After their divorce, he sought help through the Emmanuel Movement and later wrote a book, The Common Sense of Drinking, in which he described a secularized treatment methodology.
Born on 23 Jan 1892 to Jacob Crowninshield Rogers Peabody[3] and Florence Dumaresq Wheatland,[3] his family was among the upper-class of Boston society.
[4] His great-great-grandfather was Salem shipowner and privateer Joseph Peabody who made a fortune importing pepper from Sumatra as well as opium from Eastern-Asia and was one of the wealthiest men in the United States at the time of his death in 1844.
[5] Another of his ancestors was Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Endecott, who ordered the hanging of non-conformist Quakers, but who none-the-less was a friend of Roger Williams.
[6]: 8 After a year of marriage, Polly became pregnant, and because the icy steps of the stone cottage were unsafe, they moved to an apartment on Fifty-third Street in New York.
Their second child, a daughter, Poleen Wheatland ("Polly"), was born on August 12, 1917, but Dick was already in Officers Training Camp at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the artillery.
Dick became a captain in the United States Army's 15th Field Artillery, 2nd Division, American Expeditionary Force.
Bill Wilson who would later found Alcoholics Anonymous trained at the same camp that summer and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Battery C of the 66th Coastal Artillery.
He summoned his wife to meet him, and she borrowed money from her children's nurse and her uncle for the train fare to Columbia.
Polly found after the war that Dick had only three real interests, all acquired at Harvard: to play, to drink, and to turn out, at any hour, to chase fire engines.
[1] Polly's life was difficult during the war years, and when her husband returned home and resumed drinking, her commitment to her marriage was further weakened.
Crosby, breaking decorum, never spoke to the girl on his left that he was supposed to spend time with, but focused his attention on the buxom Mrs.
Having lost his family and his fortune, he sought help with his alcoholism and began attending a clinic and weekly health classes in the winter of 1921-1922 at the Emmanuel Church.
[11] For his practice, Peabody adapted methods used by the Emmanuel Movement from Dr. Elwood Worcester and Courtenay Baylor, excluding fellowship and any spiritual or religious elements.
[11] He prescribed a method for getting and staying sober that included rigid scheduling, self-control and work to bring feelings and emotions under control through reason.
[8] “The treatment may be subdivided as follows: (1) analysis; (2) relaxation and suggestion; (3) auto-relaxation and auto-suggestion; (4) general discussion, which might be called persuasion in the manner of Dubois or readjustment after McDougall; (5) outside reading; (6) development where possible of one or more interests or hobbies; (7) exercise; (8) operating on a daily schedule; (9) thought direction and thought control in the conscious mind.
"[17]:115 "A mental analysis is made wherein the drinker learns that certain actions and systems of thinking, past as well as present, have directed him on the unfortunate course he has been pursuing, by creating doubts, fears, and conflicts.
The first thing to impress on his mind is the fact that he is a drunkard and as such to be definitely distinguished from his moderate or even hard-drinking friends; furthermore, that he can never successfully drink anything containing alcohol.
An alcoholic has one idea of pleasure, and it is of the greatest importance that he discover as soon as possible that he can enjoy life in many ways outside of intoxication if he will lift himself to a more intelligent plane of thought and action.
While on the subject of hygiene, I might add that precautions are taken to find out if the individual is as physically healthy as possible, and if he has not recently been examined, he is urged to get in touch with his physician.
One of the chief difficulties of the treatment is its seeming vagueness outside of the central theme (abstinence), and so the more reality that can be brought into the work, the surer and quicker the favorable outcome.
A person literally thinks himself out of his alcoholic habit, and his ability permanently to control or direct his thoughts is the determining factor in his success or failure.
Samuel Moor Shoemaker was Rector and active in the Oxford Group, and near the Olive Tree Inn that Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W.'s friend Ebby Thacher went to.
"[23] He later stated, "There emerged in Boston a program developed by Richard Peabody which apparently worked quite well for a number of alcoholics.
"[26] Raymond G. McCarthy noted, "Probably Peabody as much as anyone is responsible for introducing into the popular vocabulary the word ‘alcoholism' and substituting ‘alcoholic' for the emotionally charged label ‘drunkard.’ "[23] Peabody trained various lay therapists including Samuel Crocker; James Bellamy; Francis T. Chambers, Jr.; William Wynne Wister; and Wilson McKay.
[30] "The therapy I use, with the co-operation of physicians, treats alcoholism as a mental illness and follows lines laid down by the late Richard Peabody of Boston.
[32]:16[33] Ernest Kurtz indicated, “[T]he approach of Richard R. Peabody, as developed by Francis Chambers and popularized especially by the talented writer Jim Bishop, not only preceded in time [Bill] Wilson’s own sobriety but was well into the 1950s accepted and endorsed by many doctors and clergy much more enthusiastically than was Alcoholics Anonymous.
[8]:123 While the stories share some common features, historian William Schaberg believes that the individual in the Big Book was "someone Bill [Wilson] knew from personal experience or whom he had heard about from the personnel at Towns Hospital.
The associated author profile stated, "Richard R. Peabody, author of 'The Danger Line of Drink,’ died of a heart attack on April 26, just as this number was going to press.”[16]:383 His wife, Jane McKean, advised Willam Wynne Wister, “He had had a very bad cold and a local doctor came and said that it had developed into pneumonia and that Dick must stay in bed.
On the other hand, Katherine McCarthy noted, “A common opinion is that Peabody died intoxicated, although the evidence is not conclusive” and that “published sources contradict each other.