Chapter 7: The Man Who Mastered Fear
· · ·
He spent eighteen years running away, and then found he didn't have to run.
So he started A.A. in Detroit.
FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS, from the time I was twenty-one, fear governed my life.
By the time I was thirty, I had found that alcohol dissolved fear---for a
little while. In the end I had two problems instead of one: fear and
alcohol.
I came from a good family. I believe the sociologists would call it upper
middle class. By the time I was twenty-one, I had had six years of life in
foreign countries, spoke three languages fluently, and had attended college
for two years. A low ebb in the family fortunes necessitated my going to
work when I was twenty. I entered the business world with every confidence
that success lay ahead of me. I had been brought up to believe this, and I
had shown during my teens considerable enterprise and imagination about
earning money. To the best of my recollection, I was completely free from
any abnormal fears. Vacations from school and from work spelled "travel" to
me---and I traveled with gusto. During my first year out of college, I had
endless dates and went to countless dances, balls, and dinner parties.
Suddenly all this changed. I underwent a shattering nervous breakdown. Three
months in bed. Three more months of being up and around the house for brief
periods and in bed the rest of the time. Visits from friends that lasted
over fifteen minutes exhausted me. A complete checkup at one of the best
hospitals revealed nothing. I heard for the first time an expression that I
was to grow to loathe: "There is nothing organically wrong." Psychiatry
might have helped, but psychiatrists had not penetrated the Middle West.
Spring came. I went for my first walk. Half a block from the house, I tried
to turn the corner. Fear froze me in my tracks, but the instant I turned
back toward home, this paralyzing fear left me. This was the beginning of an
unending series of such experiences. I told our family doctor---an
understanding man who gave hours of his time trying to help me---about this
experience. He told me that it was imperative that I walk around the entire
block, cost me what it might in mental agony. I carried out his
instructions. When I reached a point directly back of our house, where I
could have cut through a friend's garden, I was almost overpowered by the
desire to get home, but I made the whole journey. Probably only a few
readers of this story will be able, from personal experiences of their own,
to understand the exhilaration and sense of accomplishment I felt after
finishing this seemingly simple assignment.
The details of the long road back to something resembling normal
living---the first short streetcar ride, the purchase of a used bike, which
enabled me to widen the narrow horizon of life, the first trip downtown---I
will not dwell on. I got an easy, part-time job selling printing for a small
neighborhood printer. This widened the scope of my activities. A year later
I was able to buy a Model T roadster and take a better job with a downtown
printer. From this job and the next one with yet another printer, I was
courteously dismissed. I simply did not have the pep to do hard,
"cold-turkey" selling. I switched to real estate brokerage and property
management work. Almost simultaneously, I discovered that cocktails in the
late afternoon and highballs in the evening relieved the many tensions of
the day. This happy combination of pleasant work and alcohol lasted for five
years. Of course, the latter ultimately killed the former, but of this, more
anon.
All this changed when I was thirty years old. My parents died, both in the
same year, leaving me, a sheltered and somewhat immature man, on my own. I
moved into a "bachelor hall." These men all drank on Saturday nights and
enjoyed themselves. My pattern of drinking became very different from
theirs. I had bad, nervous headaches, particularly at the base of my neck.
Liquor relieved these. At last I discovered alcohol as a cure-all. I joined
their Saturday night parties and enjoyed myself too. But I also stayed up
weeknights after they had retired and drank myself into bed. My thinking
about drinking had undergone a great change. Liquor had become a crutch on
the one hand and a means of retreat from life on the other.
The ensuing nine years were the Depression years, both nationally and
personally. With the bravery born of desperation, and abetted by alcohol, I
married a young and lovely girl. Our marriage lasted four years. At least
three of those four years must have been a living hell for my wife, because
she had to watch the man she loved disintegrate morally, mentally, and
financially. The birth of a baby boy did nothing toward staying the downward
spiral. When she finally took the baby and left, I locked myself in the
house and stayed drunk for a month.
