Do alcoholics as a class differ from
other people?
Answer
Some years ago the doctors began to look at
Alcoholics Anonymous and they got about
thirty of us together and they said to
themselves "Well, now that these fellows are
in A.A., and they won't lie so badly, and
maybe for the first time we'll get a good
look at what the interior of a drunk is
like." So a number of us were examined at
great length by psychiatrists, and all sorts
of tests taken, and the object of this
particular inquiry was to see whether
alcoholics as a class differed from other
people, and if they did, just why and how
much.
A number of us were invited to attend the
conclave, and a number of learned papers
were read, and finally one of these
physicians (a very noted one - the meeting
took place at the New York Academy of
Medicine) began to sum up what he thought
the conclusion which they had arrived at was
this: that the alcoholic is emotionally on
the childish side. That the alcoholic is a
person who is more sensitive emotionally
than the average person. And then, they
ascribed another quality to us - they used
the word "grandiosity," they were grandiose
(meaning by that that as a type we were what
you might call "All or Nothing people.")
Someone once described it by saying all
alcoholics hanker for the moon when perhaps
the stars would have done just as well. As a
class, we're like that, said the doctors.
(Memphis, Tenn., Sept.18-20, 1947)
