The Puzzle of AA

HOSPITALS have their failures, but the outlook for this particular patient seemed so entirely hopeless that before he was discharged his case was presented at a case conference for psychiatric social workers as an illustration of the fact that there are alcoholics who simply cannot be helped. Psychotherapy had been tried but it failed because he could not form any useful relationship with the therapist--he put on a front of polite unconcern. He was given Antabuse, a drug which makes a man nauseated if he drinks after taking the tablet and which is often a useful aid in the early days of sobriety--this man simply palmed the tablets and slipped out to the pub. A young student of social work became very involved in this case and spent hours talking with the wife and still more hours in trying to get the family rehoused and the man working again. The patient was politely grateful but viewed his own problems as distantly as he would have those of the man in the moon.