Read Fred’s story (pages 39 to 43).

It reveals that Fred’s alcoholism and each episode of drinking is not due to:

- Bad circumstances (he has none)

- Bad character (his character is good)

- Mental illness (he is not mentally ill)

- Physical illness (he is not physically ill)

- Weakness (he is not weak)

- Incompetence (he is competent)

- Lack of willpower (he has considerable willpower)

- Lack of information (he has information)

- Having bad feelings (his feelings are good)

- Having bad prospects (his prospects are good)

- Having a bad day (his day is good)

Fred exemplifies someone whose alcoholism and whose drinking cannot be attributed to any circumstance or quality of the person.

Alcoholism is thus extraneous to the person but someone buried within them, like an alien presence.

It is the devil on the shoulder, whispering compellingly in the ear, persuading the person to do wrong.

The devil’s existence and motivations have nothing to do with the person.

The devil is the entire explanation for the actions.

Alcoholism is the entire explanation for the alcoholism and therefore the drinking.

Any attempt to explain it with reference to the person’s outer or inner world will fail.

“Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right- about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!” (Page 31, Big Book)

I thought I was drinking on purpose, so, when I suffered ill effects, I naturally though I could solve the problem by making ‘ACME’ adjustments: abstinence, containment, moderation, elimination. I thought I could abstain. Or contain my drinking to certain times and places so that it would not affect other areas of my life. Or moderate the quantity to avoid the worst of the effects. Or eliminate the problem drinking by sorting out the other problems in my life, which I thought were the cause of the problem drinking.

If you have a pot boiling over, you turn down the heat. Nothing could be more natural. But I did not have access to the knob to turn down the heat, because I did not have access to the cooker at all. This was the delusion. I was not drinking on purpose. I was acting under compulsion, deluded by the parasite alcoholism into thinking I was acting under my own free will.

The delusion of agency is there for alcoholism to protect itself. If you realised there was a parasite stuck to your arm telling you to harm yourself, you would get the parasite off. If you could not see the parasite but were mesmerised into thinking you really wanted to harm yourself, you would harm yourself until you died and never realise you had a problem.

AA smashed through the delusion, and it was only then I was willing to go to any lengths to get well.

 “I personally know scores of cases who were of the type with whom other methods had failed completely.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

“Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

“Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.” (Page 20 et seq., Big Book)

Alcoholics are people who persistently drink way too much. They fall into two broad categories, according to Dr Silkworth. The first category responds to ordinary interventions (at the medical, psychiatric, psychological, social, and practical levels). The second does not: these methods fail. The individual reverts to drinking.

Bill refers to the ‘real’ alcoholic, implying a different category, an alcoholic who is an alcohol of sorts, but lacks some required characteristic.

To square all of this, I think we can map Dr Silkworth’s helpable vs hopeless onto Bill’s certain-type-of-hard-drinker and real alcoholic. Thus, the certain-type-of-hard-drinker is an alcoholic of sorts (persistently drinks too much, harms themselves, and may even die early), just lacking the baffling fear of ‘real’ alcoholism, namely the individual’s inability, despite a full range of human interventions and their own maximal efforts, to stay permanently stopped. This stubborn resistance to recovery is the hallmark of Bill’s ‘real’ or ‘true’ alcoholic.

I was that type. I had all the ingredients: good interventions, full knowledge, and considerable effort on my part, but I seemed to lack the glue to hold myself together in sobriety. I repeatedly disintegrated and found myself drunk.

The glue, the integrating, centripetal force, the actuating power, the current in the circuit, the heat below the pot, the crystal seed in the saturated solution, the penny in the slot, the battery in the toy drummer, is God.

And God is activated by people.

“Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.” (Page 24, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

It is easy to confuse three different questions, firstly the circumstances that precede first attendance at meetings, secondly the emotions that precipitate attendance, and thirdly the acceptance of Step One, which activates the working of the remainder of the Steps.

Clearly, when people come into recovery, the gravity of the circumstances vary. Some people have had only ‘a nip of the wringer’, as the Twelve and Twelve has it, whilst others have been to prison or are homeless because of their addiction.

The first point to note is that the circumstances are absolutely not what bring people into recovery. Virtually everyone that has come into recovery has had months, years, or even decades of experiences that should but do not drive them to seek help. And others seek help without there being any particularly notable experiences.

