Drunks Read online

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER M. FINAN

  From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act:

  A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America

  Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior

  For Sam and Al,

  and our family ghosts

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONEMountain of Bones

  CHAPTER TWOOut of the Gutter

  CHAPTER THREEDiscovery of the Disease

  CHAPTER FOURSearch for Higher Power

  CHAPTER FIVEFalse Dawn

  CHAPTER SIXTwo Drunks

  CHAPTER SEVENThe Birth of Alcoholics Anonymous

  CHAPTER EIGHTRise of the Sober Drunk

  CHAPTER NINEBoom and Bust

  CHAPTER TENWaves of Sobriety

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  INDEX

  INTRODUCTION

  PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS had just discovered his son was an alcoholic. He was furious. Charles had been a handsome and charming nine-year-old when he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to Europe in 1779. “Charles wins the heart as usual, and is the most gentlemen of them all. . . . I love him too much,” John wrote to his wife, Abigail. But in his midteens, Charles began to display disturbing behavior. While a student at Harvard College, he was caught running across Harvard Yard with several other boys. They may have been naked. They were probably drunk. Charles was able to graduate and became a lawyer, but John and Abigail remained concerned about the character of his friends. His father wrote him many admonishing letters.1

  John learned the worst in 1799 during a visit to his daughter’s home. He found Charles’s wife and two young children living there: the family was bankrupt, and Charles had disappeared. He “is a mere rake, buck, blood, and beast . . . a madman possessed of the Devil,” John told Abigail. “I renounce him.” Abigail did not break with Charles, but she was also angry. When he reappeared, she told him that he was hurting his family and appealed to his pride and sense of honor. “But all is lost on him,” she said. “The whole man [is] so changed that ruin and destruction have swallowed him up. Poor, poor, unhappy, wretched man.”2

  In November 1800, Abigail saw her son for the last time. His body was bloated. He was in great pain and often incoherent. He died a few weeks later at the age of thirty. “He was no man’s enemy but his own,” Abigail said. “He was beloved in spite of his errors.” But Charles was not buried in the family vault. “Let silence reign forever over his tomb,” his brother Thomas said.3

  The country’s First Family was not alone in feeling anger, shame, and guilt over the loss of an alcoholic family member. Americans had always been big drinkers. Even the Puritans had considered alcohol the “good Creature of God.” Now the creature had turned. Cheap whiskey was flooding the market, and annual consumption of alcohol was climbing toward seven gallons per person, nearly three times what we drink today.4

  Americans have been frustrated by alcoholism ever since. In 1808, a doctor and a minister organized a temperance society in a small town in upstate New York. Temperance became a national movement, as over two million people signed a pledge not to drink alcohol. When voluntary measures failed, state governments began banning the sale of alcohol, and prohibition was implemented nationally in 1920. Nothing could stop the drinking.

  Many people blamed the drunks. Throughout history, they have frustrated every effort to force them to stay sober. In the first century AD, the Roman philosopher Seneca called alcoholism “a voluntary madness.” Increase Mather, a Puritan minister in Boston, preached two sermons against drunkenness in 1673. “It is a sin that is rarely truly repented of and turned from,” he said. “Blows cannot beat him out of it; but he will to it yet again, and that too the very next day after he hath smarted for it,” he wrote. In 1871, a Massachusetts judge declared that drunks deserve no mercy. “[T]he great truth . . . remains that the drunkard is self-made, progressively self-taught, and obstinately self-immolated,” he said.5

  Even after the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in 1935 proved that many drunks want to stop drinking, the major institutions of American life refused to help them. Hospitals would not admit alcoholics, turning away even those in need of emergency care. Most doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists would not accept them as patients. They wound up in insane asylums and jails. The federal government finally recognized alcoholism as an illness in the 1960s, but many people were not convinced. The drunk’s responsibility for abusing alcohol was still being debated at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

  Yet the story of recovery from alcoholism is also one of the oldest in American history. In the same year that John Adams renounced his son, an alcoholic Native American on the verge of death experienced a vision that caused him to stop drinking. Handsome Lake became the leader of a religious revival that significantly reduced alcoholism among the Iroquois people. In 1840, six hard drinkers in Baltimore made their own pledge to stop drinking and founded a group to help alcoholics. Members of the Washington Temperance Society searched the streets of the nation’s cities for homeless drunks and took them to meetings where they heard men like themselves describe how they got sober.

  The Washingtonians were unable to sustain their movement, but they inspired others to open institutions where many drunks got sober. Doctors ran some of these “inebriate” homes and asylums. In the 1890s, tens of thousands of drunks found help in clinics that dispensed a drug called the “gold cure” for alcoholism. Others were able to stop with the help of religion. Drunks who had found sobriety played an important role in all of these efforts. In the 1940s, AA members began organizing groups around the United States. There were more than sixty thousand groups in 2016.

