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01-21-2008, 10:55 AM
The Saturday Evening Post - August 7,1954 (page 22) -
These Drug Addicts Cure One Another - By Jerome Ellison

A new approach to a tragic social problem - drug addiction -
has been found by the ex-addicts of Narcotics Anonymous…..

…..They met twice weekly to make this freedom secure, and
worked to help other addicts achieve it. The New York group,
founded in 1 950 and called Narcotics Anonymous, is one of
several which have been piling up evidence that the methods
of Alcoholics Anonymous can help release people from other
drugs than alcohol--drugs such as opium, heroin, morphine
and the barbiturates..

The drug addict, like the alcoholic, has long been an enigma
to those who want to help him. Real contact is most likely to
be made, on a principle demonstrated with phenomenal
success by Alcoholics Anonymous, by another addict...The
N.A. member first shares his shame with the newcomer.
Then he shares his hope and finally, sometimes, his recovery..

To date, the A.A. type of group therapy has been an effective
ingredient of "cures' – the word as used here means no drugs
for a year or more and an intent of permanent abstinence—in
at least 200 cases. Some of these, including Dan, the founder
of the New York group, had been pronounced medically
hopeless. The "Narco" Group in the United States Public
Health Service Hospital at Lexington, Kentucky has a
transient membership of about eighty men and women patients.
The group mails a monthly newsletter, THE KEY, free to those
who want it, currently a list of 500 names. Many of these are
interested but non-addicted friends. Most are "mail-order
members" of the group--addicts who have left the hospital and
been without drugs for periods ranging from a few weeks to
several years. The H.F.D. (Habit-Forming Drug) Group is a
loosely affiliated fellowship of California ex-addicts who keep
"clean" --the addicts' term for a state of abstinence--by attending
Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with volunteer AA. sponsors.
The Federal prison at Lorton, Virginia, has a prisoner group
which attracts thirty men to its weekly meetings. Narcotics
Anonymous in New York is the sole "free world" (outside of
institutions) group which conducts its own weekly open-to-the-
public meetings in the AA. tradition…..

Narcotics Anonymous -- A.A.'s Young Brother

The American interested himself in Frank Buchman's Oxford
Group, found sobriety, and told an inebriate friend of his
experience. The friend sobered up and took the message to
a former drinking partner, a New York stockbroker named Bill.
Though he was an agnostic who had never had much use for
religion, Bill sobered up. Late in 1935, while on a business trip
to Akron, Ohio, he was struck by the thought that he wouldn't
be able to keep his sobriety unless he passed on the message.
He sought out a heavy-drinking local surgeon named Bob
and told him the story to date. They sat down and formulated
a program for staying sober -- a program featuring twelve
Suggested Steps and called Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill
devoted full time to carrying the A.A. message, and the news
spread. The now famous article by Jack Alexander in The
Saturday Evening Post of March 1,1941, made it nationally
known, and by 1944 there were A.A. groups in the major cities.

In June of that year an inebriate mining engineer whom we'll
call Houston `hit bottom' with his drinking in Montgomery,
Alabama, and the local A.A.'s dried him up. Houston gobbled
the A.A. program and began helping other alcoholics. One of
the drunks he worked with--a sales executive who can be
called Harry--was involved not only with alcohol but also
morphine. AA took care of the alcoholic factor, but left Harry's
drug habit unchanged. Interested and baffled, Houston
watched his new friend struggle in his strange self-constructed
trap.

The opiate theme of the narrative now reappears. Harry's pattern
had been to a roaring drunk, take morphine to avoid a hangover,
get drunk again and take morphine again. Thus he became
"hooked"-- addicted. He drove through a red light one day and
was stopped by a policeman. The officer found morphine and
turned him over to the Federal jurisdiction, with the result that
Harry spent twenty-seven months at Lexington, where both
voluntary and involuntary patients are accommodated, as a
prisoner. After his discharge he met Houston, and, through A.A.
found relief from the booze issue. The drug problem continued to
plague him.

During this period, Houston, through one of those coincidences
which A.A.'s like to attribute to a Higher Power, was transferred by
his employers to Frankfort, Kentucky, just a few miles from
Lexington. "Harry's troubles kept jumping through my brain,"
Houston says. "I was convinced that the twelve Suggested Steps
would work as well for drugs as for alcohol if conscientiously
applied. One day I called on Dr. V.H. Vogel, the medical officer
then in charge at Lexington. I told him of our work with Harry and
offered to assist in starting a group in the hospital. Doctor Vogel
accepted the offer and on Feb. 1 6,1947, the first meeting was
held. Weekly meetings have been going on ever since."

