The Press MONDAY, MAY 29, 1961. Alcoholism

Press, Volume C, Issue 29525, 29 May 1961, Page 10

The Press MONDAY, MAY 29, 1961. Alcoholism

Alcoholism and present-day efforts to combat it need to be understood better by the genera] public. Reports presented at the annual meeting of the Canterbury branch of the National Society on Alcoholism outlined scene of the commendable work that is being done unobtrusively and capably by voluntary organisations. The first essential is to recognise alcoholism for what it is—a crippling disease which must be considered quite separately from cny controversy over licensing laws, the liquor trade, or the temperance movement as it is commonly understood. Irrespective of legal restraints on his access to alcohol, the true alcoholic will continue to be a problem unless proper methods of treatment can be applied. Indeed the alcoholic may be harmed rather than benefited by the arbitrary withdrawal of liquor supplies. Modern advances in the sciences of the mind have made possible a revolutionary approach to alcoholism, and have largely succeeded in putting it in its correct context—that of medicine, much more than that of legal sanctions.

Statistics on this subject cannot be complete. The chairman of the Alcoholism Society in Christchurch (the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan) has described the symptoms of an alcoholic sufficiently graphically to indicate the factors that may impede research as well as actual treatment If the estimate of 20,000 alcoholics in New Zealand is reasonably accurate—and it cannot be disproved—the disease is already widespread enough in a small country to cause public anxiety. The work of the Alcoholism Society and Alcoholics Anonymous is soundly based on unimpeachable professional knowledge. It is endorsed by the churches, the courts, lawyers, doctors, and social workers. For its success it depends a good deal upon intelligent, enlightened, and humane attitudes among the public. Confusion about its objectives can impair its usefulness. If it is divorced in the public mind from everyday prejudices about alcohol, it will be seen as an attack not on ordinary adjuncts of civilised living but on a malady that afflicts individuals primarily, and the community only if the individual is left too long without assistance.