Bill's Story (Continued)
 
C: (p. 8, par. 3) 'Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again.'( This was November 11, 1934) Again that's a story within itself. It's in "A. A. Comes of Age." (" Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age," pages 56-57) If you haven't read it, you really ought to read it. It's a very interesting story. His mind, his obsession became operative, and told him it would be alright to take a drink.
Bill took a drink and triggered the allergy, and, of course, he couldn't stop. (p. 8, par. 3 p. 9, par. 1) 'Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn t In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.'
Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight. 'My musing was interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might (top of p. 9) come over. He was sober. It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed.'
This old friend was a guy named Ebby Thatcher. Bill knew Ebby way back from the time they were really children. They went to school together, various different places and times up in Vermont. Ebby drank like
Bill did. Every time Bill saw Ebby, especially in New York City, Ebby had always been drunk. Here is Ebby in New York City. He's calling Bill, and he's sober. Bill is absolutely amazed by this. The last thing he'd heard about Ebby (was that) Ebby was about to be committed to the state insane asylum in Vermont for alcoholic insanity. That's what they
used to do with people like us. They didn't have the treatment centers like they've got them today. If you knew somebody, or you had enough money you could get into a place like the Towns Hospital. But the normal old drunk like most of us are, about the only thing they could do for us was drag us in front of the Judge.
The Judge would commit us to the state insane asylum, wherever it was, for alcoholic insanity. Bill had heard that was what had happened to Ebby up in Vermont. But here he is in New York City. Not only is he not in the insane asylum, but he's sober.
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