Marty Mann
Margaret “Marty” Mann (October 15, 1904 – July 22,
1980) was a very early AA member generally acknowledged as the first woman to
achieve lasting sobriety in AA. She was one of the founders of the AA Grapevine
and author of the chapter “Women Suffer Too” in the second and third editions
of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.” In 1944, she founded the National Council
on Alcoholism, which was established to lessen the stigma surrounding
alcoholism, increase awareness, emphasize prevention and intervention, and
underscore the necessity of and right to treatment. Through a lifetime
dedicated to service, Marty Mann was instrumental in changing societal
attitudes and opinions about alcoholism and alcoholics and has been widely
credited with advancing the understanding that alcoholism is an issue of public
health, not morality.
Marty came from an upper middle class family in Chicago. She attended private schools,
traveled extensively, and was a debutante. The social circle in which she moved
was a fast-living one and Marty was known for her capacity to drink without
apparent effect. She married into a wealthy New Orleans family; when in her late
twenties, due to financial reverses, she had to go to work, her social and
family connections made it easy for her to launch a career in public relations.
Marty's drinking, however, grew to the point where it endangered not only
her business but her life, including at least one suicide attempt. In 1939 her
psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Tiebout, gave her a manuscript of the book
“Alcoholics Anonymous,” and persuaded her to attend her first AA meeting (at
the time there were only two AA groups in the entire United States). Despite several
relapses during her first year and a half, Marty succeeded in becoming sober by
1940 and, apart from a brief relapse nearly 20 years later, remained so for the
rest of her life.
In 1944 Marty became inspired with the desire to eliminate the stigma and
ignorance regarding alcoholism, and to encourage the “disease model” which
viewed it as a medical/psychological problem, not a moral failing. She helped
start the Yale School of Alcohol Studies (now at Rutgers),
and organized the National Council on Alcoholism (now the National Council on
Alcoholism and Drug Dependence or NCADD).
Three ideas formed the basis of her message:
- Alcoholism is a disease
and the alcoholic a sick person.
- The alcoholic can be
helped and is worth helping.
- Alcoholism is a public
health problem and therefore a public responsibility.
In the 1950s Edward R. Murrow included her in his list of the 10 greatest
living Americans. Her book “New Primer on Alcoholism” was published in 1958.
In 2001, a biography of Marty
Mann by Sally and David Brown was published by Hazelden-Pittman
Archives Press, “A
Biography of Mrs. Marty Mann: The First Lady of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
The following remarks by Marty are from the 1950s radio series, “This I
Believe”:
I am an alcoholic—one of the fortunate ones who found the road to recovery.
That was thirteen years ago, but I haven’t forgotten. I remember what it was
like to be hopelessly in the grip of the vicious disease of alcoholism, not
knowing what was wrong with me. I remember my desperate search for help. Failing
to find it, I remember my inner despair—my outer defiance.
I remember the arrogance and pride with which I faced the non-understanding
world, in spite of my terrible hidden fears—my fear of life and my fear of
death. At times I feared life so much more than death that twice I sought
death. Suicide seemed a welcome release from a terror and agony past bearing.
How grateful I am now that I didn’t succeed. But I believed in nothing,
then. Not in myself, nor in anything outside myself. I was walled in with my
suffering—alone and, I thought, forsaken.
But I wasn’t forsaken, of course. No one is, really. I seemed to suffer
alone, but I believe now that I was never alone—that none of us are. I believe,
too, that I was never given more to bear than I could endure, but rather that
my suffering was necessary, for me. I believe it may well have taken that much
suffering, in my case, to break down my wall of self, to crush my arrogance and
pride, to let me seek and accept the help that was there.
For in the depths of my suffering I came to believe. To believe that there
was a Power greater than myself that could help me. To believe that because of
that Power—God—there was hope and help for me.
I found my help through people—doctors whose vocation it is to deal with
suffering, and other human beings who had suffered like myself. In the depths
of my personal abyss I received understanding and kindness and help from many
individuals. People, I learned, can be very kind. I came to believe deeply in
this—in people and the good that is in them.
I came to realize that suffering is universal. It lies behind much apparent
harshness and irritability, many of the careless, even cruel, words and acts
which make our daily lives difficult so much of the time. I learned that if I
could understand this, I might not react so often with anger or hurt. And if I
learned to react to difficult behavior with understanding and sympathy, I might
help to bring about a change in that behavior. My suffering helped me to know
things.
I do not believe that everyone should suffer. But I do believe that
suffering can be good, and even necessary, if—and only if—one learns to accept
that suffering as part of one’s essential learning process, and then to use it
to help oneself and one’s fellow sufferers.
Don’t we all endure suffering, one way or another? This fact gives me a deep
sense of kinship with other people and a consequent desire to help others in
any and every way I can.
It is this belief that underlies my work, for alcoholism is the area in
which I feel best fitted, through my own experience, to help others. And I
believe that trying to help my fellow men is one of the straightest roads to
spiritual growth. It is a road everyone can take. One doesn’t have to be
beautiful or gifted, or rich or powerful, in order to offer a helping hand to
one’s fellow sufferers. And I believe that one can walk with God by doing just
that.