Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous is a recurring but narrowly depicted presence in the account of Charles Cullen’s alcoholism and marriage to Adrianne Cullen. The book first associates the organization with his earlier encounters with treatment, then returns to it through the recovery books Adrianne tries to place in his path. Their changing place in the household traces a widening gap between apparent abstinence and concealed drinking; eventually, the books appear in a scene that prompts Adrianne to call the police.

Early Association with Treatment

The account connects Charles Cullen to Alcoholics Anonymous through a history of drinking severe enough to land him repeatedly in the military infirmary and psychiatric hospital. Antabuse and Alcoholics Anonymous entered that history as part of his exposure to efforts to address his drinking. The book does not describe a particular meeting, sponsor, or period of participation. Instead, the organization is introduced as part of the background to a problem that Cullen had already experienced as serious and recurrent.

That history shaped what Adrianne Cullen believed about him when they were courting. Cullen spoke forthrightly, and often humorously, about his depression and alcoholism. His disclosure made him seem self-aware and mature, as though he understood and controlled his difficulties. He said that he simply could not drink, and Adrianne never saw him have a drink while they were dating. She understood his abstinence as a sign of conviction, rather than as evidence of a continuing struggle. When he moved into her apartment in Union, she even discarded a dusty bottle of Baileys Irish Cream she had kept for guests. Alcoholics Anonymous thus belongs to a larger contrast in the narrative: the apparent stability of Cullen’s account of himself against the private behavior Adrianne did not yet know about.

Hidden Drinking and a Locked Basement

After the Cullens moved to Phillipsburg, the drinking Adrianne had not witnessed took place in secret. Cullen kept alcohol in his Navy footlocker, stored the footlocker in the boiler room, and locked the boiler-room door. He drank alone in the basement, a concealed routine separated from his wife and family life. The earlier connection to treatment did not prevent the return of drinking; from Adrianne’s perspective, the abstinence she had taken for granted had hidden rather than resolved the problem.

The geography of that secrecy matters to the organization’s appearances in the book. Alcoholics Anonymous is not shown as an active community around Cullen. Instead, its most tangible presence is a set of old books that Adrianne can leave on the kitchen counter. She puts them out in the hope that he might remember his earlier resolutions. The gesture is an attempt to make recovery visible in a home where his drinking has been kept out of sight. But Cullen becomes angry, ignores the books, or puts them away while tidying. He then drinks Coke, eats potato chips, and retreats to the basement. The books do not open a conversation between the couple; their removal becomes part of the routine by which that conversation is avoided.

Adrianne’s Attempt to Prompt Change

By the time Adrianne addresses Cullen’s drinking directly, it has become difficult for her to ignore. After their second daughter, Saskia, was born in December 1991, Adrianne confronted him about the bottles she found by breaking into his footlocker while he was at work. Cullen first denied drinking and then acknowledged it, but insisted it was not a problem. He said he was depressed but did not want antidepressants. Adrianne saw his drinking and depression as reinforcing one another, with the family caught in the middle.

The Alcoholics Anonymous books were her practical, if indirect, attempt to reach him through a route familiar from his past. They did not persuade him to stop. Arguments while he was drunk left Adrianne with nights that Cullen either did not acknowledge or did not remember the next day; when she confronted him sober, he fled to the basement. Her employer’s health benefits would cover five days in an alcohol-treatment center, but the book makes clear that arranging help was not the same as Cullen wanting it. The books’ failure therefore registers not as a verdict on the organization’s methods, which the narrative does not describe, but as a limit in this particular household: Adrianne could offer a reminder, while Cullen could refuse its invitation.

The Books in the Police Call

In January 1993, Adrianne called the police and described Cullen as a dangerous drunk. Among the incidents she recounted was finding him intoxicated in front of the fireplace, staring at the Alcoholics Anonymous books and poking their pages into fresh flame. The books that she had earlier left out as reminders of former resolutions now appear in a scene of deliberate disregard. The account does not say that Cullen burned the books completely or explain precisely what he intended by the act; it records the image as one of the troubling details Adrianne gave the officers.

This final appearance links the organization’s otherwise domestic presence to Adrianne’s growing fear. She told the police about the hospital investigation, Cullen’s drinking, and his past claim that, as a child, he had poisoned his pregnant sister’s abusive boyfriend’s drink with lighter fluid. She was trying to put her concerns on record, though she had not yet connected all the events herself. In that context, the books by the fireplace are not proof of a specific crime or a complete account of Cullen’s relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous. They are evidence of the breakdown of the hopeful interpretation Adrianne had once placed on his abstinence: the recovery objects remain in the room, but no longer signify a change she can trust.