Drunks by Christopher Finan

Author:Christopher Finan [Finan, Christopher M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0180-6
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2017-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

Bob had always pictured alcoholics as Bowery bums. Bill was no bum. It didn’t really matter whether alcoholism was a disease. Bob discovered that he wasn’t alone. The two men talked for hours. Back home, for the first time in years, Bob did not drink himself to sleep.35

Over the next two weeks, Bill Wilson and the Smiths got better acquainted. Anne invited Bill to move into the Smiths’ modest home on Ardmore Avenue. “There I might keep an eye on Dr. Bob and he on me,” he explained.

It took the Smiths some time to adjust to their guest. Bill had only been sober for five months, and he was “jittery as hell,” he admitted. When he woke early and could not go back to sleep, he would go downstairs to make coffee, sometimes waking the family with a start at 6 a.m. The Smiths would find him in the kitchen, sitting in his bathrobe, “draped around this drip coffeepot.”36

Bill also insisted that there be liquor in the house. Believing that alcoholics would have to learn to live among people who drank, he bought two large bottles of liquor and placed them on the Smiths’ sideboard. “That drove Anne about wild for a while,” he said. She was also upset when Bill supported Bob’s desire to attend the American Medical Association convention in Atlantic City during the first week of June. The AMA convention had always been an opportunity for a binge, and Anne feared that the temptation would overpower Bob, who had only been sober for two weeks.37

They didn’t hear from Bob for five days. He had started drinking the moment he got on the train, and he had checked out of his hotel two days later to avoid disgracing himself. He couldn’t remember much about the next three days. He had managed to get back on the train and to call his office nurse when he arrived in Akron. She and her husband picked him up and took him to their home, where he finally began to emerge from his blackout.

Now there was another problem. Bob was scheduled to perform surgery three days later, and there was a good chance that he would not be fit to hold a scalpel. Bill took charge. He and Anne drove over to the nurse’s home, where Bill gave Bob enough scotch to prevent a rapid withdrawal that could trigger delirium tremens. On their arrival back at Ardmore Avenue, Bob was put to bed. For the next three days, they fed him nothing but tomato juice, sauerkraut, and Karo corn syrup, which Bill believed would give Bob energy and vitamins. Anne and Bill took turns nursing Bob around the clock, sleeping in the second bed in the room.

At 4 a.m. on the day of the operation, Bill noticed that Bob was wide awake. He was still shaking. “I am going through with it,” Bob said. “I’m going to do what it takes to get sober and stay that way.”38

At 9 a.m. Anne and Bill helped Bob dress.

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