September 28, 1991
Your Sept. 12 article on the alcoholism study at the Harvard School of Public Health reports that “Hospital treatment for alcoholics (was) found to be best,” i.e., “more effective than Alcoholics Anonymous.”
As they taught me in journalism school, “Define your terms.” An alcoholic’s hospital regimen is only a medical detoxification process (pdf file) of three to four days. It is critical, as it takes the alcohol out of the patient while preventing convulsions, organ failure and death.
But it doesn’t address the underlying problem, which is genetic in origin, chronic in nature and invariably fatal unless treated.
And treatment, in the professionally accepted sense of the word, consists of a regimen of lifetime management that includes total abstinence from alcohol supported by an ongoing, day-to-day program of recovery.
This treatment was instituted by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, and stands today as the only universally viable and proven program of treatment.
Yet, while being rejected for its non-profit, cost-free aspects, A.A. is being imitated, adapted, plagiarized and counterfeited.
JACK O’NEIL
Sewickley