Medicine: Alcoholics Anonymous

Last week one of the best-known teetotalers in the U. S., John D. Rockefeller, had 60 people to dinner. No cocktails were served, for several of Mr. Rockefeller's guests were members of "Alcoholics Anonymous," a widespread, publicity-shy group of one-time guzzlers who have cured themselves.

Psychiatrists now generally consider alcoholism a disease, specifically a psychoneurosis. Alcoholics generally drink, not just because they like liquor, but to escape from something—a mother fixation, inferiority feelings, an intolerable domestic situation, social or economic maladjustment. They may suffer the torments of the damned, even while drinking...