Changing Attitudes and New Hope

WHEN AA WAS brought to Rochester, N.Y., by Dr. Kirby Collier, the dean of Rochester psychiatrists, very few physicians would care for alcoholic people if they could avoid it. The only one of the six hospitals in the city which would admit alcoholics under that diagnosis was the emergency psychiatric ward of the Monroe County Infirmary, and then only on a police commitment. Only one of the private convalescent homes would accept anyone acutely intoxicated. AAs were caring for drunks in their homes, taking the full responsibility for what was often a medical emergency.