Page 190 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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DOCTOR BOB’S NIGHTMARE 175
local sanitariums. I was between Scylla and Charyb­
dis now, because if I did not drink my stomach
tortured me, and if I did my nerves did the same
thing. After three years of this, I wound up in the
local hospital where they attempted to help me, but
I would get my friends to smuggle me a quart, or I
would steal the alcohol about the building, so that I
got rapidly worse.
Finally, my father had to send a doctor out from my
home town who managed to get me back there in
some way, and I was in bed about two months before
I could venture out of the house. I stayed about town
a couple of months more and then returned to resume
my practice. I think I must have been thoroughly
scared by what had happened, or by the doctor, or
probably both, so that I did not touch a drink again
until the country went dry.
With the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment I
felt quite safe. I knew everyone would buy a few
bottles, or cases, of liquor as their exchequers per­
mitted, and that it would soon be gone. Therefore it
would make no great difference, even if I should do
some drinking. At that time I was not aware of the
almost unlimited supply the government made it pos­
sible for us doctors to obtain, neither had I any
knowledge of the bootlegger who soon appeared on
the horizon. I drank with moderation at first, but it
took me only a relatively short time to drift back into
the old habits, which had wound up so disastrously
before.
During the next few years, I developed two distinct
phobias. One was the fear of not sleeping, and the
other was the fear of running out of liquor. Not being