The Dry Drunkard

In the "disturbed" ward of a mental hospital, Dwight Anderson was, in his own words, "a 50-year-old derelict." In the words of his attending physician, he looked like "a disheveled man of past 60, with a bad heart and an incurable mental disorder." There seemed small hope 18 years ago of saving the little that was left to save. But Dwight Anderson's alcoholism was treated as an illness, rather than a crime, and he recovered.

Some men endow a hospital or put up a monument to mark what they consider a miraculous escape, but Anderson wrote a book, The Other Side of the Bottle (A. A. Wyn; $3), published last week as part of his contribution to the saving of other alcoholics. Longtime Pressagent Anderson did publicity for the Medical Society of the State of New York soon after he was dried out, became its executive secretary in 1945. He has pitched in as a director of the National Committee on Alcoholism to help doctors reach and treat more & more of his fellow sufferers.

No Safety. In his fast-paced, easy-to-read The Other Side of the Bottle, Anderson calls himself a "dry drunkard." He says: "I know that if I live to be as old as an elephant, I shall never be able to take a drink in safety." Technically, there is no "cure" for alcoholism so that a discharged patient can say like other men, "I can take it or leave it alone." However, if the cause of the compulsion to drink can be tracked down, it can often be rooted out by mental treatment. In Anderson's case, the unquenchable thirst was the result of an unquenchable ambition to "get ahead" and "make something of himself," always in competition with his successful, overshadowing father.

"One of the most devastating prospects," says Anderson, was a future without drink: "I felt that it would be unbearably dull and barren. I could not imagine any fun or real enjoyment without alcohol . . . I was still obsessed with the idea that I was being deprived of a part of my manhood, because I was deprived of a choice in the matter of drinking." But now he can say: "The years have not been desolate; they have been rich and full, more varicolored than I could have imagined."

House Divided. The family's attitude to the problem drinker is often an obstacle to his treatment, Anderson points out: "By the time the compulsive drinker has come to such a pass that he wants to seek treatment, the family is usually split into two embittered camps: the sympathetic who don't have to nurse poor Bill and believe that if he had more understanding at home and his wife would stop nagging, he'd be all right; and the wife's defenders, who see what a wreck he is making of her and who are convinced that Bill is a pathological liar, a cheat, and incapable of real affection for anybody but himself." The family's chief job, Anderson suggests, is to help the alcoholic find an interest to replace the alcohol, and to enter into it with him--even if it bores them to death.

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