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PARTISAN REVIEW
lines (emended in the published version): "She forgave me that golden
day my lust for her/ but what might persuade me to forgive her loss?"
He left hospital this time after 3 days on March 20th. Three days
later he was readmitted "with a flight of ideas, excessive creativity,
hypersexuality, over enthusiasm and excessive drinking." Dr. Mayberg
saw clearly Berryman's feeling that sobriety was not productive for him
as a lover or as a writer. The feeling was delusional, although there
might be some romantic foundation for the belief that he had to suffer
in order to produce. Dr. Thomes gave him a general physical examina–
tion which revealed "excessive cerumen, some shortness of breath and
tachycardia. " He was accordingly treated with supportive medication
and individual and group psychotherapy, and, as the phrase had it,
"made an uneventful recovery." The discharge diagnoses were:
" 1.
Cyclothymic personality. 2. Habitual excessive drinking. 3. Impacted
cerumen, both ears." Such brief hospitalisations would rely heavily on
medication, though it was obvious that he was medicating himself so
heavily with alcohol that he increased his tolerance for anything else.
The first week of April brought another period of excessive
drinking, at the end of which he was back in the hospital. The patient,
according to Dr. Mayberg's chart, "was lethargic, stuporous, uncoordi–
nated and diaphoretic on admission." He suffered from a marked
tremor. There was no doubt that his alcoholism was acute and chronic.
Again, three days later, he was discharged with quantities of Librium,
Haldol, Thorazine, Tuinal, and multivitamins, after a course of
treatment called "supportive with withdrawal." The vortex created by
his undisciplined use of alcohol had become intolerable either to
witness or to live with. Berryman and Kate kept an appointment with
the psychiatrist on 24 April. Dr. Mayberg noted:
Kate has made an ultimatum about drinking-At the end of the term
he must go into Hazelden or I will leave. None of us can tolerate
John 's deterioration-It's too painful to sit
by
&
watch.
Until April 1970, Berryman took alcohol for the blood of his life,
the force behind his poetic powers. Then-at last-he understood the
indisputable fact that "Alcoholism is a fatal disease. 100 percent fatal.
Nobody survives alcoholism that remains unchecked."
He did not go back to Hazelden. Instead, on May 2nd, he entered
the Intensive Alcohol Treatment Center at St. Mary's Hospital, Min–
neapolis. Berryman was a man diseased by drink, having exhibited over
the years all the symptoms of chronic alcoholism, including projec-
