Alcoholics asked to help drug addicts

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33154, 19 February 1973, Page 12

Alcoholics asked to help drug addicts

Alcoholics Anonymous should extend a charitable hand to other drug addicts, Dr G. A. Wall, M.P., told the organisation’s annual convention at Lincoln College at the week-end.

The withdrawal problems among all addicts, no matter what drug they were addicted to, were identical, as ail were seeking emotional maturity. Alcoholics Anonymous should, out of charity, be prepared to demonstrate the paths of recovery to drug addicts, so that they might pass on to other addicts what they themselves had learnt. “I can well understand that you might be hesitant about this, but 1 am not suggesting that you let them infiltrate or take over your organisation,” Dr Wall said.

“LET THEM LEARN” The addicts should be given the opportunity to attend Alcoholic Anonymous meetings to .learn from the alcoholic’s process of recovery. “Don’t question their approach, please let them hang about and learn.” Dr Wall said. Once addicts had learned how to cope with the withdrawal process, then they would be able to pass it on to other addicts, and perhaps go out to form their own organisation. “Out of charity, take them out of the cold until they learn to keep themselves warm,” Dr Wall said. Alcoholics Anonymous had shown society a process of recovery, now widely established and accepted, but this was not yet the case among the drug community.

Dr Wall said that over recent years there had been a shift in social acceptance and respectability regarding addiction to drink and drugs. He gave as an example a recent case in which the parents of a 22-year-old man had become concerned about the drinking of their son. “He was going downhill fast, but his parents seemed to find some consolation in the fact that he wasn’t tied up with ‘those nasty drugs,’ ” Dr Wall! said. “This was typical of the! ‘better to shoot yourself than drown attitude’ which had developed over the addiction to; drugs,” he said. “INCREASING RAPIDLY” Dr Wall, who has been treating alcholics since 1957. said he still saw a few alcoholics a week, but sometimes received as many as 25 drug addicts. “The way that drugs are being pushed into this country, the number of straight drug addicts, as opposed to those who combine alcohol, was increasing rapidly,” he said. The secrecy and non-accep-tance which surrounded the drug addict were the same as surrounded the alcoholic 20 years ago. Dr Wall’s subject proved a controversial one among those present, and much discussion resulted during a brief question period.