The next two years were simply a long, drawn-out process of less and less
work and more and more whiskey. I ended up homeless, jobless, penniless, and
rudderless, as the problem guest of a close friend whose family was out of
town. Haunting me through each day's stupor---and there were eighteen or
nineteen such days in this man's home---was the thought: Where do I go when
his family comes home? When the day of their return was almost upon me, and
suicide was the only answer I had been able to think of, I went into Ralph's
room one evening and told him the truth. He was a man of considerable means,
and he might have done what many men would have done in such a case. He
might have handed me fifty dollars and said that I ought to pull myself
together and make a new start. I have thanked God many times in the last
sixteen years that that was just what he did not do!
Instead, he got dressed, took me out, bought me three or four double shots,
and put me to bed. The next day he turned me over to a couple who, although
neither was an alcoholic, knew Dr. Bob and were willing to drive me to Akron
where they would turn me over to his care. The only stipulation they made
was this: I had to make the decision myself. What decision? The choice was
limited. To go north into the empty pine country and shoot myself, or to go
south in the faint hope that a bunch of strangers might help me with my
drinking problem. Well, suicide was a last-straw matter, and I had not drawn
the last straw yet. So I was driven to Akron the very next day by these Good
Samaritans and turned over to Dr. Bob and the then tiny Akron Group.
Here, while I was in a hospital bed, men with clear eyes, happy faces, and a
look of assurance and purposefulness about them came to see me and told me
their stories. Some of these were hard to believe, but it did not require a
giant brain to perceive that they had something I could use. How could I get
it? It was simple, they said, and went on to explain to me in their own
language the program of recovery and daily living that we know today as the
Twelve Steps of A.A. Dr. Bob dwelt at length on how prayer had given him
release, time and time again, from the nearly overpowering compulsion to
take a drink. It was he who convinced me, because his own conviction was so
real, that a Power greater than myself could help me in the crises of life
and that the means of communicating with this Power was simple prayer. Here
was a tall, rugged, highly educated Yankee talking in a matter-of-course way
about God and prayer. If he and these other fellows could do it, so could I.
When I got out of the hospital, I was invited to stay with Dr. Bob and his
dear wife, Anne. I was suddenly and uncontrollably seized with the old,
paralyzing panic. The hospital had seemed so safe. Now I was in a strange
house, in a strange city, and fear gripped me. I shut myself in my room,
which began to go around in circles. Panic, confusion, and chaos were
supreme. Out of this maelstrom just two coherent thoughts came to the
surface; one, a drink would mean homelessness and death; two, I could no
longer relieve the pressure of fear by starting home, as was once my
habitual solution to this problem, because I no longer had a home. Finally,
and I shall never know how much later it was, one clear thought came to me:
Try prayer. You can't lose, and maybe God will help you---just maybe, mind
you. Having no one else to turn to, I was willing to give Him a chance,
although with considerable doubt. I got down on my knees for the first time
in thirty years. The prayer I said was simple. It went something like this:
"God, for eighteen years I have been unable to handle this problem. Please
let me turn it over to you."
Immediately a great feeling of peace descended upon me, intermingled with a
feeling of being suffused with a quiet strength. I lay down on the bed and
slept like a child. An hour later I awoke to a new world. Nothing had
changed and yet everything had changed. The scales had dropped from my eyes,
and I could see life in its proper perspective. I had tried to be the center
of my own little world, whereas God was the center of a vast universe of
which I was perhaps an essential, but a very tiny, part.
It is well over sixteen years since I came back to life. I have never had a
drink since. This alone is a miracle. It is, however, only the first of a
series of miracles that have followed one another as a result of my trying
to apply to my daily life the principles embodied in our Twelve Steps. I
would like to sketch for you the highlights of these sixteen years of a slow
but steady and satisfying upward climb.
Poor health and a complete lack of money necessitated my remaining with Dr.