The Phenomenon of "Physical Dependence"

Some months later, in a strangely woven web of coincidence,
Harry reappeared at "Narco" as a voluntary patient and began
attending meetings. He was discharged, relapsed, and in a
short time was back again. "This time," he says, "it clicked." He
has now been free from both alcohol and drugs for more than
five years. Twice he has returned to tell his story at meetings,
in the A.A. tradition of passing on the good word.

In the fall of 1948 there arrived at Lexington an addict named
Dan who had been there before. It was, in fact, his seventh trip;
the doctors assumed that he'd continue his periodic visits until he
died. This same Dan Inter founded the small but significant
Narcotics Anonymous group in New York. Dan's personal history
is the story of an apparently incurable addict apparently cured....

This is the interval of greatest vulnerability, N.A. members say,
to the addicts inevitable good resolutions. He has formed the
habit of using his drug when he feels low. If he breaks off medical
supervision before he is physically and mentally back to par, the
temptation to relapse may be overwhelming. It is during this period,
Dan says, that the addict most needs the kind of understanding
he finds in N.A....

……As a result he (Dan) was among the first prisoner patients at
the new United States Public Health Service Hospital for addicts
at Lexington, when it was first opened on May 28,1935...

……On his (Dan) seventh trip to Lexington, in 1948, he was in a
profound depression.

After a month of sullen silence, he began attending group
meetings, which were a new feature at the hospital since his
last trip. "I still wouldn't talk" he reports, "but I did some
listening.
I was impressed by what Houston had to say. Harry came back
one time and told us

His story. For the first time, I began to pray. I was only praying
that I would die, but at least it was a prayer." He did not die, nor
did he recover. Within six months of his discharge he was found
in possession of drugs and sent back to Lexington for a year –
his eighth and, as it turned out, final trip.

"This time things were different, " he says. "Everything Houston
and Harry had been saying suddenly made sense. There was
a lawyer from a southern city there at the time, and a midwest
surgeon. They were in the same mood I was – disgusted with
themselves and really ready to change. The three of us used to
have long talks with Houston every Saturday morning, besides
the regular meetings." All three recently celebrated the fifth
anniversary of their emancipation from the drug habit.

Dan, conscious of what seemed to him a miraculous change of
attitude, returned to New York full of enthusiasm and hope. The
twelfth of the Suggested Steps was to pass on the message to
others who needed help. He proposed to form the first outside-
of-institution group and call it Narcotics Anonymous – N.A. He
contacted other Lexington Alumni and suggested they start
weekly meetings.

There were certain difficulties. Addicts are not outstandingly
gregarious, and when all the excuses were in only three – a
house painter named Charlie, a barber named Henry and a
waiter we’ll call George – were on hand for the first meeting.
There was uncertainty about where this would be; nobody, it
seemed wanted addicts around. Besides, missionary, or
"twelfth step," work of the new group would be hampered by
the law…..

…..Drug peddlers were not enthusiastic about the new
venture. Rumors circulated discrediting the group.

Out of the gloom, however, came unexpected rays of friendliness
and help. The Salvation Army made room for meetings at its 46th
Street cafeteria. Later the McBurney Y.M.C.A., on 23rd Street,
offered a meeting room. Two doctors backed their oral support
by sending patients to meetings. Two other doctors agreed to
serve on an advisory board.

There were slips and backslidings. Meetings were sometimes
marred by obstinacy and temper. But three of the original four
remained faithful and the group slowly grew…..

Group statistics estimate that 5000 inquiries have been answered,
constituting a heavy drain on the groups treasury. Some 600
addicts have attended one or more meetings, 90 have attained
effective living without drugs…..

…..One relapse after the first exposure to N.A. principles seems
about par, though a number have not found this necessary. "A
key fact of which few addicts are aware," Dan says, "is that once
he’s been addicted, a person can never again take even one
dose of any habit-forming drug, including alcohol and the
barbiturates, without running into trouble.

The weekly "open" – to the public – meetings are attended by
ten to thirty persons – addicts, their friends and families and
concerned outsiders. The room is small and on Friday evenings
when more than twenty-five turn up, crowed.

