Word: anon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nights with new cronies, helping to keep them from drinking. "I was suddenly jealous of Ed," she says. "He had a cause, and he was burning with it." Soon she found herself guiltily yearning for the bad old pre-A.A. days. Then Ann was saved by joining Al-Anon, a kind of ladies' auxiliary...
...Calm as a Cow." Al-Anon has nearly 1,000 national chapters and 12,000 members. It exists because of one hard fact: the average alcoholic, apart from what he does to himself, cuts a devastating swath through his surroundings. The nation's 4,000,000 alcoholics have in one way or another impaired the lives of an estimated 20 million nonalcoholics, most of them relatives. Al-Anon bars active alcoholics, but is open to almost anybody who might have suffered from them-wives or husbands of reformed, unreformed, or backsliding alcoholics; remote relatives and friends of alcoholics; people...
Whereas A.A. membership is roughly 5-to-1 male, Al-Anon finds its membership running roughly 10-to-1 female. Better than half the members join Al-Anon at an earlier stage than Ann Smith did, i.e., while they still have active alcoholic mates on their hands. One such recruit was Grace T., a schoolteacher brought in by Ann. "I've never seen anyone so close to flying apart," says Ann. "She'd had to quit teaching school; she was doing her children more harm than good. Well, now Grace has been going to my group...
...Come Around." Al-Anon expects members to rush out at any hour of the day or night to bolster wavering members or shepherd its new ones. Al-Anon weekly meetings are apt to be subdued, casual affairs largely devoted to testimony about a family's condition before and after A.A. and Al-Anon...
Although Al-Anon's influence occasionally leads an alcoholic into A.A., this is incidental to its purpose. Many members deliberately conceal from their alcoholic mates that they belong to Al-Anon. They do so in the belief that their problem is unique and should not be confused with the alcoholic problem. "You've got to take your eye off the alcoholic's problem and put it on yourself," says one group chairman. "Don't pour his bottle down the sink. Let him drink. One day he'll come around. But in the meantime...