Bob and Anne for very close to a year. It would be impossible for me to pass
over this year without mentioning my love for, and my indebtedness to, these
two wonderful people who are no longer with us. They made me feel as if I
were a part of their family, and so did their children. The example that
they and Bill W., whose visits to Akron were fairly frequent, set for me of
service to their fellow men imbued me with a great desire to emulate them.
Sometimes during that year I rebelled inwardly at what seemed like lost time
and at having to be a burden to these good people whose means were limited.
Long before I had any real opportunity to give, I had to learn the equally
important lesson of receiving graciously.
During my first few months in Akron, I was quite sure that I never wanted to
see my hometown again. Too many economic and social problems would beset me
there. I would make a fresh start somewhere else. After six months of
sobriety, I saw the picture in a different light: Detroit was the place I
had to return to, not only because I must face the mess I had made there,
but because it was there that I could be of the most service to A.A. In the
spring of 1939, Bill stopped off in Akron on his way to Detroit on business.
I jumped at the suggestion that I accompany him. We spent two days there
together before he returned to New York. Friends invited me to stay on for
as long as I cared to. I remained with them for three weeks, using part of
the time in making many amends, which I had had no earlier opportunity of
making.
The rest of my time was devoted to A.A. spadework. I wanted "ripe"
prospects, and I didn't feel that I would get very far chasing individual
drunks in and out of bars. So I spent much of my time calling on the people
who I felt would logically come in contact with alcoholic cases---doctors,
ministers, lawyers, and the personnel men in industry. I also talked A.A. to
every friend who would listen, at lunch, at dinner, on street corners. A
doctor tipped me off to my first prospect. I landed him and shipped him by
train to Akron, with a pint of whiskey in his pocket to keep him from
wanting to get off the train in Toledo! Nothing has ever to this day equaled
the thrill of that first case.
Those three weeks left me completely exhausted, and I had to return to Akron
for three more months of rest. While there, two or three more "cash
customers" (as Dr. Bob used to call them---probably because they had so
little cash) were shipped in to us from Detroit. When I finally returned to
Detroit to find work and to learn to stand on my own feet, the ball was
already rolling, however slowly. But it took six more months of work and
disappointments before a group of three men got together in my rooming-house
bedroom for their first A.A. meeting.
It sounds simple, but there were obstacles and doubts to overcome. I well
remember a session I had with myself soon after I returned. It ran something
like this: If I go around shouting from the rooftops about my alcoholism, it
might very possibly prevent me from getting a good job. But supposing that
just one man died because I had, for selfish reasons, kept my mouth shut?
No. I was supposed to be doing God's will, not mine. His road lay clear
before me, and I'd better quit rationalizing myself into any detours. I
could not expect to keep what I had gained unless I gave it away.
The Depression was still on, and jobs were scarce. My health was still
uncertain. So I created a job for myself selling women's hosiery and men's
made-to-order shirts. This gave me the freedom to do A.A. work and to rest
for periods of two or three days when I became too exhausted to carry on.
There was more than one occasion when I got up in the morning with just
enough money for coffee and toast and the bus fare to carry me to my first
appointment. No sale---no lunch. During that first year, however, I managed
to make both ends meet and to avoid ever going back to my old habit-pattern
of borrowing money when I could not earn it. Here by itself was a great step
forward.
During the first three months, I carried on all these activities without a
car, depending entirely on buses and streetcars---I, who always had to have
a car at my immediate command. I, who had never made a speech in my life and
who would have been frightened sick at the prospect, stood up in front of
Rotary groups in different parts of the city and talked about Alcoholics
Anonymous. I, carried away with the desire to serve A.A., gave what was
probably one of the first radio broadcasts about A.A., living through a case
of mike fright and feeling like a million dollars when it was all over. I
lived through a week of the fidgets because I had agreed to address a group
of alcoholic inmates in one of our state mental hospitals. There it was the
same reward---exhilaration at a mission accomplished. Do I have to tell you
who gained the most out of all this?
Within a year of my return to Detroit, A.A. was a definitely established
little group of about a dozen members, and I too was established in a modest
but steady job handling an independent dry-cleaning route of my own. I was
my own boss. It took five years of A.A. living, and a substantial
improvement in my health, before I could take a full-time office job where
someone else was boss.