  The fight against addiction is one of America’s great liberation movements. Like the battles for racial equality, women’s rights, and sexual freedom, its history is marked by periods of progress and devastating reverses. Several times, Americans have embraced humanitarianism, rejecting the view that drunks are to blame for abusing alcohol, only to return to the idea that addiction must be punished. Today we are expressing regret for our decision to send millions of addicts to prison during the 1980s and 1990s. Once again, there is hope that a more tolerant age is dawning. But after two centuries of struggle for the humane treatment of alcoholics, the fight continues.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mountain of Bones

  IN SPRING OF 1799, Handsome Lake, a Native American, joined members of his hunting party in making the long journey from western Pennsylvania to their home in New York. Handsome Lake was a member of the Seneca Nation, one of the six nations in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). He had once been renowned for his fighting skill. But the Iroquois had been stripped of almost all their lands after the American Revolution. Now fifty years old, Handsome Lake, too, was a shadow of what he had been. He would later say that heavy drinking had reduced him to “but yellow skin and dried bones.” After stopping in Pittsburgh to trade furs for several barrels of whiskey, the hunters lashed their canoes together and began to paddle up the Allegheny River. Only those in the outer canoes had to work. The rest of the party drank whiskey, yelling and singing “like demented people,” Handsome Lake said. The good times didn’t stop after they picked up their wives and children, who had accompanied them on the hunting trip and were waiting at a rendezvous. Everyone looked forward to being home in Cornplanter’s Town, named for its Seneca Leader.1

  The joy of their homecoming did not last long. There was enough whiskey to keep the men drunk for several weeks. Handsome Lake described the horror of that time:

  Now that the party is home the men revel in strong drink and are very quarrelsome. Because of this the families become frightened and move away for safety. So from m
any places in the bushlands camp fires send up their smoke.

  Now the drunken men run yelling through the village and there is no one there except the drunken men. Now they are beastlike and run about without clothing and all have weapons to injure those whom they meet.

  Now there are no doors in the houses for they have all been kicked off. So, also, there are no fires in the village and have not been for many days. Now the men full of strong drink have trodden in the fireplaces. They alone track there and there are no fires and their footprints are in all the fireplaces.

  Now the Dogs yelp and cry in all the houses for they are hungry.

  Henry Simmons, one of three Quakers who had recently come to the village and had been contracted by the US War Department to “civilize” the Indians, said that some natives died. “One old Woman perrished out of doors in the night season with a bottle at her side,” he wrote. In a community meeting later, Simmons denounced “the great Evil of Strong Drink.” But the Indians did not need much persuading. After several days of deliberation, a council of Seneca elders announced that they were banning whiskey from the village.2

  Handsome Lake was not present at the meeting or the deliberations of the council. He was suffering from the effects of so much alcohol and may even have been experiencing delirium tremens, which is caused by the sudden withdrawal of alcohol from someone who is addicted to it. For several weeks, he lay in a bed in the home of his daughter and son-in-law, consumed by thoughts of death. Handsome Lake described the ordeal, referring to himself in the third person. “Now as he lies in sickness he meditates and longs that he might rise again and walk upon the earth,” he said. “And then he thinks how evil and loathsome he is before the Great Ruler. He thinks how he has been evil ever since he had strength in this world and done evil ever since he had been able to work.” There must have been some alcohol in the village because Handsome Lake was able to get enough to ease his suffering. Drunk, he sang sacred songs to the dead. In more sober moments, he pondered the possible cause of his affliction:

  Now it comes to his mind that perchance evil has arisen because of strong drink and he resolves to use it nevermore. Now he continually thinks of this every day and every hour. Yea, he continually thinks of this. Then a time comes and he craves drink again for he thinks he cannot recover his strength without it.

  Now two ways he thinks: what once he did and whether he will ever recover.

  While severely depressed, Handsome Lake was not hopeless. He was cheered by the mornings. “Now when he thinks of the sunshine and of the Creator who made it he feels a new hope within him and he feels that he may again be on his feet in this world,” he wrote. But such feelings did not last long. “Then again he despairs that he will ever see the new day because of his great weakness.”3

  It was in this highly agitated state, seemingly torn between heaven and hell, that Handsome Lake was stricken by an apparently fatal attack. His daughter and her husband were sitting outside their cabin cleaning beans in preparation for planting when they heard Handsome Lake cry, “So be it!” As they looked toward the door, the old man staggered outside and collapsed in his daughter’s arms. He appeared to be dead, and word was sent to Cornplanter, his half-brother, and Blacksnake, his nephew, who was the first to arrive. “Is he dead?” Blacksnake asked. Handsome Lake was not breathing and had no detectable heartbeat; his body was cool. But as they carried his body indoors, Blacksnake discovered a warm spot on his chest. A half hour later, Handsome Lake began breathing normally. Warmth began to return to the old man’s body, and an hour and a half later, he opened his eyes. By this time, Handsome Lake was surrounded by his family.” My uncle, are you feeling well?” Blacksnake asked. “Yes, I believe myself well,” he answered. “Never have I seen such wondrous visions!”4

  Handsome Lake said his vision began when he heard a voice say, “Come out awhile.” At first, he thought he had spoken the words himself in his delirium, but after hearing the words repeated two more times, he dragged himself from his bed and stepped outdoors. There he discovered three middle-aged Indian men; their cheeks had been painted red and they wore headpieces decorated with feathers. In one hand, they carried bows and arrows that they used as staffs; in the other were huckleberry bushes with berries of every color. “Never before have I seen such handsome commanding men,” he said. The men told Handsome Lake that the Creator wanted to help mankind and had charged them with carrying his message to men:

  Four words tell a great story of wrong and the Creator is sad because of the trouble they bring, so go and tell your people. The first word is One’ga? [whiskey or rum]. It seems that you never have known that this word stands for a great and monstrous evil and has reared a high mound of bones. . . . [Y]ou lose your minds and one’ga? causes it all. . . . So now all must now say, “I will use it nevermore. As long as I live, as long as the number of my days is I will never use it again. I now stop.”

