Dr. Earl M. author of Physician Heal Thyself speaking in Jacksonville, FL

I'm very grateful to be here. I, recall a story that always stays with me from Vicky Sheridan in the 1955 conference in St. Louis. He introduced Bill on the 2nd night and he told a story which is so characteristic of all of us. He sat down east Texas, that there was a little town and they had no place to put a drunk if they should, perchance, pick 1 up.

So they decided they would put the drunk, should they pick 1 up, in the local ice house. And sure enough, one came along. And he was put forthwith into the ice house. And that night the sheriff was having dinner and suddenly he stopped and abruptly looked at his wife and said, Emmy, my God. I left old Joe down in the ice house.

I've got to go down and release him. So he put on his hat and he walked down the street and he came to the ice house and turned the great big handle of the stick door and it swung open. And way over there in the corner was a little old drunk huddled and he looked up at the sheriff at the door and he said, for God's sake close that door. I'm freezing to death. Our stories reveal what we used to be like, what happened and what we are like now.

Well I'm not gonna tell you my cause it's none of your business. Well I will infringe on your good natures to tell you a little bit about the last day of my drinking. I had, gone out with my daughter and we had to have breakfast. She was little at the time. And I had had a wearing blender full of vodka fizzes and 3 double vodka martinis.

And I was kind of ashamed of my taste for mixed drinks and the curbs for a long, long time. And I was also ashamed. This after came in a 8. I was also ashamed of the fact that when I drank, I also ate candy. Until I read John Barleycorn by Jack London and he did the same thing.

I said, it was good enough for Jack if it's good enough for me. And on the way home, I, I took my daughter home and I got there. And then it was a, I mixed some Alexanders, you know, 1 third vodka, 1 third cream to cocoa, and 1 third cream with a piece of ice in it. And didn't bother to mix this. And it was a very beautiful, sunny afternoon.

For reasons that I cannot disclose to this day, I went up to see a friend of mine who lived up the hill from me in a little community outside of San Francisco in Mill Valley, who had become a member of AA and had been sober for some 7 months. Now I wasn't particularly, intimate with this friend of mine. We were college classmates. We were fraternity brothers and undergraduate work. But I went up to see him.

I did not go to see him asking for help from alcoholics anonymous. On this given day, I was not concerned with stopping drinking. This had occurred to me repeatedly throughout the last good number of years, but not on this given day that I recall. Well, I went up there and, he gave me a piece of paper to read. I asked him about AA just as one friend would ask another as far as I recall.

And he gave me a piece of paper and, told me about the 12 steps and 12 traditions and, being a physician, he was giving this almost as he would to a doctor to educate. I went back to my house and asked my wife to read this to me And she did. And there are a great number of things that were directed to the active director. And only 2 of them, as I recall, stuck with me. And one was, do not give up drinking for anybody else except yourself.

Now, if somebody had doubled up a beer towel and slapped me across the face, nothing would have made more impact on me than this statement. Why? I don't know. I wasn't planning on on this day at least giving up drinking, let alone for somebody else, but it made a gross impact on me. And then it said, do not consider yourself a martyr because you stopped drinking.

And once again, the slap of the beer towel would have been insufficient as compared to the impact that this martyr about up drinking that day, let alone being a martyr about. But these two things stuck with me very clearly. And then there were a great number of other things. These these were these are typical things directed to the active drinker by the sober alcoholic. My wife went into the into the house, and I went up the side of the hill to fix the barbecue fire.

It was now about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I was loaded. I got to the top of the stairs and fuzzily looked at my glass that had about that much left in it. Just a little bit. And I decided that I would come down to the kitchen and make another drink. And then I would have it up there when I was making the barbecue fire.

And as I turned around on the stairs, the thought suddenly pierced me. It didn't simply occur to me as many thoughts do. I can't find the word to describe it. It pierced me. This is your last drink.

And at that instant, the craving to take another drink disappeared and to this day has not returned. It was just as though someone had reached down and taken a hot, wet, heavy overcoat off of my shoulders and put it on the front. I remember it was sunny and, visually, the sun tended to become brighter to me. Never in my life had I felt such fantastic relief. Now, just to show you how close one can be to this problem and not recognize it.

I'm sure that many, many people were intensely grateful to find out that their problem was one of booze. I certainly was one of those. Sometimes you're so close to the forest, you can't see the trees. And there is a disease in medical science known as hyperventilation. This comes from people who are chronically upset.

