Mann, Marty, 1904-

Margaret "Marty" Mann (1904-1980) was an American advertising and public relations executive and founder of the National Council on Alcoholism. Born into an upper middle class family in Chicago, Mann attended private schools, traveled extensively, and was a debutante. She married into a wealthy New Orleans family; when in her late twenties, due to financial reverses, she had to go to work, her social and family connections made it easy for her to launch a career in public relations.

Mann's "social" drinking, however, grew to the point where it endangered not only her business but her life, including at least one suicide attempt. In 1939 her psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Tiebout, gave her a manuscript of his book Alcoholics Anonymous, and persuaded her to attend her first AA meeting (at the time there were only two AA groups in the entire United States). Despite several relapses during her first year and a half, Mann succeeded in becoming sober by 1940 and, apart from a brief tumble nearly twenty years later, sober she remained for the rest of her life.

In 1945 Mann began working actively to eliminate the stigma and ignorance regarding alcoholism, particularly for women, and to encourage the "disease model" which viewed it as a medical/psychological problem rather than a moral failing. She helped start the Yale School of Alcohol Studies (now at Rutgers) and organized the National Council on Alcoholism (now the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence or NCADD). She was also in great demand as a public speaker, her personal experience making her particularly effective, and she was instrumental in educating the public that alcoholism is a serious but treatable disease.

Mann published her New Primer on Alcoholism in 1958. Although the National Council on Alcoholism had no formal relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous, Mann's willingness to admit her alcoholism and her successful experience with AA encouraged others to seek help, and Mann contributed the chapter "Women Suffer Too" to the 2d and 3rd editions of The Big Book of AA . In the 1950s Edward R. Murrow named her as one of the "Ten Greatest Living Americans." She died at home in 1980.