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Show Somsnsitee On Alcoholic Education Engages SLO Speaker For Mon. night Your Attendance Urged At This Discussion Of Public Interest Meeting last Friday night to lay the groundwork for a broad program of education, the local Committee on Alcoholic Education Edu-cation set Monday, August 22, as the date for the initial public pub-lic meeting in an all-out drive to bring about general understanding understand-ing of alcoholism as the No. 4 U. S. public health problem. The opening public session has been set for 8 p. m. in the Roosevelt Roos-evelt stake tabernacle with Glen S. Hatch, Salt Lake attorney, and former assistant executive director direct-or of the Utah Board, on Alcoholism, Alcohol-ism, as the speaker. Mr. Hatch is recognized as the state's foremost authority on the problem. His close association and work with Alcoholics Anonymous, Anon-ymous, plus his attendance at the Yale University summer school sessions on alcoholism have given giv-en him an intimate knowledge of the causes, the effects and the treatment of alcoholism. The LDS- church is cooperating cooperat-ing with the Committee on Education Edu-cation for Alcoholism and Alcoholics Alco-holics Anonymous in bringing Mr. Hatch to Roosevelt for a frank public discussion of the disease which until recently has been surrounded by a wall of social misunderstanding. That the ominous shadow of alcoholism hangs heavily over many unsuspecting Uintah Basin Ba-sin homes was recognized by the-local the-local committee last week .when' it agreed to wholeheartedly supK port the program of rehabilitation rehabilita-tion being carried out by Alcoholics Alco-holics Anonymous. Further evidence evi-dence that it intended to intensU fy an educational program of no small magnitude was introduced when Dr. Glenn Wyler was named to the committee. The committee is now comprised com-prised of Mrs. Mattie Edwards, chairman, Mrs. Martha Shanks, Dr. R.V. Larson, Dr. Glenn S. Wyler, George E. Stewart, and C. L. Fretwell, secretary. At last Friday's session, James Bacon attended at-tended as the representative of the LDS church. Two statements of fact advanced ad-vanced by Alcoholics Anonymous Anony-mous formed the basis for the committee's opening discussions. They are: "There is no medical cure for alcoholism, Its victims are usually, forced to wage a losing battle not only against the ravages of the disease, but also against the ignorance of a society which refuses to regard the Alcoholic Al-coholic as a diseased person," and 'The action of alcohol on the chronic alcoholic is the manifestation mani-festation of an allergy; the phenomenon phe-nomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all, and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it; once having lost their self confidence, their reliance upon up-on things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly as-tonishingly difficult to solve." Mr. Hatch, in his public discussion dis-cussion Monday evening, will detail de-tail these facts established by the work of Alcoholics Anonymous and the findings of the Physiology Physiol-ogy department of Yale university. |