Dr. Low in Detroit, September 20, 1954

There came a point in Recovery’s history when the strategy changed from getting the psychiatric profession on board with us.  The plan instead was to turn to the clergy for help in getting Recovery to those in need of it.  After Michigan's expansion took off, there was a large gathering in 1954 in Detroit.  Dr. Low was in attendance and of course gave a speech.  So many speeches were made that I have decided to share the transcript in sections, so stay tuned for more very soon.  I'm doing this in "part acts" as we say in Recovery!

September 20, 1954

“Some Techniques Which Recovery, Inc. Has Offered”

This is a transcription of a tape recording of talks which were presented at a meeting at 8 PM, June 4, 1954, in the Central Methodist Church, 23 E. Adams, Detroit, Michigan.  The transcription is almost verbatim, although some parts of the recording were hard to understand clearly.

Mr. Castle Avery:  My name is Cass Avery, and if you don’t think I have nervous symptoms right now, you’re crazy (audience laughed).  A year ago this month I was at home afraid to do anything.  I was afraid to face my job, my social responsibilities, my domestic responsibilities.  I had battled nervous symptoms for many years.  I had made the rounds of doctors and hospitals and clinics.  I had tried all kinds of diets and medications, bland diets and rough diets and pills, and everything that the various doctors could prescribe and nothing helped.  I got worse and worse.  Finally, a year ago, I was at home feeling hopeless and helpless.  Then I started in Recovery.  After a year of practice and study I still have some symptoms, but they are mild, they do not incapacitate me from doing the things that I should do in connection with my various responsibilities.  I am once more handling critical situations in my work that I used to run away from, I think I am nicer to my family than I used to be, I am leading a Recovery group on the West side (of Detroit) and am also serving as Michigan secretary for Recovery.  A year ago that would have been unthinkable.  My experience in Recovery is not unique and just to prove it I would like to ask you Recovery folks who have experienced material improvement or actual cures through Recovery to raise your hands…(pause)…which ought to prove something or other.  Now it is my privilege to present to you the person primarily responsible for the phenomenal growth of Recovery in Michigan during the past year, the lovely lady whom we all respect and admire for her practice of Recovery, and for the help she gives us.  Our Michigan leader, Mrs. Treasure Rice (applause).

Mrs. Treasure Rice:  Boy what a spot to put a nervous patient in (Mrs. R. chuckled).  A little over a year ago one of our Detroit newspapers printed a story about the Michigan branch of Recovery.  At that time there was only one group in Michigan, with a membership of not over 25 active members.  We received about 250 requests for help from this first article.  We mobilized ourselves to try to stretch Recovery’s benefits to these people throughout Michigan.  We drew on older members as leaders.  The mother-group in Chicago rushed to our aid.  Subsequent newspaper publicity in the same paper and another local paper have netted us, to date, around a thousand cries for help in Michigan alone.  After our first year of experiences here in Michigan we are proud to announce that we now have 35 active groups functioning, with a total membership of about 500, and it looks as though, in the near future, we will be able to take in the hundreds who are still on our waiting list.  However, there has been a growing concern among the members and their friends for the hospitalized patient who cannot now reach the benefits of Recovery.  We have offered Recovery’s techniques to the State hospitals, but so far no action has been taken.  Recently we have received quite a few letters from hospitals, Veteran’s organizations, some from psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, and particularly from the relatives of hospitalized patients.  So we in Recovery felt that it was wise to schedule this meeting so that you folks, who show by your presence here tonight that you are vitally interested in the Nation’s number one problem…excuse me, I should say number two problem; we shouldn’t take precedence over the Army-McCarthy hearings (audience laughed)…The purpose of this meeting is to present a comprehensive picture of what Recovery has accomplished and what it can offer the hospitals.  Among the first batch of letters that we received, one caught my eye from a member of the clergy, and by the way, right here I would like to seize this opportunity to speak for myself and all Recovery members, to express our gratitude to not only this man of the cloth, but to all others of the clergy who have seen our needs and have reached out to help us.  Well, I contacted this minister and before I knew it he and his wonderful wife were off for Chicago where they spent a week at Recovery headquarters learning the ins and outs of Recovery.  I understand that when he returned from Chicago he preached a sermon one Sunday morning on Recovery and had slips of paper at the back of the church so that members in the congregation could sign up if they wanted to.  To make a long story short, his church has become a regular Recovery center in Redford (Michigan).  Now I would like to take my place among the members where I belong and turn this meeting over to him and introduce him to you now.  May I present on of Detroit’s finest ministers, Reverend I. Paul Taylor (applause).

