October 25 in A.A. History

In 1939, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the fourth article [right] in Elrick B. Davis’s five-part series titled “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here.” It read, in part,

    What gets the pathological drinker who finally has reached such state that he is willing to listen to a cured rummy member of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that the retrieved alcoholic not only understands what only another alcoholic can understand, but a great deal that the unreformed drunk thinks no one else could know because he has never told anyone, and his difficulties or escapades must be private to his own history.
    Fact is the history of all alcoholics is the same; some have been addicts longer than others, and some have painted brighter red patches around the town — that is all. What they have heard in the “cure” hospitals they have frequented, or from the psychoanalysts they have consulted, or the physicians who have tapered them off one bender or another at home, has 
has convinced them that alcoholism is a disease. But they are sure (a) that their version of the disease differs from everyone else’s and (b) that in them it hasn’t reached the incurable stage anyway.…
    He presents his excuses to the retrieved alcoholic who has come to talk. Can’t sleep without liquor. Worry. Business troubles. Debt. Alimentary pains. Overwork. Nerves too high strung. Grief. Disappointment. Deep dark phobic fears. Fatigue. Family difficulties. Loneliness.
    The catalog has got no farther than that when the member of Alcoholics Anonymous begins rattling off an additional list.
    “Hogwash,” he says. “Don’t try those alibis on me. I have used them all myself.”