  The messengers explained that the Creator had made alcohol for white men to use as medicine. The white men also abused alcohol and “drink instead of work.” But Indians should not use alcohol at all, they said. “No, the Creator did not make it for you.”5

  Alcohol was not the only evil that faced the Seneca, but the danger of alcohol was a recurring theme in the visions that Handsome Lake experienced over the next nine months. Six weeks after his first vision, a fourth messenger took Handsome Lake on a “sky journey” that included a stop in the domain of the Punisher, a monster whose shape was continually changing and occasionally took the form of the Christian devil, complete with horns, tails, and cloven hoofs. He lived in a vast iron lodge where sinners suffered torments that fit their crimes amid scorching blasts of wind: witches were plunged into boiling cauldrons and then frozen; women who had used love potions were forced to display their naked, rotting flesh. Drinkers swallowed molten metal.

  The messenger also conducted Handsome Lake along the narrow path of the righteous, which was surrounded by flowers and delicious fruit. On their arrival in the land of the Creator, he was reunited with his dead son, grandchild, and niece. Even the beloved dog that he had sacrificed during the white dog ceremony greeted him rapturously. Before sending Handsome Lake back to his people, the messenger repeated the warning against alcohol and witchcraft and said a “great sickness” would enter his village if the people did not mend their ways.

  Handsome Lake’s people appeared eager to obey. Cornplanter had described his brother’s vision to the villagers soon after it was revealed in mid-June. Simmons, the Quaker adviser, said the Indians were deeply moved. They appeared “Solid and weighty in Spirit.” Simmons also “felt the love of God flowing powerfully amongst us.” Although he was regarded with suspicion by many of the natives, he felt he had to speak out in praise of Handsome Lake. Following the second vision in August, the Indians met in council again to hear the details of the sky journey. Handsome Lake was still too ill to attend.6

  By the time of his third vision in February 1800, Handsome Lake was able to describe it to the council himself. The three angels had asked whether the people had given up whiskey, and Handsome Lake had admitted that he did not know. They told him to have his revelations written in a book and ordered him to carry the lessons of the Gaiwiio (Good Word) to all the towns of the Haudenosaunee. In June 1801, during a three-day meeting of representatives of five of the six nations in Buffalo Creek, Handsome Lake seized his chance, announcing that the Creator had revealed to him that “[w]hiskey is the great engine which the bad Spirit uses to introduce Witchcraft and many other evils amongst Indians.” Handsome Lake’s prophecy was believed. Before the council ended, it banned the use of alcohol and appointed Handsome Lake “High Priest, and principal Sachem [leader] in all things Civil and Religious.”

  Soon after, a whiskey seller named Webster witnessed the effect of Handsome Lake’s prophecy. Eighteen Onondaga chiefs who had gladly accepted whiskey from him on their way to Buffalo Creek refused to touch the bottle he put before them on their way home. Webst
er feared that he might be attacked, but the Onondagas reassured him:

  The chiefs explained, that they had met at Buffalo, a Prophet of the Seneca nation, who had assured them, and in this assurance they had the most implicit confidence, that without total abstinence, from the use of ardent spirits, they and their race would shortly become extinct; that they had entered upon a resolution, never again to taste the baneful article, and that they hoped to prevail on their nation to adopt the same salutary resolution.

  The Iroquois had taken their first step on the path to becoming a sober people.7

  Before they began to encounter European explorers and fishermen in the sixteenth century, very few indigenous people of the eastern coast of North America had ever tasted alcohol, and none had experienced anything more than the mild inebriation of fermented drinks used ceremonially. Nothing prepared them for the effects of distilled spirits. In 1609, explorer Henry Hudson offered alcohol to a group of Munsee Indians he encountered on Manhattan Island. His purpose in giving them drink was to determine “whether they had any treaherie in them,” but he was surprised when one of the Munsee became intoxicated. “[T]hat was strange to them, for they could not tell how to take it.” It must have been memorable for the Indians as well. (One theory of the origin of the word “Manhattan” is that the Indians named the island manahactanienk—the “place of general inebriation.”)8

  The experience of getting drunk for the first time could be terrifying for anyone. Not long after Hudson’s encounter with the Munsee, Captain John Smith, the military leader of the colony at Jamestown, gave liquor to a native man who he was trying to revive. “[I]t pleased God to restore him againe to life, but so drunke and affrighted, that he seemed Lunaticke,” Smith said. The man’s brother was “tormented and grieved” by his wild behavior.9