America's Number One Psyche Killer

Just last week I attended a session of the Manhattan District Chapter of the F.E.N.D. I am the first journalist, and indeed, the only outsider, ever allowed into a meeting of this fast-growing organization; and I can report that never have I felt more uplifted than by the F.E.N.D. program.

I went to the meeting with Gilbert Chase himself.

By now, of course, everyone knows that Chase is the Founder and President of FEND, as its members call it, and surely we have all read tributes to him in the self-help magazines or the Congressional Record. The latest of these tributes, in the pages of the trade paper Successful Personnel Management, is quite typical:

"At this very moment," writes the editor of that periodical, "in ranch houses in every state of the union there are men who owe everything they have to Gilbert Chase. These are men who have made their wives happy with charg-a-plates and who have been able to afford for their kiddies the advantages of color TV in their own bedrooms -- men with station wagons in their driveways and credit cards in their wallets -- men who, but for Gilbert Chase, would project none of these prosperity images, but instead would be drifting from rooming house to drab rooming house, divorced by their heartbroken wives, forgotten by their children, despised by prospective employers. This would have been their fate but for the fact that Gilbert Chase has rehabilitated them."

Such encomiums have created throughout America a lively curiosity concerning Chase; but until the evening of last week's FEND meeting, when I went by appointment to the Park Avenue apartment house where Chase lives (and which he now owns), no one was in a position to assert, as I now can, that the story of FEND and its thousands of rehabilitated members is in a very real sense the merely personal story of how Gilbert Chase achieved success.

For Chase was his own first rehabilitation project.

"I was a mess," he told me, pouring me a martini. He has an iron-gray crew cut above a manly lined face which broke now into crinkles as he smiled in recollection of what a mess he had been. "Just 10 years ago I was the worst Problem Non-Drinker you ever saw."

"Like the FEND members you help now," I suggested, "the Fellowship for the Elimination of Non-Drinking, that is."

"Exactly."

I said: "I don't feel the public quite understands Problem Non-Drinking."

"It's a disease of distributors."

"That needs explanation."

"It's very simple," he said. "At one time the big problem of our civilization was production. Well, we solved that problem. Oh, we still have producers, but the important people these days are the distributors. Distribution means sales, and contacts, and getting around, and getting to know everybody, and getting everybody to like you. In production you can be half-successful, or unsuccessful for that matter, but in distribution you're either a big success or you're a bum."

"I don't see why."

"Well, in production you've got to build something or grow something. You've got to have specific ability. If you fail -- if someone else is a better engineer or (continued on page 98) Psyche Killer (continued from page 75) farmer or chemist or something -- well, what of it? Nobody but artists insist on being the best in what they do. But in distribution---- Well, the point is, you don't do anything. You project yourself, is all. And if you're not a success, there's only one reason: people don't like you. People don't like you. Just think for a minute what that means."

It was a solemn thought, of course. It is bad enough not to be able to afford the $200 suits, the jet-plane travel, the tax-deductible pleasure cruisers, the air-conditioned automobiles that others around you enjoy -- but to know that this is because you cannot hold your own as an amiable man among men must make your defeat in life a particularly crushing one.

"I see what you mean," I said. "And I gather that in FEND you believe that failure occurs mainly because of Problem Non-Drinking."

"Not mainly. Solely. Granted no repulsive deformities and a modicum of intelligence, it's only Problem Non-Drinking that can keep a distributor from success."

"Most of us," I said, "never heard of Problem Non-Drinking until you started FEND."

"That's because it's something new. It's a disease created by a changed environment. There wasn't any silicosis until men started cutting stone and mining coal, and there weren't any Problem Non-Drinkers until we built urban areas and began being distributors. Now every year young men come to this city -- and other cities, too, and we've got FEND chapters in all of them now -- and they become salesmen, time buyers, space buyers, they go into public relations, which is just distribution if you analyze it properly, and then, whammo! some of them find themselves in the situation I was in 10 years ago. They find they can't succeed because they're Problem Non-Drinkers. Let me tell you, Problem Non-Drinking is America's Number One Psyche Killer today."

He discussed it then, learnedly, and I shall try to summarize what he said.

Medical science (Chase quoted several eminent doctors) now recognizes not only that Problem Non-Drinking is an illness, but that there is no cure for it. A Problem Non-Drinker, no matter how many years he has been convivial, is always in danger of going on the wagon. He is not like the rest of mankind. He cannot leave it alone or take it, though he often pretends that he can. Actually, he belongs with the two out of every 13.6 people (there may be one in your family) who, even in the most relaxing of social or business situations, yearn and burn and itch and sweat with the maddening secret desire to leave it alone. Alcohol makes the Problem Non-Drinker retch, perhaps, or it gives him violent headaches. He does not understand why in the summer other people delight in what they call "tall cool ones," for the tall cool ones make him hot. The medicinal ones dehydrate him and drive his cold inward so that he is more miserable than when his nose was running. The social ones blur his vision and make him dizzy and coat his tongue until he feels so awkward that he shamefully ducks out to the terrace for a secret bout of solitary non-drinking. In short, alcohol makes him feel awful. He is a sick man, and if he is to be helped, some understanding people must be very patient with him.