No, the seeking of recovery comes because of divine intervention (or at least a spontaneously arising impulse that is not a mechanical result of bad experiences or even bad emotional responses to those experiences). Circumstances never brought a single person into recovery; if they did, everyone would seek recovery at the first occurrence of such ‘circumstances’.

Consequently, the first rock-bottom is not really the array of circumstances but the collapse of the ego and the sense of desperation that arises out of the egoic self-deception being temporarily taken offline. The sense of desperation does not correlate with the circumstances.

We can conclude, therefore, that it is really desperation that provokes the impulse to come into recovery, although even desperation alone is insufficient: desperation can drive people to stop fighting and just resign themselves to the addiction or to worse. It needs hope and resolve, and that’s where God comes in.

Neither the circumstances nor the desperation, hope, and resolve that prompt first attendance are the really operative rock-bottom, however.

The really operative rock-bottom is Step One: the realisation that one must take the rest of the Steps not because of past or future consequences but because one is subject to an overpowering compulsion which has temporarily abated and which can be combatted durably only by developing a working relationship with God, combined with the observation that opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, and, if the opportunity is not taken up now, it might never arise again.

This operative rock-bottom therefore has nothing to do with circumstances and nothing to do with emotion but is the 100% intellectual acceptance of Step One, that, if I carry on as I am, I will use again, and, when I use, I may never stop. In other words, I am powerless, and, as a consequence, I am unable to manage my own life (which has nothing to do with neurosis, immaturity, disorganisation, incompetence, or failure) but is a technical recognition that I am the host of the parasite of addiction, and it, not me, is calling the shots.

“Al-Anon teaches me that the drinker knows no more about his compulsion than I do.” (ODAT, 27 February)

It’s helpful to remember that with any addiction, any compulsion, whether we’re talking the first drink or the subsequent avalanche of drinks, the individual is acting under compulsion.

When compulsion is operative in human affairs, one does not ask the person compelled why the action is taken. From their point of view, it is taking place because they are under compulsion. One would have to ask the person exercising the compulsion.

In this case, one cannot ask the brain sub-routine responsible for the compulsion. It’s a senseless, mindless mechanism. It is not the mind. It is a malfunction in the brain. The malfunction has no useful purpose, no trigger, no sense. Anyone who has watched alcoholics or addicts over the years (or who has been one) will know there is no particular circumstance that always causes relapse and no particular circumstance that confers safety. It’s senseless and unfathomable.

‘Why’ is not a helpful question.

Rather, what I need to do is face facts and work around them.

When I was drinking, I was compelled to have the first drink then compelled to continue. This is alcoholism.

Compulsion is the reason why it is happening, and it precludes all other reasons.

I was compelled to drink and sometimes enjoyed drinking. But the compulsion is the explanation; the enjoyment was an accompanying phenomenon. This is proved by the fact that when I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it (and I was right, I didn’t), I still found myself compelled. Once compulsion is operative, I have no agency, and ‘reasons’ come in only to justify how agency is exercised. No agency—no reasons.

Now, the reasons I ‘gave myself’ (at the time and afterwards) were not the cause of the drinking but the cover story. Alcoholism, once the host has realised he is acting under compulsion, has its days numbered. Eventually the host rebels against the compulsion. To stop the host rebelling against the compulsion, the host must be fed ‘reasons’ to convince him that he is acting with agency and with good reasons for his actions.

The reasons I gave myself were quite wrong, in fact, so wrong as to be insane: it would be insane to drink to treat depression when drinking is making depression worse. The same insanity is operative in relation to a dozen other excuses.

It is wrong to say, though, that the insanity was driving the drink.

This would presume

(1) I had agency.

(2) I acted based on the principles of reason

(3) But my reason was not operating correctly.

If this were the case though, Step One would have to read, ‘We admitted we were grossly mistaken …’

But it doesn’t: it refers to powerlessness.

Might the powerlessness theory be quite wrong?

Might the problem be not compulsion but recurring temporary insanity?

The reason I think this is not the case is my experience that the compulsion to drink was as strong and effective when I recognised I had no good reason, that it would not help, that it would get me into trouble, that it would make me miserable, that there was no good justification at all as when I felt myself justified.

In such cases, I was quite sane in my thinking, but nonetheless drank. The action was insane, but the mind was sane.

This is why powerlessness is a more compelling explanation. It gets in all of the facts. It explains why it is possible to drink knowing full well the consequences, not wanting to drink, and knowing there is no justification: it explains drinking in a condition of sanity as well as insanity.