There is an interval of chitchat and visiting, and then, about nine
o’clock, the secretary….. opens the meeting. In this ceremony,
all repeat a well-known prayer: ….. The secretary then introduces
a leader – a member who presents the speakers and renders
interlocutor’s and evening – describe their adventures with
drugs and with N.A….

…..Harold and Carl have now been four years without drugs;
Manny, three; Marian, Don, and Pat, one…..

Besides the Friday open meeting there is a Tuesday closed
meeting at the Y for addicts only. As a special dispensation I
was permitted to attend a closed meeting, the purpose of
which is to discuss the daily application of the twelve steps…..

The Narco meetings at Lexington have born other fruit. There
was Charlie, the young GI from Washington, D.C., who..........
discovered that there was a concentration of addicts in the

Federal penitentiary at Lorton, Virginia. Working with Alcoholics
Anonymous, which already had meetings going in the prison,
he obtained permission to start a group like the one at Lexington.
Now a year old, these meetings, called the Notrol Group --
Lorton backwards --attract the regular attendance of about
thirty addicts…..

Friendliness of ex-drug addicts with former devotees of alcohol
sometimes occurs, though Bill, the same who figured so
prominently in A.A.'s founding says a fraternal attitude cannot
be depended upon. The average A.A., he says, would merely
look blank if asked about drug addiction, and rightly reply that
this specialty is outside his understanding. There are, however,
a few A.A.'s who have been addicted to both alcohol and to
drugs, and these sometimes function as "bridge members."

"If the addict substitutes the word "drugs" whenever he hears `
Alcohol' in the AA. program, he'll be helped," Houston says.
Many ex-addicts, in the larger population centers where
meetings run into the hundreds, attend A.A. meetings. The H.F.D.
(Habit-Forming-Drug) Group, which is activated by an energetic
ex-addict and ex-alcoholic of the Los Angeles area named
Betty, has dozens of members, but no meetings of its own…..

The roll call of ex-addict groups is small. There is the parent
Narco Group, Addicts Anonymous, P.O. Box 2000, Lexington,
Ky.; Narcotics Anonymous, P.O. Box 3, Village Station, New
York 14, N.Y.; Notrol Group CIO U.S. Penitentiary, Lorton, Va.;
H.F.D. Group, c/o Secretary, Bay Area Rehabilitation Center,
1458 26th St., Santa Monica, Calif…...

A frequent and relevant question asked by the casually
interested is, "But I thought habit-forming drugs were
illegal-where do they get the stuff?" The answer involves
an interesting bit of history explaining how opiates come
to be illegal. In the early 1800’s doctors used them freely
to treat the innumerable ills then lumped under the heading,
"nervousness." Hypodermic injection of morphine was
introduced in 1856. By 1880, opium and morphine preparations
were common drugstore items. An 1882 survey estimated that
1 per cent of the population was addicted, and the public
became alarmed. A wave of legislation swept the country,
beginning in 1885 with an Ohio statute and culminating in
the Federal Harrison Narcotic Law of 1914. Immediately after
the passage of this prohibitory law, prices of opium, morphine
and heroin soared. A fantastically profitable black market
developed. Today, $3000 worth of heroin purchased abroad
brings $300,000 when finally cut, packaged and sold in
America.

Among the judges, social workers and doctors with whom I
talked there is a growing feeling that the Harrison Act needs to
be re-examined. Dr. Hubert S. Howe, a former Columbia
professor of neurology and authority on narcotics, says the
statute, like the Volstead Act, "removed the traffic in narcotic
drugs from lawful hands and gave it to criminals." In an address
before the New York State Medical Society he asserted that the
financial props could be knocked from the illegal industry by
minor revisions of present laws and rulings, with no risk of
addiction becoming more widespread. Doctor Howe
proposes a system of regulation similar to that of the United
Kingdom, which reports only 364 addicts.

Meanwhile the lot of those who become involved with what our
British cousins rightly call "dangerous drugs" is grim. It is just
slightly less grim than it might have been five years ago. Since
then a few addicts have found a way back from the nightmare
alleys of addiction to a normal life which may seem humdrum
enough at times, but which when lost, then regained, is found to
be a glory.

Source: The Saturday Evening Post, August 7, 1954