"And that's where FEND comes in," said Gilbert Chase. Suddenly he laughed. "When I started FEND, a lot of folks were puzzled. They were used to thinking like producers instead of distributors. Inner-directed, the sociologists would call them. And they couldn't understand the moral value of an organization that called itself Fellowship for the Elimination of Non-Drinking. But the Problem Non-Drinkers understood it immediately, and they flocked to me. At sales conventions and luncheon conferences they hadn't been able to hide their non-drinking illness, and the very words -- Fellowship for the Elimination of Non-Drinking -- spoke mighty eloquently to them, believe you me. It gave them hope."

Gilbert Chase had known that they would react this way, as only a person whose life had nearly been ruined by the Non-Drinking Problem could possibly know.

"I was a time salesman for one of the big television networks," he said, "and I couldn't drink. Think of that for a problem. Oh, if I'd needed ability in my work, it wouldn't have mattered. I could have got along without drinking. But distributors don't need ability. Alcohol is the fuel that runs our big business machine nowadays, and what distributors need mostly is to know how to gulp it down. Oh, sure, there are other adjuncts to successful distribution -- but let me tell you something, you can take a prospect on a yacht trip, get him a hundred-dollar prostitute, offer him a generous kickback on all business done -- and if you can't drink with him, he won't buy a damned thing."

Gilbert Chase himself, like most of those who seek help from FEND, never faced his own problem until he had lost his job. This happened after a company cocktail party at which he had hidden his highball glass in the bowl of an indirect-lighting fixture; when it grew dark, and someone turned on the light, there was the silhouette of the glass, and there was Gilbert Chase, empty-handed and disgraced. He was fired the next day.

"That's when I knew I had to lick this Non-Drinking Problem if I wanted to get my self-respect back," Chase told me. "And that's when I -- mighty painfully, let me tell you -- began to feel my way toward the FEND program." He glanced at his watch. "We'd better get to the meeting hall. What happens at a FEND meeting is a distillation" -- he laughed -- "a distillation, if you'll pardon the expression, of all my experience in licking my own problem. You'll see."

The Manhattan Chapter of FEND occupies a second-floor loft in the 20s which has been sectioned off into two or three small executive offices and a large meeting hall. To get to Gilbert Chase's office, we had to pass through the meeting room, which was attractively dotted with small round tables, each with four chairs, and all gaily painted yellow or blue or green or red. Already several members were there, drinking.

"I'd estimate they're at about the three-to-four stage," Chase said to me as we went into his comfortable office. He closed the door.

"Three-to-four stage?"

Chase explained to me that each FEND member is taught to start his drinking each day with a well-diluted mixture, six parts water to one part whiskey, gradually increasing the dosage of whiskey and decreasing the dilution by one part with each successive drink. Practically all Problem Non-Drinkers find this most helpful. Some fortunate ones even get to like drinking; these, however, are as statistically insignificant and as mysterious to medical science as spontaneous remissions of leukemia. Most remain ill, remain Problem Non-Drinkers forever -- but through FEND they help each other in every emergency.

A Problem Non-Drinker, faced (let us say) with a luncheon meeting the next day at which he must make a sale, may find himself cowering terrified in his home at the thought of tomorrow noon's cocktails. He calls FEND -- and presently several of his fellow members arrive with whiskey. They start drinking with him -- six parts water to one part whiskey at first, but working toward the point where the patient will down a couple of the four-parts-water-three-parts-whiskey mixture. Then he is allowed to go to bed; but one of the visitors remains, and the next morning before breakfast this helper sees to it that the sufferer takes a drink three parts water and four parts whiskey. Then a two-to-five drink is poured into a small jar which fits easily into the pocket. The patient is to drink this just before he enters the restaurant for the luncheon meeting. He should be sufficiently conditioned by then to hold his own with the drinking that will ensue.

As Chase explained all this to me, the sounds from the meeting room were growing clearer. The members were gathering, and indeed, the meeting itself seemed to be under way. There were sudden bursts of laughter, there was the hum of conversation, there were silences, broken eventually with applause.

Gilbert Chase said, "They've started. Let's go."

"I've got a question first."

"Shoot."

"As I understood it, you as National President of FEND get no salary."

Chase looked shocked. "What do you think I am?" he asked.

"Forgive me. But the question does arise, because when you lost your job and set about rehabilitating yourself, you had no money -- and then when you founded FEND, you devoted yourself to it. You didn't get your old job back?"

"No."

"But you own the apartment house you live in, you eat in the best restaurants, you travel first class, you ----"

"I'm a millionaire, is that what you're trying to say?"

"Are you?"

"I am."

"I don't understand it."