When the drinking co-occurs with the insanity (e.g. when I believed that it was a good idea or at least a neutral one), then the insanity is still not the cause of the drinking; it is merely an accompanying phenomenon.

If I ask Susan why she applied for a particular job, she will set out grounds, namely inputs to the reasoning process, plus the consequent of those grounds, namely the conclusion that she would like to do that job, which is why she applied for it. This is a ground–consequent relation.

When I ask Susan why she sneezed, however, she does not proceed to set out grounds, namely inputs to the reasoning process that led to the sneeze. This is because the sneeze was involuntary, was not the result of a reasoning process, and is attributable, rather, to a chain of causes. She might answer that paprika always makes her sneeze. What we understand by this is that she is cooking with paprika, the paprika is getting into the air though the cooking vapours, the vapours are being breathed in and resting on the mucosa of the respiratory system, and this is triggering an involuntary sneeze response. This is a cause–effect relation.

Let’s turn to alcoholism. I drank for four years, from 1989 to 1993, over which period every aspect of my life deteriorated substantially. I decided to stop drinking in January 1993, just after New Year, yet resumed drinking within two weeks. Let’s ask the question, why did I start drinking again? In fact, let’s ask the question, why was I drinking all through that period?

Was I aware of the gradual impairment of every aspect of my life? Yes.

Was this clearly as a result of my drinking? Yes.

Was the continuation of this deterioration a foreseeable consequence of continuing to drink? Yes.

Did this impairment trouble me? Yes.

The first sub-question to ask is, was I drinking voluntarily?

I did not want the foreseeable consequences. The answer to this is therefore no, unless I was insane. The insane are unable to reason. We now look as though we have found a reason: alcoholics, though sane generally, suffer from temporary insanity, and, in this temporary insanity, a drink seems like a good idea.

“The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.” (Page 24, Big Book)

Is this the end of the story?

First of all, a nuance. There are situations where one feels one has no good reason to drink; one simply wants to. This is the case covered above: the ‘can’t I just have a beer?’ situation. But sometimes the drinking is apparently deliberate:

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Page 37, Big Book).

This is really just a variation, however. Either way, there is the “appalling lack of perspective” (Page 5, Big Book) that allows the perceived benefit to outweigh the perceived cost.

Alcoholism therefore appears to be the persistently occurring insanity of believing that the first drink is a good idea.

There is a slight fly in this ointment, however.

Two experiences.

1. On Tuesday, 2 June 1992, I wanted to go home from the city centre to watch the last episode of thirtysomething, a show that was the bright spot of my life. But the impulse to drink was strong, and, miserably, I went to the pub to drink instead. I had a horrible evening. I did not want to drink, but I was drinking.

2. On Friday, 25 December 1992, I knew that if I started drinking, I would drink way too much. It would be a bad idea. I would not have fun. There was nowhere to go to enjoy myself. And yet I drank, and I had a miserable time, and I got so stocious I had to take to my bed, with a bottle of gin and bottle of Cointreau. I drank, slept, woke up, drank, slept, woke up, until Boxing Day.

In both cases, I was suffering no delusion, no insanity whatsoever, at the mental level. But I ‘did the insane thing’: I did something that was counterintuitive, irrational, even though my reason was functioning perfectly.

In both cases, I was fully aware that I was acting under internal compulsion, and that that compulsion was beyond reason and willpower. My reason put up a perfect argument, yet this had no effect on the impulse, which was implacable. I did not perceive myself to have a choice in the matter, so the impulse won and I drank.

The conclusion must be drawn that I was only ever drinking under compulsion, and that the temporary insanity was alcoholism’s method of easing the path to the first drink, convincing me that a drink was a good idea and I was acting of my own free will. However, when reality bled through the bandages of the temporary insanity, and I coldly understood what was happening, I drank anyway, as if by clockwork. Turns out the impulse was always going to win, and the ‘reasoning’ was really the rationalising cover story, constructed after the impulse arose.

Once there is any suspicion that compulsion might be involved—entailing the powerlessness of the individual to resist that compulsion—the individual’s thoughts and feelings cease to constitute reliable evidence of anything. If you think someone might be a spy or in the pay of a paymaster, what they say immediately falls under suspicion, because professed innocence is what you would expect both from the innocent and the guilty. If compulsion conceals its nature with the appearance of free will, the person acting under free will is going to ‘explain’ their actions, providing grounds for the consequent. They will be indistinguishable from someone with free will in their presentation of ‘reasons’.

