We are on the same wave length you know. We get them sober at the institute and teach them the program and then send them out to every city and town in America. Like missionaries. We can be like the religionists and send new comers out on a mission for maybe two or four years. That way we can reach thousands of suffering alcoholics instead on just one at a time. We will have meetings in every city in America before you know it.
B.W.
I have to confess I have been thinking about an AA Training Institute set up with a hospital. In one section we will use the hospital to detox drunks and help them get sober. Then we will teach them the program in another division. Maybe even have a school for job training. Then some of them could come to Hi Watch and train as missionaries.
M.M.
How about a residential AA center. You know I have had a hard time finding a place to live and I know you and Lo lived around for a long time before you were able to get a place to reside.
B.W.
This is going to cost a lot of money. Other people’s money. Do you know any rich people who would like to invest in AA?
M.M.
I don’t know any rich people like that right now. But let me tell you one thing. There is a rich drunk out there someplace with lots of money who is just looking for something big to invest in. We will find him/her, sober them up, give them the program and they will volunteer to donate the money for the AA Training Institute.
B.W.
Well I know one thing. It won’t be the Rockefellers or DuPont’s or Roosevelt’s. At least not the ones we have met so far. Although in fairness to Mr. Rockefeller, he has helped Dr Bob and me get by for this year.
M.M.
There are thousands more like him. Some of them drunks like us and when they hear the message and get sober they will want to help. Something else came to me in my dream. Do you want to hear it?
B.W.
By all means. Tell me everything.
M.M.
When I was a teenager I had tuberculosis TB affected thousands of Americans and it hurt the rich and the poor. TB was declared to be a Public Health Issue and a threat to every American. Every large city had a TB Committee made up of important citizens who want to stamp out TB. Every state had a TB Sanitarium Hospital for treatment. Most counties had a TB Hospital.
My vision is to have Alcoholism classified as a Public Health Issue and a threat to every American. Then we can have high minded citizens form committees in cities and states to build hospitals and schools and training institutes to combat alcoholism. TB has been virtually wiped out and alcoholism can be treated the same way. I will find a University like Yale or Brown to create a special department to study alcoholism.
Scene V
New York City Office National Council on Alcoholism
B.W.
You have to help me understand this word Lesbian. I never heard of a lesbian before you. What does it mean? How does it work? No woman I ever knew said anything about women wanting women, just women wanting men.
M.M.
A lesbian is al woman who is romantically or sexually attracted only to other women. Women who are attracted to both women and men are more often called bisexual. An individual’s self-identification might not correspond with her behavior and may be expressed either, both, or neither of these words.
B.W.
Never heard of such a thing!
M.M.
Well I knew when I was very young that I was different from my girl friends. I never wanted what they wanted from boys. I wanted to compete with them. But society dictated what I could do so I got a boy friend and we lived together but the relationship became abusive. I told him I wanted to be with women and he got angry and tried to control me. But I went to gay bars any way. Then I met a drunk who could drink as much as I did and we got married. A couple of years later we got divorced. It was an abusive relationship.
I became more and more homophobic and afraid of my feelings about “coming out as a lesbian. I parked near the gay bars to see who or what went in. Then I went in and had a drink and the party began. This went on for five years. One night I was in a bar, drinking and partying and a woman grabbed me and gave me a big kiss. It did not turn me on but it was part of the party so I went along with it. That woman and I later became lovers in a three year abusive relationship. I think she may have called my mother and told her I am gay.
Finally I told my mom and dad that I think I am gay and they were OK with it. I told my therapists that I had a problem and thought I am gay. She said it is not a problem and you may be gay. Then I told my sister and she said it is OK.
When I went to England I got into a relationship with the very handsome and rich woman who dressed like a man. She had fast cars, race horses, a yacht and vacation homes in France, Spain, Switzerland and England. The relationship became abusive because I could not stay sober. I drank more and more and wanted to party all of the time. My lover, who never loved me, just kept me as a trophy, became jealous and resentful and finally sent me packing.
B.W.
I am speechless. I never heard of such a thing.
M.M.
I am not surprised. But it is not much of a secret in Puritan American. Here all women are viewed more or less in heterosexual terms. That does not change the facts. Women have lived together as spinsters forever and if they are careful no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.
For several years I have had a friend named Pricilla who lives on Fire Island where there is a large gay community. She objects to me drinking so much and if I can stay sober she wants me to move in with her at Cherry Grove. Pricilla edits the arts for Vanity Fair magazine.
B.W.
Humm. You are certainly educating me on this issue. I think I knew that there are some men who want only men but I never knew there were women who want only women.
E-N-D
Bibliography: This Stage Play is the author’s interpretation of documents found in these sources: Alcoholics Anonymous & Mrs.. Marty Mann Based on The Big Book Story “Women Suffer Too” ; “What The Alcoholic Owes to Marty Mann”, Readers Digest, January 1963; “In Search of the Mysterious Mrs.. Marty Mann” Ron Roizen, and “Where Did Mrs. Marty Mann Learn Alcoholism Was a Disease?” Ron Roizen; “A Brief History of the National Council on Alcoholism Through Pictures”; Stanton Peele.
Narration: (Use as needed)
Narrator One: Mrs. Marty Mann was one of the most important public health figures of the twentieth century. Marty was one of the first women to embrace Alcoholics Anonymous and achieve long-term sobriety through it. She was a pioneer in the understanding and treatment of alcoholism from the time that she entered recovery in 1939 until her death in 1980 at age 76. Mrs. Mann was also an open lesbian who lived with her life time partner Pricilla Peck on Fire Island in Cherry Grove, New York. Marty had grown up as a wealthy child young woman who was attractive, smart, and talented. She was successful in spite of a serious infection of pulmonary tuberculosis in her late teens.
Narrator Two: In her late 20’s, as a result of her uncontrolled drinking, she lost everything including her money, integrity and self esteem. She then became an expatriate and lived in Europe for a number of years where she hung out with a group called the Bloomberg Group that included personalities like Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemmingway, Thornton Wilder, Henri Matisse, Joseph Conrad, and Marion Carstairs. Karl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
Narrator One: Marty became more and more unhappy she once attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window and spent months in orthopedic care, where she managed to continue drinking. She relapsed several times during her first year of recovery and again, briefly, after about 20 years of sobriety. Although frequently depressed, Mrs. Mann devoted her life to spreading information about alcoholism and fighting the stigma that is attached to it. She founded the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism, which became the National Council on Alcoholism and is now the Nationa
l Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. She traveled extensively. Most years she made over 200 speeches on fulfilling her dream of educating the public to the disease concept of Alcoholism. She spoke to groups and helped start Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as well as branches of the National Council on Alcoholism in the United States and abroad.
Narrator Two: Marty Mann was a charismatic public speaker and gave hundreds of lectures. She spoke to and served as consultant to many levels of governmental committees. She cultivated and enlisted the help of the rich and the famous, many of whom were problem drinkers or had come from a family that had alcoholism in its past.
Narrator One: Prior to 1952, the prevailing psychiatric thinking about alcohol abuse was that there was an underlying emotional conflict that drove one to drink. The favored treatment approach was to try to uncover the basic psychosis and resolve those conflicts through psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Once the real problem was uncovered, the alcoholic could resume drinking. Coupled with that concept the historical view was that alcoholism was a sign of moral corruption or at best character degeneration.
Narrator Two: AA’s 12-Step programs spelled out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous are now widely regarded as the gold standard for treating alcohol addiction, and most people are aware that it is recognized as a disease by the American Medical Society. Mrs. Mann was deeply involved in the early disputes about anonymity because of her zeal to tell the world about