They overbreathe, sigh repeatedly. We all sigh. But this is, in in pathological amounts. So that finally, excessive amounts of carbon dioxide are breathed out and certain blood chemistry changes so that there are symptoms of shaking, sweating, tremulousness, hyperact overactivity, and so on. And I thought for years that what I was suffering from was hyperventilation.

And the cure is very difficult in these circumstances. And here I was stuck with this disease. Believe me, never was a physician so glad to find out that he was not suffering from hyperventilation, but that he was a damn drunk. This is a great help to me. Well, so so why it came to me easily and abruptly and quickly.

Well, it took me 6, 7 hours or so to sober up. Most alcoholics come to sobriety and the remorse of a hangover or some such circumstance. And while I'm supposed I suppose there are many other alcoholic who have come to sobriety, filed drugs. I don't think it's a common course. Not to belabor my story, but let me tell you one other thing.

But it was about 6 or 7 days or a week or 8 days before I went to my first meeting. And I went up to my friend and told him about my story and he had been aware of my drinking, but had said nothing to it to me about it the day that he gave me this report. And secretly in his heart, he had given this to me because he thought I needed it, but I didn't know this secretly in his heart, he had given this to me because he thought I needed it, but I didn't know this until a later time. Well, he took me to a meeting. And at this meeting, there were only a handful of people.

There was a typical banquet table like you have there, 4 by 8. And on this end of the banquet table, there was a man named Clark Clark Billingsley who was the community or one of the few community butchers. And at this end of the table, there was a little short ball headed bird who was quite aptly called Shorty. And he was a carpenter. And on that side of the table, there was a man who was a baker and his name was Bern.

He were he was a baker in one of the local bakery shops. And on this side of the table was my friend who was kind of a self styled inventor and mechanic and myself. And these were all aware of the first meeting I attended. I was told later that this group was about to fold. But, it so happened it did not and it's now a thriving meeting.

Well, I looked around at these people and I thought, what in God's name am I getting myself mixed up with? Low lifers of this sort. And I asked to be excused. And I went out outside and sit under a large elm tree that's there and took counsel with myself. And if you'll pardon me for some personal references for just a moment.

This is what I said to myself. Do you mean to tell me that you being a doctor who is licensed to practice in the state of California And there was a diplomat of 1 of the great surgical specialty boards in the United States on the faculty of one of the greatest medical schools in the world, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a fellow of the International College of Surgeons. And I might stop here and say, make another personal reference and then I'll make no more. My medical training was twofold. I'm a surgeon.

I don't treat alcoholics nor am I interested in treating alcoholics. But I was also trained as a psychiatrist in the East here. Now, I don't practice psychiatry, Joe. I could if I wanted to, but I do not. As somebody once said when they found out that I was a member of the American Psychiatric Association, when I first came into AA, they said, what's worse than a confused psychiatrist?

So there you go. And so I reiterated. And also, as I stood on this elementary, a member of the American Psychiatric Association. And you with all of this have got to go in to this hall and get a butcher and a carpenter and a baker and a mechanic to make a man out of you? And the answer was yes.

And I went back into that meeting, and never has a physician been so grateful for the mere existence of a butcher and a carpenter and a baker and a mechanic and this one and his entire life. When I lived a 100000 years and I spent 24 hours a day attempting to repay these men for what they have done for me, I could not break even. These are truly great men. Well, you know, I had thought about many, many things, but one thing had not occurred to me. When association was getting started, a a in 1935, I was an embryo physician at the time and I went to a psychoanalyst and I spent an hour a day, 5 days a week for 5 and one half years.

Now, this was of great value to me, but it was not anything in terms of alcohol. Now in those days, alcohol was nowhere near the problem that it became, but it was one of the the problems on occasion at that time. It brought me into this organization. Psychiatry can be of great value to people and even to alcoholics, but not for alcoholism. That's a strange often occurs to me.

It makes good sense to me, you see, that if the if the, a patient, an alcoholic goes to a psychiatrist and tells him about his problems. I'm kinda simplifying this thing as a matter of fact. Simplify this thing and and tells life's problems and finally finds out the origin. This isn't quite the way it goes, but in general, that then this problem would fade. This happens in other symptoms that emotionally disturbed people have.

If the alcoholic then goes to psychiatrist and we find out why he drank, it makes perfect sense to me that then the alcoholic should become a social drinker. There's only one thing wrong with it and that is it is wrong. It just doesn't happen. Well, at any rate, I have not thought about God as such. Oh, I'd heard of the boy.

