AA for the Woman
excerpts from the G.S.O. approved literature "AA for the woman".

You are not alone

If you think you have a drinking problem — if you suspect that drinking may be one of your problems — then you will read in this article the stories of women who once thought and felt as you do.

Different as each is from the other, they all finally reached a point where they had to recognize that alcohol was seriously affecting their lives. For all of these women — young, middle-aged, old, house-wife, career woman, student, from affluence, from poverty, and from many social and ethnic back-grounds — the answer was the same. Through the simple program of Alcoholics Anonymous, they found a way to stop drinking, to maintain sobriety, and to build in sobriety a life more rewarding and fuller than any had believed possible.

The word "alcoholic" may disturb you. To many people it still suggests weakling or outcast. Applied to women, this misconception remains particularly strong. Most of society tends to look with tolerance or even amusement on a male drunk, but to recoil in distaste from a women who is in the same condition. Even more tragic is that the woman alcoholic herself often shares this bias. For her, the burden of guilt carried by every alco-holic drinker is often doubled.

The women of A.A. have shed the crippling weight of unjustified guilt. They have learned a medical fact for themselves. Alcoholism is not in itself a queston of morals or manners (though it certainly affects both). Alcoholism is a health prob-lem. It is an illness, described as such by both the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association.

This definition is no longer revolutionary. It has been well publicized, and most people accept it — casually, as a general statement: "Of course alcoholism is an illness." But when the focus turns to a specific person — co-worker, neighbor, friend, relative, or yourself, the old attitudes return: "Why can't she drink like a lady?" or "Why can't I drink the way other women do?" or "Why can't I stop? I have no willpower," or even, "I'm no good." On a personal basis, the illness is too often regarded in its earlier stages as a breach of eti-quette, in its latter stages as a deep moral failing.

Perhaps the strangest and most insidious aspect of the disease of alcoholism is its ability to hide itself from the sufferer. Alcoholics are experts at not seeing their own illness. They are often the last to admit that they have a drinking problem.

If the illness is so hard for the alcoholic to recognize, how can you tell whether or not you are an alcoholic? What is the measuring stick of alcoholism? Drinking in the morning? Drinking alone? How much you drink? Not necessarily any of these. The test is not when you drink, or with whom, or how much, or where, or what (alcohol is alcohol regardless of what it's flavored or diluted with), or even why you drink. The real measure is in the answers to these questions: What has drinking done to you? How does your drinking affect your family, your home, your job or school work, your social life, your physical well-being, your inner emotions?

Trouble in any one of these areas suggests the possibility of alcoholism. It need not be devastating trouble at first. Some alcoholics start out as social drinkers, enjoying a large capacity for liquor and literally "feeling no pain." Others experience typ-ical alcoholic symptoms from the very beginning. If you are "functioning" — as a housewife, student, working women, etc. — and covering up the effects of your drinking, ask yourself: How much effort, how much sheer willpower is involved in the cover-up? Is the effect worth the effort? Is there any real fun left?

Alcoholism is a progressive illness. Late start-ing or early, the drinking gets more and more out of control. Indeed, the very attempt to control it can become an all-consuming preoccupation. Drinking only wine or beer, promising oneself to drink only on weekends, spacing drinks; these are only a few of the methods devised by drinkers to try to control their alcohol intake. Such "white-knuckled" ruses are themselves as classic a symptom of alcoholism as the shattering hangover or the frightening blackout.

There is a turning point, and you do not have to reach it via a hospital bed or "rehab" or prison, although many women have come to A.A. only after reaching these stages of the illness. At any point in the downward progression of the illness called alcoholism, you can get off and stay off, simply by reaching out for help and becoming willing to face your problem. It doesn't matter whether you are 15 or 50, rich or poor, college graduate or high school dropout, self-supporting or sheltered in a family household, a patient in a treatment facility, a prison inmate, or a street person. Help is available, but you must make the decision to ask for it.

In A.A there are no application forms to sign or admission fees to pay. You will not be asked to subscribe to any formal "course of treatment." You will simply meet men and women who have found a way to free themselves from their dependence on alcohol and have begun to repair the damage it has done to their lives. Such freedom and recovery can be yours, too.

In this article you will read no dry statistics, but rather the stories of individual women alcoholics. These stories were chosen to represent the common experience of women alcoholics and to show the wide range of types of women who recover from alcoholism, what A.A. means to them and could mean to you. After attending their first meetings, some other women have reported: "A feeling of warmth at being with other people who had the same problem that I did . . . ." "compassion and understanding. . . ." "an atmosphere of unconditional love . . . ." "I realized I was not alone."

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