This office job brought me face to face with a problem that I had
sidestepped all my adult life, lack of training. This time I did something
about it. I enrolled in a correspondence school that taught nothing but
accounting. With this specialized training, and a liberal business education
in the school of hard knocks, I was able to set up shop some two years later
as an independent accountant. Seven years of work in this field brought an
opportunity to affiliate myself actively with one of my clients, a fellow
A.A. We complement each other beautifully, as he is a born salesman and my
taste is for finance and management. At long last I am doing the kind of
work I have always wanted to do but never had the patience and emotional
stability to train myself for. The A.A. program showed me the way to come
down to earth, start from the bottom, and work up. This represents another
great change for me. In the long ago past I used to start at the top as
president or treasurer and end up with the sheriff breathing down my neck.
So much for my business life. Obviously I have overcome fear to a sufficient
degree to think in terms of success in business. With God's help I am able,
for one day at a time, to carry business responsibilities that, not many
years ago, I would not have dreamed of assuming. But what about my social
life? What about those fears that once paralyzed me to the point of my
becoming a semi-hermit? What about my fear of travel?
It would be wonderful were I able to tell you that my confidence in God and
my application of the Twelve Steps to my daily living have utterly banished
fear. But this would not be the truth. The most accurate answer I can give
you is this: Fear has never again ruled my life since that day in September
1938, when I found that a Power greater than myself could not only restore
me to sanity but could keep me both sober and sane. Never in sixteen years
have I dodged anything because I was afraid of it. I have faced life instead
of running away from it.
Some of the things that used to stop me in my tracks from fear still make me
nervous in the anticipation of their doing, but once I kick myself into
doing them, nervousness disappears and I enjoy myself. In recent years I
have had the happy combination of time and money to travel occasionally. I
am apt to get into quite an uproar for a day or two before starting, but I
do start, and once started, I have a swell time.
Have I ever wanted a drink during these years? Only once did I suffer from a
nearly overpowering compulsion to take a drink. Oddly enough, the
circumstances and surroundings were pleasant. I was at a beautifully set
dinner table. I was in a perfectly happy frame of mind. I had been in A.A. a
year, and the last thing in my mind was a drink. There was a glass of sherry
at my place. I was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to reach out
for it. I shut my eyes and asked for help. In fifteen seconds or less, the
feeling passed. There have also been numerous times when I have thought
about taking a drink. Such thinking usually began with thoughts of the
pleasant drinking of my youth. I learned early in my A.A. life that I could
not afford to fondle such thoughts, as you might fondle a pet, because this
particular pet could grow into a monster. Instead, I quickly substitute one
or another vivid scene from the nightmare of my later drinking.
Twenty-odd years ago I made a mess out of my one and only marriage. It was
therefore not extraordinary that I should shy away from any serious thought
of marriage for a great many years after joining A.A. Here was something
requiring a greater willingness to assume responsibility and a larger degree
of cooperation and give and take than even business requires of one.
However, I must have felt, deep down inside myself, that living the selfish
life of a bachelor was only half living. By living alone you can pretty much
eliminate grief from your life, but you also eliminate joy. At any rate the
last great step toward a well-rounded life still lay ahead of me. So six
months ago I acquired a ready-made family consisting of one charming wife,
four grown children to whom I am devoted, and three grandchildren. Being an
alcoholic, I couldn't dream of doing anything by halves! My wife, a sister
member in A.A., had been a widow nine years and I had been single eighteen
years. The adjustments in such a case are difficult and take time, but we
both feel that they are certainly worth it. We are both depending upon God
and our use of the Alcoholics Anonymous program to help us make a success of
this joint undertaking.
It is undoubtedly too soon for me to say how much of a success I shall be as
a husband in time to come. I do feel, though, that the fact that I finally
grew up to a point where I could even tackle such a job is the apex of the
story of a man who spent eighteen years running away from life.