And I recall at college deciding that religion was the greatest thing in the world for one reason. And that was that it kept the masses of people together so that intellectuals like myself could think. This is what I remember. Actually thinking, deciding this. Well, suddenly, I got heaped on this God business.

And I I got a Bible and I put it in my, in my, nightstand by my bed and in the glove compartment of my car and my surgical locker at the hospital, my 2nd right drawer at the desk in my office, and they're all still there. And I got a hold of all the books by Emmett Pfaff. The first one I got was Sermon on the Mount and I got all all the books and they are there are about 58 of them. If you want them, I'll be glad to give them for you. I got a hold of books by Thomas Kelly.

I got a hold of books by endless numbers of people, Norman Vincent Steele, whatnot. And we had little groups that met. Don't you know? We would meet in somebody's house and we would say, have you read lines such and such an Emmett Fox says in his 30th book? No.

I haven't. I'd go home. I open the book and read it and feel filled. I would go out in the morning and I would see a leaf hanging from a tree and I would say to myself, and that's God. And I would drive around the rim of Marin County in the morning as I was going to surgery and stop and listen to the silence, and I would say to myself, and that's God.

And I walked down the stairs and see a couple of berries hanging from a tree. And I would look at this and fold it and say, and this is God. And I put this on the visor of my car, you know, the sun visor so that I could look at it frequently, these two berries, and say, and this is God. And then I would go back to these little meetings. These are kind of extra meetings that we had in addition to the AA meetings.

And we all were intrigued by this sort of a business, don't you know? And we learned a tremendous amount and we would fill one another's cups, don't you know? And we seemed to kind of float up into the sky somehow and I felt like hell. And I went to my friend Clark and I said, Clark, what in God's name is the matter with me? He said, I said, I might just as well be drunk.

It'd be like this. Well, Clark, the butcher, he's a very simple, not simple minded, but simple in his way of speaking and his demeanor. And he's very gentle and very kind. And he took me by the arm over to a table and got me a cup of coffee. And he said, I like to talk to you just for a minute, Earl.

I said, fine. And I couldn't take my eyes off of this man. And finally, he said, you know, I'm very proud of you. He said, you've been around here 3 or 4 months now. And he said, we have an organization in Mill Valley, the community where I live.

He said, we have an organization in Mill Valley. And this organization is known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Why in the hell don't you join And I said, well, now what do you think I've been doing? I've I've been around here for now for 4 months and all this. So I mean, he's I don't know what you've been doing, but it doesn't have very much to do really with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Well, I said, what do you do? Well, he said, I don't know what you would do, but he said, I can tell you what I would do. I would get a hold of the big book. Have you read it? Yes.

I said I'd read it I'd read it twice. Get a hold then of the big book and read again and hear what it says on page 70, page 58 in the new volume. And I went home and I got it out. And this is what it said. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves this simple program. Usually, men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such enforcements. They're not at fault. They seem to have been born that way.

They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than f. Are those 2 who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose what we used to be like, what happened, and what we're like now. If you have decided, the book said to me, if you have decided that you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps.

At some of these, we bought. We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all of the earnestness at our command, we begeth you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us are trying to hold on to our old ideas, but the result was nil until we let go absolutely. And then something seemed to happen.

Surely give oneself this simple program. Surely give oneself this simple program. Any length, you know, this sort of thing. Hang on to old ideas. It doesn't seem to work so well, but give and let go completely.

And suddenly, this went through my thick head. What this book had been saying to me all along? Remember, we deal with alcohol, it said. It's cunning and baffling, powerful. Without help it's too much for us.

But there is one who has all power. And that one is God. May you find him now. It said to me, half measures, it said to me, avail is nothing. I didn't say half measure avail is half.

That's purely and succinctly and clearly. Half measure avail is nothing. We stood at the turning point and we asked his protection and care with complete abandon, complete abandon, any length, giving oneself with a simple program, thoroughly doing all of this stuff, finally rang through my brain. And so then, I guess, AA became meaningful to me at this time with some clarity. Well, enough.

Tonight, I thought we might just spend a little time talking about how is it that you and I have become as we are. How do we become powerless over alcohol? What is behind all of this? Now alcoholism and I'm gonna get it's gonna be, kind of maybe it's an AA in a way. Let's just just kinda discuss this just a little bit.