Rev. Taylor:  You know, after that introduction, I can hardly wait to see what I am going to say…(Rev. T. chuckled and the audience laughed)…I got into Recovery and became interested in Recovery because of the impossibility of doing my job.  I needed help.  We had nervous, mentally disturbed, frustrated people in our church and in the community and it was just impossible for one man to try to minister to all of them.  When I found out about this Recovery movement and its employment of the practice of group therapy, I became immediately interested because we already had a group of Alcoholics Anonymous in the church and I knew what they were doing and could do.  Now, before introducing the two speakers on this evening’s program, I want to tell you of just one thing, one way, let us put it that way, one way that Recovery works, of one technique that it uses.  I think all of us, whether we are nervous patients, nervous persons, or consider ourselves normal, or average, will admit that one of the strongest desires in a human person is to be a part of a group, to belong to something, or to somebody.  We are social individuals.  We long for the security,  comfort, and protection that comes from belonging to this group or that group.  It is an old, old thing.  Wasn’t it Kipling who said: “now this is the Law of the Jungle- as old and as true as the sky; and the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.  As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back – for the strength of the pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the pack.”  We feel secure when we are among loved ones and within their protection.  Now a person who does not long to be within the group is sick, he is mentally and emotionally disturbed.  We recognize that first of all among the alcoholics.  One of the first symptoms of an alcoholic is that he goes off and drinks in a corner by himself.  Where I use “him”, I mean “her”, too.  In other words, they retire from the group and isolate themselves.  The person who withdraws, picks up his marbles and goes home and doesn’t want to belong to the lodge anymore, the club, the church, the card-party, whatever group it is that he is associated with, and goes home.  The person is sick, and if he doesn’t stop, pretty soon he doesn’t speak to his neighbors, he retires within his home, he builds a shell of protection around him, isolates himself in his house, and then in a room.  He is afraid to go to the shop, he won’t go to the store, it makes him sick to ride in the bus.  He says it is the movement of the bus.  It isn’t it’s the people.  He’ll tell you “people make me sick.”  That’s not so, they can’t make you sick.  But your attitude towards them can make you sick, and does make you sick, and this isolation away from the group is one of the first symptoms of a nervous person.  They withdraw from the community.  If I can use a theological term, Father, they excommunicate themselves.  They draw themselves out of the community.  Now this is attacked by Recovery by forming these groups and bringing people into the group.  You find your isolation is a vicious circle.  Then you find the weakest place in that circle and then you get the courage to break through that weakest spot and then another spot, and then another spot.  I have attended group meetings in Detroit and in Brighton (Michigan), all over Detroit, and in Chicago, and I want to tell you that one of the characteristic things of every Recovery group that I’ve ever walked into is that there is a certain warmth of fellowship that makes you at home because there you meet people that are fighting the same problems that you meet.  Now this is what Dr. Low calls “being group-minded.”  Now we’re not preaching any unselfishness to you, but if you want to be mentally and emotionally healthy you must be group-minded, you must join a group, you must have fellowship, and not isolation.  I believe they’re fighting that problem out in Washington right now, among some other ones.  In other words, we want to give you personal help.  I’ll never forget when we first started our Alcoholics Anonymous group, I went downstairs one Saturday night and one of the founders of the group came up to me and he collared me and he said, “Now listen, Reverend, I don’t want you to get me wrong.  I’m here for a purely selfish purpose.  I want to stay sober.  That’s all I’m interested in but I can’t stay sober unless I’m a good Samaritan to somebody every day.”  You can’t stay mentally healthy unless you get into a group.  You can’t be a mentally and emotionally well person and isolate yourself in a room by yourself.  Dr. Fosdick in his book “On Being A Real Person” has one chapter on accepting ourselves and the very next chapter is getting ourselves off our hands.  You see, it’s the way you meet your problem; not your problem.  Take a man whose child is taken sick with polio, comes out a cripple.  He can meet the problem in one of two ways.  He can immediately face it in a realistic manner.  He can say, “Well, now this is what I’ve got to do.  This is what we’ve got to do for this boy, this is what we’ve got to give up in our family, this is the way we’ve got to rearrange our family because of this boy’s illness.  This is the way we’ve got to handle it.”  Or he can retire within himself, not be group-minded to even his own child, but be a rugged individualist, except he’s not very rugged, he’s a shrinking one, surround himself with self-pity, and say, “why did it happen to me, why did this happen to me?  Why did God send this affliction upon me?”, and certainly ‘round and around and around he goes.  That’s individualism.  Recovery stands for fellowship, or, if you want it in Biblical terms, you can get it there too, “He that will save his life, individually, shall lose it, but he that loses his life, it’s one group, shall save it.”  So this is only one aspect, and this is the aspect that interested me first in Recovery.  I’m rather proud of the fact that I was the first Protestant minister that went to Chicago and became interested in it, but someone else beat me to the gun and that man we have with us tonight, who has organized a group within his own church down in St. Louis.  He is the real pioneer in the church relationship to Recovery.  I’m very, very happy to have met him tonight and I know that you will listen with great interest to his experience.  Father Dowling (applause).