Florence Rankin

A Feminine Victory

(Original Manuscript & p. 217 in 1st edition.)

To my lot falls the rather doubtful distinction of being the only “lady” alcoholic in our particular section. Perhaps it is because of a desire for a “supporting cast” of my own sex that I am praying for inspiration to tell my story in a manner that may give other women who have this problem the courage to see it in its true light and seek the help that has given me a new lease on life.

When the idea was first presented to me that I was an alcoholic, my mind simply refused to accept it. Horrors! How disgraceful! What humiliation! How preposterous! Why, I loathed the taste of liquor-drinking was simply a means of escape when my sorrows became too great for me to endure. Even after it had been explained to me that alcoholism is a disease, I could not realize that I had it. I was still ashamed, still wanted to hide behind the screen of reasons made up of “unjust treatment,””unhappiness,” “tired and dejected,” and the dozens of other things that I thought lay at the root of my search for oblivion by means of whiskey or gin.

In any case, I felt quite sure that I was not an alcoholic. However, since I have faced the fact, and it surely is a fact, I have been able to use the help that is so freely given when we learn how to be really truthful with ourselves.

The path by which I have come to this blessed help was long and devious. It led through the mazes and perplexities of an unhappy marriage and divorce, and a dark time of separation from my grown children, and a readjustment of life at an age when most women feel pretty sure of a home and security.

But I have reached the source of help. I have learned to recognize and acknowledge the underlying cause of my disease; selfishness, self-pity and resentment. A few short months ago those three words applied to me would have aroused as much indignation in my heart as the word alcoholic. The ability to accept them as my own has been derived from trying, with the unending help of God, to live with certain goals in mind.

Coming to the grim fact of alcoholism, I wish I could present the awful reality of its insidiousness in such a way that no one could ever again fail to recognize the comfortable, easy steps that lead down to the edge of the precipice, and show how those steps suddenly disappeared when the great gulf yawned before me. I couldn’t possibly turn and get back to solid earth again that way.

The first step is called–“The first drink in the morning to pull you out of a hangover.”

I remember so well when I got onto that step–I had been drinking just like most of the young married crowd I knew. For a couple of years it went on, at parties and at “speakeasies,” as they were then called, and with cocktails after matinees. Just going the rounds and having a good time.

Then came the morning when I had my first case of jitters. Someone suggested a little of the “hair of the dog that bit me.” A half hour after that drink I was sitting on top of the world, thinking how simple it was to cure shaky nerves. How wonderful liquor was, in only a few minutes my head had stopped aching, my spirits were back to normal and all was well in this very fine world.

Unfortunately, there was a catch to it–I was an alcoholic. As time went on the one drink in the morning had to be taken a little earlier–it had to be followed by a second one in an hour or so, before I really felt equal to getting on with the business of living.

Gradually I found at parties the service was a little slow; the rest of the crowd being pretty happy and carefree after the second round. My reaction was inclined to be just the opposite. Something had to be done about that so I’d just help myself to a fast one, sometimes openly, but as time went on and my need became more acute, I often did it on the quiet.

In the meantime, the morning-after treatment was developing into something quite stupendous. The eye-openers were becoming earlier, bigger, more frequent, and suddenly, it was lunch time! Perhaps there was a plan for the afternoon–a bridge or tea, or just callers. My breath had to be accounted for, so along came such alibis as a touch of grippe or some other ailment for which I’d just taken a hot whiskey and lemon. Or “someone” had been in for lunch and we had just had a couple of cocktails. Then came the period of brazening it out-going to social gatherings well fortified against the jitters; next the phone call in the morning.

“Terribly sorry that I can’t make it this afternoon, I have an awful headache”; then simply forgetting that there were engagements at all; spending two or three days drinking, sleeping it off, and waking to start all over again.

Of course, I had the well known excuses; my husband was failing to come home for dinner or hadn’t been home for several days; he was spending money which was needed to pay bills; he had always been a drinker; I had never known anything about it until I was almost thirty years old and he gave me my first drink. Oh, I had them all down, letter perfect–all the excuses, reasons and justifications. What I did not know was that I was being destroyed by selfishness, self-pity and resentment.

There were the swearing-off periods and the “goings on the wagon”–they would last anywhere from two weeks to three or four months. Once, after a very severe illness of six weeks’ duration (caused by drinking), I didn’t touch anything of an alcoholic nature for almost a year. I thought I had it licked that time, but all of a sudden things were worse than ever. I found fear had no effect.

Next came the hospitalization, not a regular sanitarium, but a local hospital where my doctor would ship me when I’d get where I had to call him in. That poor man–I wish he could read this for he would know then it was no fault of his I wasn’t cured.

When I was divorced, I thought the cause had been removed. I felt that being away from what I had considered injustice and ill-treatment would solve the problem of my unhappiness. In a little. over a year I was in the alcoholic ward of a public hospital!

It was there that L– came to me. I had known her very slightly ten years before. My ex-husband brought her to me hoping that she could help. She did. From the hospital I went home with her.

There, her husband told me the secret of his rebirth. It is not really a secret at all, but something free and open to all of us. He asked me if I believed in God or some power greater than myself. Well, I did believe in God, but at that time I hadn’t any idea what He is. As a child I had been taught my “Now I lay me’s” and “Our Father which art in Heaven.” I had been sent to Sunday School and taken to church. I had been baptized and confirmed. I had been taught to realize there is a God and to “love” him. But though I had been taught all these things, I had never learned them.

When B– (L’s husband) began to talk about God, I felt pretty low in my mind. I thought God was something that I, and lots of other people like me, had to worry along without. Yet I had always had the “prayer habit.” In fact I used to say in my mind “Now, if God answers this prayer, I’ll know there is a God.” It was a great system, only somehow it didn’t seem to work!