How do you and I become powerless over alcohol? What happens to us? Now we know that alcoholism is a threefold disease. It's a spiritual disease, of course. But I'm not gonna talk about the spiritual aspects of alcoholism.

I'm gonna set that over here in the side and not talk about that tonight. But let's agree, certainly, it's there. We'll talk about it tonight. And then there are the emotional sides of alcoholism. And there are many people who still believe that we are emotional cripples.

Now I personally think that this is only partially correct and the rest of it is simple hogwash, really. I'm gonna read you something that I think is a definition of an alcoholic. I took my daughter to yeah. Just show it to Al here. I took my daughter to New York once upon a time and we we came back and, this was on my desk and, and without a contact, it was still shared.

It's not a kind of where it came from. Don't even who said it. And here is what it says. A third level of action. Apparently, this paper talked about 2 others.

This is one paragraph of it. A third level of action are those whom Hunter calls athletes of the spirit who are fundamentally effective and aware. They are often patronized by the rebels as being childish or adolescent. These great souls have a gaiety that is childlike, a spontaneous and free way because they are conscripts of a terrible compassion. Evil has no power to crush or to sour them because they see through the intervening ugliness to something just and something lovely beyond.

Do their hands produce so much because their hearts are serene? Or is there tranquility the result of their creativity? Neither is the final cause of the other. But these qualities are the reward of that most important of all human acts. Commitment.

These athletes of the spirit live for and buy something infinitely higher than themselves. I think that's pretty good definition of alcohol. At any rate, I'm not gonna talk about the emotional sides of alcoholism tonight. We'll talk about the physical aspects only. Now what do we know about the physical aspects of alcoholism?

Well, we don't know very much. We do know a couple of things. And what I'm about to say to you is not conclusive. It isn't absolute, but it's what medical science knows. And I don't treat alcoholism, but I have availed myself of what medical literature there is on alcoholism.

And I like to share this with you so we might come to a little understanding. It might be of some value as to how you and I got here tonight. Now we know that the alcoholic has within him a physical difference. Whether he's born with this, we don't know, but it's there. Let me just point out, what I mean.

Alcoholism might be compared to diabetes. You know, the diabetic has something physically different and that's what's known as the islets of Langerhans that rest in his pancreas here are abnormal. And so that the production of insulin is an insufficient amount and he has trouble utilizing sugar in his body. And we all know this, doctors and non doctors alike. The alcoholic is the same, so say many, not all, but many of the specialists in alcoholism.

Now, for instance, what are some of the differences? We know that the alcoholic has a fantastic requirement for sugar. We know that the sweet 2 of the alcoholics known and listening. My gosh, the alcoholic takes lots of sugar into his body. I'm talking about sober alcoholics now and eats desserts and pies and cakes and so forth.

And about an hour and a half later after he's eating all this, he just feels like death warmed over and then he drinks a lot of coffee and then whips him up for a while. And in 2 or 3 hours, it feels like death warmed over all the more and so on. We know that the utilization of sugar in most alcoholics, not all, is not quite kosher. Somewhere the level of blood sugar falls at an earlier time in nonalcoholics as compared to nonalcoholics. And alcoholics as compared to nonalcoholics.

And this leads to a variety of symptoms which I won't go into. But by some, this has been called hyperinsulinism. Well, this is not a 100% true, but it's in many, many, many alcoholics. So say many of the studies that I quote to you. Other ones say the alcoholic has periods of low blood pressure.

He wakens in the morning, irritable, sick in the head, numb, irritable and so forth and gets up. And here his blood sugar is low and his blood pressure is low and he's gets up and he thinks he's he reads, read the big book, you know, and he reads it from chapter 5 and the 12 steps and he hates them and he thinks he's off the program and all is terrible and so on When actually a little exercise, little food to help this guy, and then he could go ahead and read the big book. And these are unique differences that are in all people, I suppose. But the authorities say are more so an alcoholic. The alcoholic has a fantastic requirement for fluids.

The nonalcoholic gazes, at us in utter, amazement at our injudicious slurping of fluids. As we sit around and drink fantastic quantities of fluids and orange juice and coffee, this just bewilders the nonalcoholic. We know that tension, muscle tension is higher in alcoholics than a nonalcoholic. These have been measured by time graphs around the arm where actual muscle tension has been has been measured in many of the clinics in the east and west. So the tension of muscle, apparently, the alcoholic is a tense person and is that is gonna live with it forever somewhere.

