For the first time since Covid-19 reached our shores, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members from all over SA will meet in person in Cape Town over Easter to celebrate the organisation’s jubilee — 75 years of fellowship which have rescued millions of lives from alcoholism.
A new peer-reviewed study found that even drinking at a “modest” amount — a few beers or glasses of wine a week — can compromise the brain by reducing its overall volume and ageing it. The effects of alcoholism are much greater.
The AA’s colourful history in SA started in 1946 with two men from opposite sides of the “colour bar”, a court translator and a wealthy stockbroker, both desperate to free themselves from the grip of alcohol.
AA SA spokesperson Ray G (anonymity is protected) said that year Reader’s Digest magazine ran a story about an “almost miraculous cure for hopeless alcoholics”.
“About that time Solomon S, who was a well-educated man and translator at the Johannesburg magistrate’s and supreme court, had a problem with alcohol. Like all of us alcoholics, one drink needed company and he got into an increasing amount of trouble,” he said.
“He got fired and was living in Alexandra township. One day he was walking past a rubbish bin and fished a Reader’s Digest out of the trash and found the story. He was the first South African to write to AA headquarters in New York.”
The AA wrote back to Solomon S and sent him literature about its work, including the 12-step recovery programme, described as a “spiritual, not religious experience”.
“Solomon immediately took to it and stopped drinking. He got his job and family back, and lived to a ripe old age,” said Ray, but he struggled to get his old drinking buddies to join him in a sober life.
About the same time Arthur S, who lived in a mansion on Parktown Ridge, had tried doctors and other ways to stop drinking by the time he read the article. After he wrote to the AA the organisation sent him the same literature and he decided to try to form a group with his well-connected Joburg set.
Five prominent professionals supported Arthur in his recruitment of alcoholics and the first AA meeting in SA was held on October 16 1946 (the jubilee festivities run until October).
At that meeting Arthur reportedly pitched up inebriated and warned the others not to follow in his footsteps.
“Arthur did not manage to stay the course and died the following year, but the fellowship continued,” said Ray.
Today the AA’s members, thousands across all provinces, come from diverse backgrounds to attend the free meetings and beat their disease, one day at a time.
“Alcoholism is an equal-opportunity disease,” said Ray, and many people cannot afford to go to rehab to tackle their physical addiction and psychological obsession with drinking.
For the latest peer-reviewed study on how alcohol affects the brain, scientists analysed data from more than 36,000 adults, including brain MRIs. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications in March.
The researchers found, for example, that 50-year-olds who increase their drinking from an average of half a beer a day to one pint (or a glass of wine) would see changes in the brain “equivalent to ageing two years”.
“It’s not linear. It gets worse the more you drink,” said the co-corresponding author of the study, Prof Remi Daviet, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of the reductions of grey and white matter in the brain.
A key principle in the AA programme is that recovering alcoholics support people who want to recover, acting as their sponsors in giving up drinking. “This is just one alcoholic passing on to another how to sober up,” said Ray.
It’s not linear. (Brain function) gets worse the more you drink.
— US researcher Prof Remi Daviet
The AA has many meetings every day of every week, including on public holidays, conducted in languages from English and Afrikaans to isiZulu and isiXhosa. Some branches, like Soweto, are dynamic, with several meetings a week that attract young people and women, he said.
“During lockdown we had to go online, but not everyone had data for Zoom. People would go and sit in places with wifi and follow meetings on WhatsApp.”
The WhatsApp meetings ran right through in SA and in Zimbabwe, with one Sunday meeting reaching about 350 people, though not all simultaneously.
But finally, this weekend, AA members will reunite in person for the SA national convention, which is open to anyone.
“The majority at the convention will be AA members, but anybody can go to listen to others speaking,” said Ray. “It is a chance also for people to socialise and have fun.”
Members of the AA’s sister organisation Al-Anon, founded to support people affected by the alcoholism of a loved one, will also be present. For every alcoholic, about 16 lives can be blighted, research shows.
Ray said the children, husbands, wives, partners, parents and friends of alcoholics are among those vulnerable to unhealthy behaviour patterns from living with the damage of the disease. Children from alcoholic homes are at higher risk of antisocial and criminal conduct, statistics suggest.
The AA is completely self-funded, earning about half its income from literature sales and accepting no donations from the state, churches, businesses or non-alcoholics, said Ray. “We don’t only survive, we thrive.”
“I should have been dead by now, but I sobered up nine years ago. I want to pass this on out of gratitude,” he said of the life of hope in which he will rejoice at Easter.
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