A. No. Alcoholics are all kinds of people: from rich to poor, from highly intelligent to ignorant, and from every walk of life. Since alcoholism is a disease,it is no respecter of persons and knows no boundaries, geographic, economic, social, or of sex, race, color, or creed. Alcoholism strikes human beings whoever or wherever they are--workers, executives, professionals, clergymen, housewives, career women, the famous, and the great anonymous masses. No one who drinks is immune.
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Q. Is there an alcoholic personality?
A. No. Considerable research has failed to produce any evidence that there is such a thing. The belief in such a possibility undoubtedly stems from many striking similarities in full-blown alcoholics--in behavior, in speech, in thinking and feeling. But many therapists believe that the neurotic pattern of the alcoholic is the result of alcoholism, rather than inherent in the person. This belief is supported by the fact that so many alcoholics return to normal effective functioning when they stop drinking, with a minimum of psychiatric treatment, or none at all.
page 58, q2,a2
Q. Is there a way to tell whether you are an alcoholic?
A. Yes, there is a simple test. It is generally impossible for an alcoholic to control his drinking over any long period of time although he can "go on the wagon" temporarily, sometimes for quite lengthy periods. The secret is control--the alcoholic has lost it. The test is: for a period of six months, at least, determine not to exceed a certain number of drinks a day, that number to be not more than three. (This does not mean it has to be daily.) Whatever number is chosen, one, two, or three, must not be exceeded under any circumstance. Absolutely no exceptions, or the test is failed. This test has shown many people they had alcoholism, and has relived the minds of many more who had no difficulty in passing it.
Q. Are most alcoholics loners?
A. No. Most alcoholics are gregarious and prefer drinking with others. However, they may do a lot of quick drinking by themselves before they join the others. And when on a real bender and alcoholic may hole up at home or in a hotel room to drink. In the late stages most alcoholics drink alone, but it is a much because other people avoid them as vice versa.
page 59, q,1,2, a,1,2
Q. Is there any particularly outstanding characteristic of alcoholics?
A. Yes. Denial. Almost without exception alcoholics deny their condition and continue to do so long after it has become apparent to everyone around them. Everyone knows the alcohoic's insistence that "I can take it or leave it alone." But he almost never leaves it alone.
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