We also know that that the alcoholic, a nonalcoholic can be, in his home and his wife will say, dear, would you go out and cut the lawn? And he goes out and cuts the lawn for a while. And then he stops and looks at the bird up in the tree. And then he goes on for a while and pretty soon he talks. So he's a friend across the fence and his wife goes out and says, dear, let's cut the lawn.

And so he cuts a little bit more and he and finally, slowly, and tediously, but rather accurately, he gets the lawn cut. But the alcoholic who was next door who made me flap in his back may suddenly get a flash to cut the lawn and just cut just like that. Just like that. Then he does 5 other things while the nonalcoholic is still cutting the lawn, and then he's flatting his back over here for a long period of time. Now this is a characteristic of the alcoholic.

This is these are some we don't know what these physical differences are. There are those who say that the adrenal glands, little glands that sit on top of the kidneys here put out an abnormal form of what's known as aldosterone. Forget the word, but it's there. And this alters, the expression of fluids in a human being. The alcoholic is given to periods of swelling known as edema.

You may notice from day to day that you vary a pound or 2 or 3. Nonalcoholics are more stable, not all, but more stable. This has been observed in the various studies that the alcoholic is prone to store fluids for periods of time. This means he gets some storage of fluid in his frontal lobes of his brain. He's irritable.

He's depressed. He thinks he's not a dry drunk when he just needs to get rid of some fluid. No. There all incidentally, there is a lower incidence of baldness oddly enough, amongst alcoholics as compared to nonalcoholics. And there's a lower incidence of obesity, amongst alcoholics, nonalcoholics.

And we're talking to the general practice section of the American Academy of General Practice in Los Angeles. 25 100 doctors. And I told them when I'm telling you only in technical terms, but I mentioned these two things and came out the next, morning all over the country on every radio. I mentioned the excessive thirst, the part of the alcoholic said, if you're bald, if you're slim, and if you're thirsty, you're a drunk. But I stopped counting the letters of protest that I got from all parts of the country and oddly enough, most of them from people who were obviously in AA.

And I didn't even answer my I hung my head. Well, that's what they quoted. So this is gonna be a red hot headline. Well, so we know then that somewhere in the alcoholic's body, there is a physical difference. This has been called the x factor.

We don't know where it is. Now we know that people go through periods of tension throughout the day. Well, for instance, you heard that this meeting, this was coming tonight and you're tired and you've been here for a couple days for conference and you said to yourself, shall I go to that banquet or not? And your attention rose just a little bit and you pondered for a while. And while you pondered, your tension was at a static level.

And then you said to yourself, yes. I will go. And when you made that decision, your tension dropped off. And if you said, yes. I will go.

You're here. And if you said, no. I will not go. You're not here. But you do know then that the tension dropped off and you decided what suit, if you have more than 1, shall I wear?

Or what dress shall I wear? A little period of tension, and then it went off like this and you decided I'll wear that dress and down came the period attention. And this is rather simple. We know this. It happens to all of us, nonalcoholics and alcoholic alike.

We also know some people grow periods of attention for years. What business am I going into? What school am I going to go to? How many wives am I going to have? All this sort of business leads to some period of tension.

We all know that. That. Now human beings have found that there are certain chemicals which decrease tension. And one of those we found. And this is booze.

Now why didn't the nonalcoholic find booze? He also drinks booze to decrease his tension. We know this too. The, non alcoholic, he he takes a drink into his body and his tongue loosens up, and he's more friendly and he's more relaxed. The tension slowly drops off, and the party is more convivial.

And I suppose one might say in a manner of speaking that alcohol is one of the saviors of the human race except for you and me. Now and it's just been said that the inhibitions of life are alcohol soluble. So intentions do drop off as one drinks. But what happens to the alcoholic who has this so called poorly understood if they're at all, and we think it's there, x factor inside of his body. He takes a drink into his body to get relief and wow.

He gets a fantastic relief from tension. It's as though God came down from heaven and gave him manna and said, you are my son forevermore. Now the golden, golden drops mean so much. They do so much for us. To the nonalcoholic, well, they mean a little bit, but, you know, we can take it or leave it or it doesn't make much difference, but not to us.

Our eyes brighten. We're sharper. We do things quicker. We're we're more fantastic, we're clever, we can talk longer and louder and write better books and tell better stories and so on. There's no doubt that alcohol in our early drinking days served us a tremendous favor.