Finally B– put it to me this way: “You admit you’ve made a mess of things trying to run them your way, are you willing to give up? Are you willing to say: “Here it is God, all mixed up. I don’t know how to un-mix it, I’ll leave it to you.” Well, I couldn’t quite do that. I wasn’t feeling very well, and I was afraid that later when the fog wore off, I’d want to back out. So we let it rest a few days. L and B sent me to stay with some friends of theirs out of town–I’d never seen them before. The man of that house, P– had given up drinking three months before. After I had been there a few days, I saw that P– and his wife had something that made them mighty hopeful and happy. But I got a little uneasy going into a perfect stranger’s home and staying day after day. I said this to P– and his reply was: “Why, you don’t know how much it is helping me to have you here.” Was that a surprise! Always before that when I was recovering from a tailspin I’d been just a pain in the neck to everyone. So, I began to sense in a small way just what these spiritual principles were all about.

Finally I very self-consciously and briefly asked God to show me how to do what He wanted me to do. My prayer was just about as weak and helpless a thing as one could imagine, but it taught me how to open my mouth and pray earnestly and sincerely. However, I had not quite made the grade. I was full of fears, shames, and other “bug-a-boos” and two weeks later an incident occurred that put me on the toboggan again. I seemed to feel that the hurt of that incident was too great to endure without some “release.” So I forsook Spirit in favor of “spirits” and that evening I was well on the way to a long session with my old enemy “liquor.” I begged the person in whose home I was living not to let anyone know, but she, having good sense, got in touch right away with those who had helped me before and very shortly they had rallied round.

I was eased out of the mess and in a day or two I had a long talk with one of the crowd. I dragged out all my sins of commission and ommission, I told everything I could think of that might be the cause of creating a fear situation, a remorse situation, or a shame situation. It was pretty terrible, I thought then, to lay myself bare that way, but I know now that such is the first step away from the edge of the precipice.

Things went very well for quite a while, then came a dull rainy day. I was alone. The weather and my self-pity began to cook up a nice dish of the blues for me. There was liquor in the house and I found myself suggesting to myself “Just one drink will make me feel so much more cheerful.” Well, I got the Bible and “Victorious Living” and sitting down in full view of the bottle of whiskey, I commenced to read. I also prayed. But I didn’t say “I must not take that drink because I owe it to so and so not to.” I didn’t say “I won’t take that drink because I’m strong enough to resist temptation.” I didn’t say “I must not” or “I will not” at all. I simply prayed and read and in half an hour I got up and was absolutely free of the urge for a drink.

It might be very grand to be able to say “Finis” right here, but I see now I hadn’t gone all the way I was intended to go. I was still coddling and nursing my two pets, self-pity and resentment. Naturally, I came a cropper once more. This time I went to the telephone (after I had taken about two drinks) and called L to tell her what I had done. She asked me to promise that I would not take another drink before someone came to me. Well, I had learned enough about truthfulness to refuse to give that promise. Had I been living after the old pattern, I would have been ashamed to call for help. In fact I should not have wanted help. I should have tried to hide the fact that I was drinking and continued until I again wound up behind the “eight ball.” I was taken back to B’s home where I stayed for three weeks. The drinking ended the morning after I got there, but the suffering continued for some time. I felt desperate and I questioned my ability to really avail myself of the help that the others had received and applied so successfully. Gradually, however, God began to clear my channels so that real understanding began to come. Then was the time when full realization and acknowledgement came to me. It was realization and acknowledgement of the fact that I was full of self-pity and resentment, realization of the fact that I had not fully given my problems to God. I was still trying to do my own fixing.

That was several years ago. Since then, although circumstances are no different, for there are still trials and hardships and hurts and disappointments and disillusionments, self-pity and resentment are being eliminated. In this past year I haven’t been tempted once. I have no more idea of taking a drink to aid me through a difficult period than I would if I had never drank. But I know absolutely that the minute I close my channels with sorrow for myself, or being hurt by, or resentful toward anyone, I am in horrible danger.

I know that my victory is none of my human doing. I know that I must keep myself worthy of Divine help. And the glorious thing is this: I am free, I am happy, and perhaps I am going to have the blessed opportunity of “passing it on.” I say in all reverence–Amen.

Biography: “A Feminine Victory”

Florence R.

(Original Manuscript & p. 217 in 1st edition.)

Florence was the first woman to get sober in A.A., even for a short time. She came to A.A. in New York in March of 1937. She had several slips, but was sober over a year when she wrote her story for the Big Book.

It must have been difficult for Florence being the only woman. She prayed for inspiration to tell her story in a manner that would give other women courage to seek the help that she had been given.

She was the ex-wife of a man Bill Wilson had known on Wall Street. She thought the cause of her drinking would be removed when she and her husband were divorced. But it was her ex-husband who took Lois Wilson to visit her at Bellevue. Bill and Lois got her out of Bellevue and she stayed in their home for a time. After she left their home she stayed with other members of the fellowship.

In part, due to Florence having been sober more than a year, “One Hundred Men” was discarded as the name for the Big Book.

She moved to Washington, D.C. and tried to help Fitz Mayo (“Our Southern Friend”), who after sobering up in New York started A.A. in Washington, D.C.

She married an alcoholic she met there, who unfortunately did not get sober. Eventually Florence started drinking again and disappeared. Fitz Mayo found her in the morgue. She had committed suicide.

Despite her relapse and death from alcoholism, Florence helped pave the way for the many women who followed. She was in Washington by the time Marty Mann (“Women Suffer Too”), the next woman to arrive in A.A. in New York, entered the program.

Marty only met her once or twice, but her story in the Big Book no doubt encouraged Marty.