On Sunday, May 17, 1987, Dr. Richard Bates spoke at the grand opening of the Alano Club East.
What follows is an outline of his talk on the history of AA and treatment facilities in Lansing. AA has its roots in Lansing in the former Olds Hotel where the first group met in the early 1940s.
The “Olds Hotel Group” met once a week with about seven or eight people attending. In later years, this same group was to welcome the first woman in Lansing AA, Statter Benton.
At that time, this group was about the only place a drunk could find any kind of help. In those days, alcoholics were not admissible to area hospitals unless they were suffering DT’s or some other purely physical symptom of the disease. St. Lawrence would sometimes take the more severe detox cases, but for the most part drunks were detoxed by the AA members in their homes.
In the early 1950s, about the only way an alcoholic could be admitted to the hospital was through the psychiatric ward. Mary Canning was running the psych ward and took in drunks as the medical system would allow her.
In 1958, AA members in Lansing had somehow scraped together enough money to start the first treatment center, as we know them today. Located between Lansing and Williamston, it was known as “The Retreat,” and used AA as its means of treatment. AA had grown to two weekly meetings in Lansing, but it had not grown to support The Retreat. Out of money, AA turned to the city government for help.
Dr. Bates was asked to head a committee to investigate it. Dr. Bates knew that Blue Cross had begun to cover alcoholism treatment at Hurley Hospital in Flint, thanks to AMA recognition of alcoholism as a disease. He decided to try the same thing in Lansing hospitals, but soon realized he was having little if any success employing psychiatric treatment techniques. He also saw that AA did have the secret of changing peoples’ behavior, and they used methods directly opposite those of the psychiatrists. By this time, The Retreat had failed financially and AA threw in with Dr. Bates and the hospital system. The first treatment center they opened was in the building that formerly housed the contagious disease ward.
Due to this association, it became known as the “Pest House.” Sensing allies in the making, the hospitals began seeking the input of AA members. There were no alcoholics on the hospital staffs, but they were invited into the wards to informally help in treatment.
This joining of forces was the beginning of cooperation between the medical world and AA, in the treatment of the disease. The experiment proved a success and the modern concept of in-patient alcoholism treatment was born in Lansing. “Pest House” was moved to Sparrow Hospital in 1961 and shed its derogatory name.
In 1972, St. Lawrence took over alcoholism treatment, first at the Saginaw and Logan facility, and finally at Dimondale, where it remains today.