It helped us put up with the miseries of life, which we are so allergic to somewhere. You know, I think it's an odd thing. You know? I mean, the alcoholic is a very funny bird. We say he's sensitive.

Well, he's probably sensitive nuts, I think, in a sense. But I heard now going down to Fresno, California, going to talk in a meeting and I saw a little boy sitting there at about 6 years old on the baggage compartment and a man came up to him. We're all around trying to get our luggage. I was going down to a medical meeting and talk down there. And, this man talked to this boy with all of us around much as all of us talk to children.

And he said, my, aren't you a big strong boy and reached out and grabbed a hold of his arm and the boy kinda winced a little bit, you know, and he said, I'll bet you're the captain of your football team, aren't you? What what breed are you in, son? And this boy just simply looked up at him much as to say, do you have to say this to me? Do you have to act this way? Of my impression that the alcoholic was born with an absolute direct pipeline to God until he found people somewhere didn't act this way.

He came into his mother one day and he said, mama, I love you. And mama who wasn't too comfortable accepting this kind of a statement said, have you done the dishes yet? And he said, well, well, no, no, to himself. No. I haven't done the dishes.

But what in God's name happened to my statement? And slowly, he found that statements of this kind of love and affection and a purified form didn't get accepted too well. And one day he came in and wanna say I love you, mama, and he felt that this wouldn't get accepted too well. And and and, so he said, I don't like you. And she smacked him across the face that you don't talk to him that way.

He must have said to himself as drunk to be, what do you do in this world? Here I see people, the alcoholic. I see people that they they don't trip me square somewhere. And and and, and somewhere they they they pretend to be happy. I hear him say thank you and I hear him say, please, but they don't seem to mean it as far as I can see.

And so the alcoholic finally decided if that's what you're supposed to do. Oh, you're supposed to pretend this business. You're supposed to mean this somewhere. Well, you ain't seen nothing yet, said the alcoholic to himself. And so the alcoholic grew up a very sensitive person to these crudities.

The alcoholic can tell in an instant when somebody is laughing too much. He can tell in an instant when somebody is crying just a little too much. When somebody can tell an instant when somebody is a little too effusive about saying hello to him. He can tell he wake up in the morning and it make very much difference. He's the first 99 people he speak to say hello, that's par for the course.

One person doesn't say hello and he's dead for the rest of the day. It is important that the alcoholic finally become number 1. It's important that they not be number 2. And so the alcoholic grows up with the greatest pretense, the greatest of lying, the greatest of dishonesty, the greatest of cheating around himself because he outdoes the whole bunch, but he hates everybody else who does it. This one cheats.

This one cheats. That pretends and so forth, and he's a maestro of it himself. And And all of a sudden one day, he gets a drink, and this makes it wonderful again like it was with a kid with that direct pipeline up there, and he feels better. But before long, because of this X factor, this guy is licked and his crutch is no longer there. And then he finds a bunch of ex drunks like this.

And all of a sudden he gets some of that pipeline slowly back again. Well, I think the drunk was kind of a spiritual bird to begin with, but I'm off the topic. And so the alcoholic, this does so much for him. Alcohol does so much for him that he comes back to alcohol more and more and more frequently. Why?

It does something for him that boobs does. Now anyone who takes a chemical substance of 4 in one into his body often enough in large enough quantities over a sufficient period of time will become an alcoholic. Why does the nonalcoholic then become an alcoholic? It doesn't do enough for him. He doesn't want that much in that quantity over that period of time.

It doesn't gonna help him. It doesn't mean that much to him, but it does to us It solves our problems somewhere. Don't you know? Now anybody who, pours a foreign substance into his body over a long enough period of time develops a tolerance to it. That is he can stand more of it without having it affect him.

Example, take the morphine addict. The morphine addict, I remember operating a woman who was taking 40 grains of morphine a day. That number of years ago. Now this is enough to kill any 80 of us here. What happened to her?

Her tolerance to morphine had increased over the course of years. She needed this 40 grain to give her the same effect that a quarter of a grain used to. Now this is kind of an exaggeration because she was taking this on the black market and I have only her word for this. But let's just suppose, that she was only taking 5 grains of morphine a day. That's still enough to kill me 10 of us here at rest.

She built up a tolerance to it, but she absolutely needed that much morphine to give her the same effect that this much down here used to give her. The same happens to the drum. Each day that he drinks, he builds up a tolerance to it and he needs more and more and more and more and more and more. Until on any given day, he needs that much alcohol to give him the same effect that this much down here used to give him. And in here, rest the alcoholic's dilemma.

