October 10

October 10 – AM          Page 6-7, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms, for mine endured this agony two more years.  Sometimes I stole from my wife’s slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me.  Again I swayed dizzily before an open window, or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling.  There were flights from city to country and back, as my wife and I sought escape.  Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish I feared I would burst through my window, sash and all.  Somehow I managed to drag my mattress to a lower floor, lest I suddenly leap.  A doctor came with a heavy sedative.  Next day found me drinking both gin and sedative.  This combination soon landed me on the rocks.  People feared for my sanity.  So did I.  I could eat little or nothing when drinking, and I was forty pounds under weight.
My brother-in-law is a physician, and through his kindness and that of my mother I was placed in a nationally-known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics.  Under the so-called belladonna treatment my brain cleared.  Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much.  Best of all, I met a kind doctor who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I had been seriously ill, bodily and mentally.

October 10 – PM          Page 130-131, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

There will be other profound changes in the household.  Liquor incapacitated father for so many years that mother became head of the house.  She met these responsibilities gallantly.  By force of circumstances, she was often obliged to treat father as a sick or wayward child.  Even when he wanted to assert himself he could not, for his drinking placed him constantly in the wrong.  Mother made all the plans and gave the directions.  When sober, father usually obeyed.  Thus mother, through no fault of her own, became accustomed to wearing the family trousers.  Father, coming suddenly to life again, often begins to assert himself.  This means trouble, unless the family watches for these tendencies in each other and comes to a friendly agreement about them.