Thus, to determine whether I am powerless over alcohol, drugs, and other behaviours, the matter of what I think and feel in the period of premeditation is irrelevant. It constitutes no evidence whatsoever.

If I repeatedly behave in a way that is foreseeably damaging and I regret the damage, there are four possible bases: error, general psychosis, temporary insanity, or compulsion. In a person of normal intelligence, error is implausible if the behaviour recurs persistently. In a person who is not generally psychotic (and few alcoholics are), general psychosis provides no explanation. Temporary insanity is plausible but drops away as an explanation when the person drinks against their perceived will and with full knowledge of their condition. The only remaining candidate is compulsion.

Now, when compulsion is operative, motivation is neither here nor there. When I am compelled by anything—be it another person or an imperious urge, an overriding impulse, an implacable necessity—the person, the urge, the impulse, the necessity is the cause, and the action is the effect. Motivation is moot.

If I am a passenger of the bus, and the bus turns left, I turn left because the bus has turned left. You would not ask me for my motivation, because the bus turned left without my being consulted.

If I take an action at gun point, the answer to the question ‘why did you take the action?’ comes in the form not of motivation but by a mere statement of compulsion: I was compelled; that is why I took the action.

Since alcoholism concerns powerlessness, it concerns compulsion. I am compelled to take the first drink and thereafter compelled to take the rest. I am in the territory of cause and effect, not ground and consequent.

What this means is that all of the discourse in AA about the perceived benefit of what alcohol did for me, the special effect it had, the reasons I had for drinking, the feelings that it relieved, my mental, emotional, material, and spiritual condition before I ever drank and during my drinking, what I was feeling or thinking in general or on any particular occasion, the notion I drank in response to anything, the notion I drank on feelings of X, Y, or Z, the purpose of drinking, or any related topics are predicated on an error, namely that alcoholic drinking is explained by a ground–consequent relation, when it is really explained by a cause–effect relation. One’s story might mention thoughts and feelings only to demonstrate the opposite: that they had nothing at all to do with one’s drinking.

It is often said, quoting the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, that Step One is the only Step that can be taken perfectly. I might hazard the assertion that it is the only Step in AA that has almost never been taken at all. If someone answers the question, ‘Why did you drink’ with ‘Because I was compelled by alcoholism: I was powerless over alcohol’ (or something equivalent), then they have understood Step One. If thoughts, feelings, motivations, and purposes enter into the explanation, then the individual has not yet started to under the concept of compulsion.

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.” (Page 24)

If you go to a great restaurant with great food but get food poisoning, you don’t go back. If you go back every day for years, the reason you’re going back has nothing to do with how good the food and ambience is. Discourse in AA about what alcohol did for me is entirely beside the point. It is not why I drank.

“Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” (Page 30, Big Book)

The obsession is thus an impulse that comes cloaked in a justification. I have never had to justify putting on a jumper when it is cold, going to church at Christmas, returning a greeting, sending someone a birthday card or thank-you letter, or buttering toast. What is good or neutral requires no justification. Only that which prima facie [on the face of it] is wrong, abnormal, or unexpected requires justification. One justifies an uncharitable act, a peculiar habit, or a response that seems at odds with the facts. One justifies theft on the grounds of hunger; one justifies an aversion to cinnamon on the grounds of an unhappy memory; one justifies taking the long way round on grounds of avoiding Audrey, who lives on the direct route.

During my drinking, I regularly justified my drinking to others, and constantly to myself. Since getting sober, I have regularly ‘explained’ my drinking, which is to say I justified it, with reference to cause, ground, reaction, or purpose. The mere fact of doing so, however, reveals the truth. Only what is wrong, abnormal, or unexpected requires justification. It only requires justification because it is prima facie unjustifiable. It only requires explanation because it is prima facie inexplicable. The fact I am justifying it tells the listener not to believe the justification. The fact I am explaining it tells the listener not to believe the explanation.

The truth is that there was no justification for my alcoholism—or any other addiction. And the explanations given were not real explanations.

The real cause of my alcoholism was this: I’m built in such a way that, once I’ve developed a ‘flavour’ for a substance or behaviour, I will be periodically impelled to return to it. Repeated bad experiences do not prevent the impulse from arising. The application of knowledge and reason do not block the impulse, which has carte blanche.