How can he satisfy his ever increasing tolerance and need for and demand for make no bones about this? It has to be had as long as he drinks. How may satisfy this crazy increasing tolerance on the one hand and social approval on the other? He can't. Endlessly, he tries to become a man of distinction and drink like a gentleman, not wanting we don't wanna become drunk.

We never want to become drunk, but we became because of our need for alcohol. And we think because inside of us is a, an inherent physical difference as compared to the nonalcoholic. Now, if you were to take and pour a half ounce of whiskey into your body per hour, you wouldn't get drunk. If you were to take 8 ounces of beer into your body per hour, you wouldn't get drunk. Now any alcoholic here who is stupid enough to go out and try this will find that that of a half ounce he starts off with in an hour or a day, it'll be an ounce an hour or 2 ounces an hour or 3 ounces an hour.

But let's just suppose that it is drunk here stupid enough to go out and try this again. Of the 3 ounces an hour, let's say for an example that you finally will be drinking, I promise you that only 2 and a half ounces will be involved in getting you drunk. The other half ounce has burned up metabolites and done away with. Same with the beer. Now what good thing is a half ounce of whiskey or 8 ounces of beer to the oncoming drum?

What good does it do him? He needs quantities of the stuff into his into his body. So this leads and I'm gonna put some symptoms here on the board. This leads to one of the early symptoms of alcoholism namely golfing. I was the alcoholic to distraction more than in his drinking days to go to a cocktail party and see a very delightful nonalcoholic who really understands how to drink because we never understand how to drink anyway.

I don't think. To take a martini to his or her lips and sip it. Just sip it. This just drives the alcoholic back. He says to himself, why in God's name don't you knock that thing off?

And then the non alcoholic has the temerity to take this sipped drink and to set it down again. It just drives the alcoholic to distraction because he needs to get quantities into his body because his power ends each day is increasing. Now the alcoholic is always around the source of supply of, alcohol and no matter where he is during his drinking days. If he has a home and by the way, I might say this. Marty Mann is here.

I'm sorry. I missed her. But she tells me that only 3% of alcoholics are on Skid Row. 3%. And recently got a report from her office in in which this was brought out by a study that was done partly by her or her organization and another organization.

3%. So 97% of alcoholics, she says, and I agree with this and so did the article say this, will never see Skid Row except if it drives through in a car. Oh, I don't mean the resentful, irritable drunk who for 2 or 3 days or a week or 2 weeks or a month even goes down and lives on Skid Row. You know, Skid Row, Bobby. He he's he's faking off.

That's all he's doing. I'm talking about the person who really lives on Skid Row. That's that's sort of a business. So we're talking about then 97% of the, alcohol. Well, he's around a supply of alcohol.

He's got 6, 7 friends in the room in here. He's making the drinks. He puts them on a tray. His is a little stronger than the rest. And then he takes, which we all managed to get some time, a little pet 3 or 4 ounce glass.

Don't you know the pet 3 or 4 ounce glass you kept always in the cupboard and they wanna throw it out all the time. You know? They don't quite want it there for. Maybe the jelly glass or something. You know?

So he takes this pet glass that's becoming his pet and he pours it full of booze and knocks it off. And then he takes the tray of drinks into his company. Wasn't nothing wrong with this, at all. Until finally one day, he's doing this and the tray of drinks is mixed here and he takes his pet 3 or 4 ounce glass and pours out a good slug and knocks it off. And just then, a nonalcoholic walks in.

And the nonalcoholic looks at him and says, what are you doing that for? You gotta drink in the glass. I I, I don't know. Somehow, it just seemed like a good idea. Well, scientifically, we know that what's happening to this guy is he needs that drink because it appeals to his ever increasing tolerance and his absolute need for marbu.

It's what good that drink and that trade do him alone only. Well, he takes a firefighting. So this leads then to one of the next symptoms known as sneaking drink. Now the alcoholic, he often worries about these people in the living room. He says, no.

I I really must. He said that, they're drinking too much in there, so I'll pour out the rest of this bottle or most of it into a glass and I'll put it up behind this dish and the cupboard up here to keep them from knowing that it's there because I am worried about their welfare. So this is what he does. Or he goes to the, to the liquor store and he buys pints because then he can just have a pint out on the on the kitchen table. They won't know that he has more because he's worried about them.