"I own a business."

"What business?"

He smiled and leaned forward in his chair. "Listen." he said.

From the meeting room, the sounds had changed in quality. Laughter seemed to be general, and raucous. Conversation seemed to be conducted by shouts from one side of the room to the other. Somebody yelled "Ouch!" then guffawed. A few were singing. I could tell now that there were women as well as men there. Shrill women.

"I'll answer your question," said Gilbert Chase. "But first, I want you to see something."

He rose. I followed him to the door, and as he opened it, I gazed upon the meeting.

Some of the members of FEND were still seated at their tables, but most were on their feet, their ties loosened and shirt collars unbuttoned, their faces red and gleaming with sweat as each laughing member tried to roar louder than his companion. The females, from girls in their early 20s to smartly dressed middle-aged lady executives with skin that sagged, were as merrily engaged as the males -- pummeling men and squealing with laughter as the men pummeled back; kicking off their high-heeled shoes; one of the younger ones dancing; two of the oldest biting men's ears; one wriggling and pushing at her skirt in a manner that puzzled me until her girdle fell to the floor to be snatched up, as she stepped from it, by a man who waved it aloft like a banner as he snaked through the crowd. Everyone was drinking, and everyone went from time to time to a table at the front of the room to pour more whiskey.

Gilbert Chase shut the door.

"There isn't a person in that room out there," he said, "who had a job when he joined FEND. Now most of them are employed and on their way up."

"They certainly look happy," I ventured.

"They're not. They're Problem Non-Drinkers. They're forcing themselves to drink. Every one of them hates the drinking he's been doing all day to prepare for the meeting, and hates what he's doing now."

"Amazing," I said. "They look like people at a convention."

"Exactly. Like people at a convention. A sales convention, for example. A distributors' convention. They're sick people who'd rather be at the movies or home reading or playing Scrabble or something -- but they're learning how to adjust to the civilization they live in." Dramatically, he opened the door again, and this time the din almost deafened us. "Can you tell them from normal distributors?" asked Chase proudly.

A man and woman wrestling, gasping with laughter, fell together to the floor. The middle-aged woman who had removed her girdle now hiked up her dress and executed bumps and grinds. A man stood with his legs apart, bending back, back, back as with head tilted upward he sucked down the contents of a whiskey bottle, some of which dribbled down his chin.

Gilbert Chase shut the door again.

"Some of our people have become so good at simulating enjoyment of this sort of thing," he said, "that out in the world, among people who are not Problem Non-Drinkers, they actually lead. They actually start the fun and keep it going and pull others along with them. Think of it: people who have no Non-Drinking Problem at all shamed into following the lead of our members and never suspecting that our members are gritting their teeth every minute of the time."

"Remarkable," I said.

"That's why FEND members have such a splendid record in business," said Chase. "I wanted you to understand that before I answered your question. You see, I'm proud to be a millionaire because I've made mine by helping Problem Non-Drinkers to achieve" -- he gestured toward the meeting room -- "what they've achieved."

"What business are you in, Mr. Chase?"

"I am the official distiller and distributor for FEND."

"The only one? FEND buys all its whiskey from you?"

"Whiskey and water. I bottle seven different kinds of whiskey: one part to six parts water, two to five, and so forth, down to straight whiskey. Every FEND member buys all seven kinds from me and every FEND chapter does the same."

"But ... You mean to say you can make a million dollars selling water mixed with whiskey?"

"Certainly. My undiluted whiskey costs about what any good whiskey costs in a package store. The other stuff costs increasingly more the more water there is in it."

"More?"

"Of course. My costs are based on a general law of distribution. Which costs more, a single-feature movie or a double-feature movie?"

"Single."

"Pants with pleats or pants without pleats?"

"Without."

"You see? The less you get, the more you pay. It's a sound principle, because our economy is no longer based on the worth of the goods themselves, but on the status concepts that we attach to goods. No pleats means quality, so you gladly pay to have the tailor refrain from doing more work. The same with my whiskey. You, sir, may not need a sealed bottle with more water than whiskey in it -- but people who value a product like that will pay anything for it."

I was dizzy, trying to take in the genius of this man. A few years ago, and with good reason, he had wondered whether he would ever achieve even a moderate success. He had been unable to sell so much as a minute spot commercial. Now the weekly volume of his sales must be staggering. He was a millionaire, and what is more, a beloved millionaire. This, I was beginning to see, was because compassionately as well as profitably, he filled the deepest needs of thousands of fine people. I was proud that in my country such a man could be appreciated, as I knew he would not have been in some of the less highly developed societies.

Silently, I shook his hand.

"Shucks," he said, "I like helping. Let's go join the fun."

And so we went into the meeting room, where I found that the lady who had taken off her girdle now had taken off her dress, too. She sat down with me at one of the tables. She had an awful lot to tell me, and it was very interesting, though I had difficulty hearing all of it, what with the noise around us and the fact that she was crying rather hard.