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Show Veal Sill: August 11. 1949 .' There's no need to beat around the bush, Bill, alcoholism killed a friend of mine today. If we had been a little less selfish, a trifle less afraid, and interested enough in our fellow men to become enlightened on t alcoholism it wouldn't have happened. hap-pened. For my friend died of a human disease as devastating and as vicious as any affliction of man.- There are a lot of people who t squirm when you say alcoholism, Y squirm because their minds still ' hold fast to the age-old belief I that an alcoholic is a burden on society because he derives his I pleasure from drinking liquor, I : and that his pleasures are ob-; ob-; noxious to society, i Bill, there was never an al- coholic born, and they are born, K who ever derived an ounce of pleasure from drinking. There j never was an alcoholic who hasn't prayed within himself for i someway to stop drinking', and there never will be an alcoholic once he becomes aware of his a affliction, who won't accept a way out once it's offered to him. My friend found his way out. He was not cured of the disease because it can not be cured, but he arrested it and it would have i . remained dormant had those ' who knew him understood what ' vhe needed. : Alcoholism is a disease, and not a quest for pleasure nor the product of a weak will. Thank God for the scientists of Yale university who a few short years J ago told the world of this di-i di-i . sease. They gave my friend tf. many days of the companionship iie sought, they gave him a few j6, months of freedom from the mental men-tal torture and the physical suffering suf-fering he had endured " down through the years. But alcoholism rose again and 'tP: wok his life, a life he wanted J to devote to fighting alcoholism t f with every weapon at his dis-I dis-I p Posal. And alcoholism will strike I ; asain, again and again until all ' of us rid our minds of the pre- Judices, the prudishness and the ignorance which has been associated as-sociated with the word, "alcohol" I across the centuries. Only when i. we are willing to understand ', those truths which are dawning ; upn the world today, and heed ' the pleas pouring from thousands , upon of thousands of frightened nutnan hearts can we hope to v turn back a disease more tor-f tor-f lufous than cancer and more i crippling than polio. As Ever J - Unc j |