A Brief History of the National Council on Alcoholism Through Pictures

Written by Stanton Peele

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Marty Mann and E.M. Jellinek

Marty Mann and E.M. Jellinek Marty Mann became the first woman to achieve recovery through AA. (Although Bill W. and Dr. Bob formed AA in 1935, Mann only joined AA in 1939. She also spoke of a number of slips she had early on in her recovery.) Mann's thrust was to gain wide public support for the alcoholism-as-disease movement (she was by trade a publicity flack). In pursuing this goal, she formed what eventually became the National Council on Alcoholism, while utilizing the Yale School of Alcohol Studies under Jellinek to establish scientific legitimacy for the disease concept.

R. Brinkley Smithers and E.M. Jellinek

Smithers provided funding for only a few specific research projects — one of which resulted in Jellinek's (1960) Disease Concept of Alcoholism.

R. Brinkley Smithers and Marty Mann

"In 1954, NCA's problems seemed insolvable.... It was now Mrs. Mann's turn to play the optimist. 'there is a rich drunk out there somewhere who will get sober and help us.'.... In 1954, a person who has done as much to advance work in the field of alcoholism as any single person, and who ranks among the greatest influences in the advancement of the cause of alcoholism,... [joined] the ranks of its [the NCA's] leadership.... His advent on the Board of Directors of the National Committee was the catalyst for the development of that agency from a struggling organization to one of...national recognition." (National Council on Alcoholism, 40th Anniversary Commemorative Journal, p. 10)

Thomas Pike

Pike, a member of the NCA Board (1965-78), was at the same time a member of the board of the Rand Corporation when the first Rand Report was published. The Rand reports on alcoholism, in 1976 and 1980, found the resumption of nonproblem drinking by dependent alcoholics was commonplace. Pike attempted to have the first report suppressed, while at the last minute Mary Pendery tried to delay the report so it could be re-analyzed more to her tastes.