Problem-Drinkers

Fifty years ago a man who drank too much was called a drunkard, and told that he would go to hell if he did not stop. Today the same sort of man is called a dipsomaniac or an alcoholic according to how frayed his nerves are, and is t somewhat groggy guinea pig of practicing psychologists and psychiatrists. Last week, a layman named Dr. (Ph.D.) Charles H. Durfee, speaking before an annual convention of Connecticut physicians at Groton, offered homespun family practitioners a few points in the treatment of drunkards, whom he calls "problem-drinkers." For the past six years he has been treating them on his Wakefield, R.I. farm.

Greatest mistake of most alcoholic therapy is to emphasize staying away from the bottle. Dr. Durfee prefers straightening out whatever fundamental twist in personality is responsible for the urge.

Drunkards drink to escape, and keeping them in physical confinement only aggravates their mental state. Further, Dr. Durfee will treat no one who does not come to him voluntarily. On his farm Dr. Durfee leaves liquor handy, and when there are guests, he has patients pour cocktails, so that when they return to normal life they are used to being near alcohol. But even when their psyches are patched up, none of Dr. Durfee's patients are supposed to touch alcohol again.

Problem-drinkers should always have something to think about and something to do. The best thing Dr. Durfee has found yet is farm life. He keeps his patients digging ditches, mending fences, clearing fields, tending bees. After six years of-curing drunks, Dr. Durfee has an extraordinarily good-looking farm.

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