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Abstract
NA is an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous and uses the same type of group therapy and mutual support to help its members. It sees alcoholism, overeating and other obsessive behavior as mere symptons of deep neurosis.
* Jesus G staggered to his first meeting seven years ago with a monumental hangover in which he confused NA with AA. His arrival illustrated the first rule for new members. "You have to admit you are beaten, that you can't handle your emotions, that you need help," he says.
* The lean, intense Maximino turned to NA eight years ago. He was a twitching, sleepless wreck. At work he labored like three men. At home he could not stop picking things up, taking them to pieces, putting them together, cleaning and polishing, washing and scrubbing. He was, in his own words, "like a robot that could not be turned off."
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MEXICO CITY - The Mexican capital is an ecological disaster wrapped in an economic crisis.
Residents frequently interact like rats in a maze, and the delinquents vastly outnumber the police. Vehicles challenge each other like stags at rutting time and main arteries are solid knots of hooting metal.
Neurosis crackles through Mexico City's streets like static electricity.
There are 18 million people, more than three million vehicles and about 140,000 industrial plants of varying sizes in and around the capital. Together they spew out some 5.4 million tonnes of assorted contaminants a year.
Green spaces are shrinking rapidly, visibility has dropped sixfold in the last five years, the noise is maddening and the dried sewage blows back from the arid Texcoco lakebed in a filthy wind that would make a stone gag.
Crime, alcoholism and traffic accidents are climbing and citizens display a range and scope of emotional disturbance that would make a Freudian blink.
Since the vast majority of the population cannot afford meat, much less psychiatrists, it is not surprising that the free group therapy provided by Neurotics Anonymous is extremely popular.
The Mexican branch of NA was founded in 1974 with nine members and by 1978 there were 23. In the last three years, the number has shot up to at least 4,000 regular members and an estimated 2,000 more who attend with less regularity.
Members' anonymity is strictly observed so no lists are kept, and no fees or quotas are paid. Members donate both time and money to keep NA afloat.
Cheerful dogma
"We are growing fast," says Arturo R., who runs NA's central office in a tall, dingy building in the centre of the city. "There is a clear need for what we are doing."
NA is an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous and uses the same type of group therapy and mutual support to help its members. It sees alcoholism, overeating and other obsessive behavior as mere symptons of deep neurosis.
The organization does not go in for clinical definitions or individual diagnoses, but operates with the cheerful dogma that all emotional sickness is the same - only the symptoms are different.
* Jesus G staggered to his first meeting seven years ago with a monumental hangover in which he confused NA with AA. His arrival illustrated the first rule for new members. "You have to admit you are beaten, that you can't handle your emotions, that you need help," he says.
Jesus was orphaned as an infant and grew up on the streets. He could not keep a job because he was always drunk. He beat his children.
* The lean, intense Maximino turned to NA eight years ago. He was a twitching, sleepless wreck. At work he labored like three men. At home he could not stop picking things up, taking them to pieces, putting them together, cleaning and polishing, washing and scrubbing. He was, in his own words, "like a robot that could not be turned off."
* Eugenia was afraid of everything. When she saw an ambulance, she imagined horrors inside it - then imagined those horrors happening to her. A sudden noise could reduce her to a quivering jelly. She lived in perpetual panic.
* Arturo R. stayed in bed all day, but never slept. He would go out at night and get into violent quarrels with strangers.
* Ines, an older woman with a fierce-looking face, kept repeating her mistakes. She married or lived with one alcoholic after another. She worked hard at the same job for 25 years, shamefully exploited and underpaid. She came to hate men, hate society and began attacking and fighting people in the streets for imagined slights.
* Antonio sought help after babysitting for his niece. When the child started to cry, he found himself stuffing a bar of soap down her throat.
All these people now regard themselves as cured by NA's well- tried methods. Each is a calm, self-possessed adult who devotes time to fellow sufferers with patience and concern.
Malevolent world
"Emotional sickness is the same for everyone, whatever the symptoms," Arturo R. says. "There is one cause and one cure."
The cause, according to NA, is excessive self-absortion. The neurotic combines a flawed self-image with a strong ego and he contemplates himself endlessly.
His ego can survive the most brutal putdown and leads him to blame his misfortunes on others. He concludes he is helpless in a malevolent world and withdraws into the loneliness of his own head.
"His absolute self-concern prevents him from feeling for anyone else," Arturo R. says. "He is incapable of loving at that point. He is isolated and imprisoned by his egoism, which is as primitive as a baby's."
NA says the emotionally sick are only cured by letting go of their ego and taking an interest in others. This is the reason for group discussions.
"I learned to worry about someone else," Jesus says. "That saved my family."
Eugenia found she "could love someone more than myself, I was cured by loving."
Mexico City may be the worst place on earth for the emotionally sick, but the emotionally healthy can take it in their stride, Arturo R. says.
"You have to remember the sickness is in you, not in outside things. If I'm caught in a traffic jam, I read a book or listen to music. I have seen Mexicans get out of their cars and fight, even shoot each other, but it's not really the fault of the traffic."
* Alan Robinson is a Star correspondent based in Mexico City.
Copyright 1987 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.