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Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, an advocacy group that is still active. Under the aegis of this newly formed organization, Mann testified many times in front of medical communities, often without disclosing her status as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
    In 1943 Marty Mann and Bill Wilson had joined forces with another major figure—E. M. Jellinek—to establish a new institution at one of the nation’s most prestigious schools: Yale University. Wilson himself was placed on the faculty.
    Jellinek, an important figure in his own right, is considered the primary author of the “disease theory” of alcoholism, which holds that heavy drinking is in some substantive way different from other behaviors—that rather than being a behavior, it is in fact a gradually progressive disease analogous to other chronic medical illnesses. His model of inevitable deterioration was soon disproven (Jellinek ultimately distanced himself from it), but AA embraced it. Even today, AA members regularly repeat the mantra that continued drinking leads inevitably to insanity and death.
    It was perhaps unexpected that AA would fasten onto Jellinek’s view, given that the physician’s model of alcoholism as a medical disease did not precisely comport with the organization’s own model of alcoholism as a spiritual illness. But throughout AA’s history, its members have often embraced any literature that references disease, whether degenerative, genetic, or biochemical. AA favors the term
disease
because it fits with the description of alcoholism as a disease in its own literature. It also supports the foundational notion that an addict’s behavior is uncontrollable (“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol”). Ultimately the mechanism of the disease (and whether it is strictly logical to embrace it, given AA’s own views) has been less important than the word itself.
    Jellinek’s landmark paper establishing his ideas was published in 1946. 18 It went on to be heavily cited in the years to come—despite the fact that it was based on a study funded by Marty Mann and another backer and employed just ninety-eight questionnaires returned by self-selected members of AA who had seen them in the
Grapevine
, AA’s own magazine. 19
AA’S SPREADING INFLUENCE
    In 1951, largely on the strength of self-reported success and popular articles, AA was honored with the Lasker Award, “given by the American Public Health Association for outstanding achievement in the fields of medical research or public health administration.” The citation makes no mention of any scientific study that might prove or disprove the organization’s efficacy, simply declaring its “recognition of [AA’s] unique and highly successful approach” to alcoholism.
    AA’s march toward public legitimacy accelerated. In 1955, at AA’s annual conference in Missouri, Dr. W. W. Bauer, an eminent member of the American Medical Association, told the assembled crowd: “You who have seen what alcohol can do in your lives are working together in groups and individually, and you are making a bigger impression on the problem of alcohol than has ever been made before.” Harry Tiebout, Wilson’s personal therapist, also appeared, assuring the collected members that AA was “not just a miracle but a way of life which is filled with eternal value.” 20
    It wasn’t long before the court systems began to mandate AA attendance for drug and alcohol offenders. AA won a landmark decision in 1966 when two decisions from a federal appeals court upheld the disease concept of alcoholism and the court’s use of it, despite the fact that there was scant precedent for a US court of law to assign itself the power of medical diagnosis. Although later decisions would rule court-mandated 12-step attendance unconstitutional, judges still refer people to AA as part of sentencing or as a condition of probation. Dr. Arthur Horvath, a past president of the Division on Addictions of the American