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“As Mann strung together days and weeks and months of continuous sobriety, she became a kind of unpaid spokesperson for AA,” Miller writes. “He took her to AA meetings and became kind of a mentor for her recovery - a sponsor, in AA parlance,” Miller writes.
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Shortly after reading Wilson’s book, Mann tracked him down and he led her through the brave new world of sobriety. He never offered data or evidence to confirm any of it. He just made it up, later adding that the condition was incurable and that drinking in moderation was impossible for an alcoholic. Silkworth wound up treating Bill Wilson in 1934, and this is where Wilson “learned” that his condition was an illness, an epiphany that he and Mann would soon evangelize about to the rest of the world.Īccording to Miller, though, Silkworth never had any scientific backing for his theory.
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In the early 1900s, a New York doctor named William Silkworth was the rare medical professional who would work with “drunks,” then regarded as immoral degenerates not worth anyone’s time.Īfter seeing the desperation among many who couldn’t stop drinking, Silkworth reasoned that this could not be a simple vice or habit - it had to be a compulsion, a disease. “AA is below cognitive behavioral therapy and aversion therapy and regular therapy, below marriage counseling and self-help books, naltrexone and another FDA-approved drug called acamprosate, below psychedelic drugs and even placebos.”Īnd yet, the rise of AA suppressed other possible cures and attitudes toward alcoholism, Miller claims - a suppression that started with Mann. “Out of 50 treatment methods ranked by the strength of scientific evidence, AA comes in 38th,” Miller writes, citing a study by the University of New Mexico. In addition, most scientific studies show that some alcoholics can drink in moderation and that numerous drugs and therapies could prove more successful than AA in curing alcoholism, Miller writes. “Of that 5 percent who stay a year or more, about half remain members for good, achieving long-term sobriety.” “By AA’s own accounting, 95 percent of the people who come to their meetings looking for help … quit within a year,” Miller writes. She roped in Yale’s Elvin Jellinek (right) to back her cause with dubious science. After an early copy of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” saved her from addiction, Marty Mann (above) became an evangelist for the program. While many hail Mann as a hero, Miller - a recovered alcoholic himself - has a different view. Soon, it became accepted belief that alcoholism was a disease and AA the only workable cure, that alcoholics could never drink in moderation and that they couldn’t even begin the program until they had basically hit bottom, ruining their life with drink. She even engineered a PR campaign that would make AA the default treatment for alcoholism nationwide. Mann got sober (save for a few short-term relapses over the years) and was an instant convert to the group’s message.įor the rest of her life, Mann would become AA’s biggest booster. Mann would soon befriend the book’s author, AA co-creator Wilson, and she began attending AA meetings in 1939. And the book described her condition as an allergy. “The stories the authors told of their hopeless battles with alcoholism seemed exactly like her own.
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“As she read it, she felt great relief,” writes Joe Miller in his new book, “ US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism” (Chicago Review Press), out now. Written by an alcoholic named Bill Wilson, the book took an approach to the addiction she’d never encountered before. Mann saw doctors and psychologists and tried various treatments, but nothing curbed her problem until one psychologist gave her an early copy of a book, still unpublished at the time, called “Alcoholics Anonymous.” Tired of constantly being drunk or hungover, she attempted suicide twice.
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In the hospital, with her jaw wired shut, she begged friends to smuggle in whiskey so she could drink it through a straw.Ī hard drinker since her early 20s, Mann kept on boozing because she didn’t know how to stop. She nearly died, fracturing her leg and breaking her jaw, and spent the next six months in traction. On July 4, 1934, a 30-year-old New York-based writer and publicist named Marty Mann got staggeringly drunk at a party and fell from a balcony. This critter is the animal kingdom's heaviest alcohol drinkerĬagney & Lacey’s Sharon Gless: ‘My love affair with Martinis nearly killed me’ Keith Urban: I'm thankful my alcoholism didn't destroy my music If you're drinking more alcohol, here's what you need to know