William Swegan

On the Military Firing Line in the Alcoholism Treatment Program: the Air Force Sergeant Who Beat Alcoholism and Taught Others to Do the Same William Swegan

An insightful, very readable book. The father of military alcoholism treatment tells about his own life and recovery from alcoholism, and describes how he set up the first officially sanctioned military treatment programs for alcoholics in the 1940s and 50s, when the Alcoholics Anonymous movement was first spreading across the United States. A survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he almost died after the war from his own out-of-control drinking. Using his own recovery as a guide, he persuaded the Air Force to appoint him full time to working with other alcoholics. The success story which he and psychiatrist Dr. Louis Jolyon West related in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1956 was distributed all across the country by the National Council on Alcoholism. If you think that you may have a problem with alcohol or drugs yourself, this book can save your life. The author describes in simple terms the processes which drive people to drink and use drugs, and the route to recovery. He talks about genetics, physical addiction, and the social and psychological pressures which produce subconscious conflicts and massive guilt in alcohol and drug abusers. For mental health professionals, he discusses the relationship between the twelve step program and basic psychiatric principles, and shows how the professionals and the A. A. and N. A. groups can work together to produce impressive recovery rates. This A. A. old-timer (fifty-five years sober) also talks about his early mentor Mrs. Marty Mann, the first woman to gain long-term sobriety in A. A. He describes his conversations with Sister Ignatia and the good old-timers in Akron, Ohio, his work with the noted alcohol researcher E. M. Jellinek at the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, and the way early A. A. meetings were organized and conducted. His book is a lasting monument to those early years, when it was first discovered that alcoholics could be saved.