Thus the cause of my alcoholic drinking is ‘material’ (I’m built as an alcoholic, or, more specifically, I have alcoholic circuitry in my physical brain) and ‘formal’ (the essence of being an alcoholic is to produce the act of drinking). It has neither ‘efficient’ cause (an ‘efficient’ cause is the set of upstream circumstances that provide the grounds for a decision) nor ‘final’ cause (a ‘final’ cause is the purpose for which something is done). [Cf. Aristotle’s four-way analysis of causality.]

In other words, I drink because I am an alcoholic, and what alcoholics do is drink.

I do not drink in response to anything, on grounds of anything, in reaction to anything, or to attain any goal.

And it is the same with any other addiction, chemical or process.

“Whenever I give in to my natural impulse and habit to take over and try to force a change, I’m in trouble again. I know I can only make progress when I really believe in, and practice, the First Step.” (ODAT, 30 January)

If I’ve done something wrong, I do need to apologise. It’s best to do so swiftly, simply, and boringly. Understated not overstated.

The purpose of this, however, is not to make someone feel better. It is to clear my side of the street—to fulfil my moral obligation to establish the conditions in which reconciliation is possible.

When someone is upset, I leave entirely alone. I cannot fix it. Anything I say or do will make it worse, so I absent myself entirely, once any mandatory apology and olive branch have been offered.

I cannot force change in others.

I have practice Step One when it comes to others and their paths—they are entitled to their own paths.

“life of sane and happy usefulness” (Page 130, Big Book)

When I’m unhappy, I’m insane, which means I’m not seeing anything as it is.

When I’m unhappy, I have questions, usually about the apparently thorniest thing in my life, and I try to talk about these things to others.

If such others are sane, themselves, they will say, “You’re mad. Get sane first. Then we’ll discuss.”

Unfortunately, most people will take what an unhappy person reports as having some sort of relationship with the truth or with reality, will try to tidy it up, adjust it, and make it a bit better.

A lot of activity ensues but nothing changes.

No one wants their perceptual system to be razed to the ground and replaced with a new one.

That is the only thing the Steps really offer, however.

If the Steps do not ruin everything, they’ve not been done right.

They’re not there to improve things.

They’re there to destroy the entire world one lives in, to replace it with a new one.

“A new world came into view.” (Page 12)

It’s possible to do lots of Step actions but not take the Steps.

One needs the right premise and a full battery of actions, for quite some time.

What is the right premise?

That the only sane thing one can say is that one must be quite mad.

In other words, the problem is not him, her, it, them, the world, God, or anything.

When I’m unhappy, I’m not unhappy because of him, her, it, them, the world, God, or anything.

I’m unhappy because I’m an unhappy person.

Same if I’m frightened, angry, or anything but peaceful, trusting, and buzzing along.

The problem is the person, or, really, the persona.

The persona must be destroyed.

“I'm here to kill you, not to judge you.” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

If one wants to destroy the persona and be left with the person, who will be a complete stranger, then, by all means, take the Steps.

I was willing only when I had so utterly failed I wanted to die.

The only useful thing another person could was to butter the slide to accelerate the descent.

Anyone that tried to help me on the way down was preventing me from hitting a rock bottom.

Get away from them.

Talk to the people who don’t believe a word one is saying, and one might learn something.

“We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery.” (Page 30, Big Book)

“Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.

(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

(c) That God could and would if He were sought.” (Page 60, Big Book)

Three ideas: (a), (b), and (c). Each is one idea. (a) is one idea not two. Alcoholism = powerlessness → unmanageability.

Unmanageability is not a characteristic of my life: the term refers to a lack of ability on my part: to manage.

What is to manage? To direct operations.

Alcoholism entails being unable to direct the operations of one’s life.

Why?

Because I’m not calling the shots; alcoholism is.

I do not drink because of … [insert motivation]. I do not drink on … [insert trigger]. I do not drink in order to … [insert purpose]. Those statements are made by someone in control, in a management function, directing operations.

I drink because I am compelled. The compulsion has the agency. The compulsion is in control. The compulsion is in a management function. The compulsion is directing operations. The compulsion is in charge, and I am not: I am not able to manage my life, because it is managing my life in my stead.

“But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

Imagine being on a train platform. On the right is your regular train, heading towards your destination. On the left is a sinister train painted in garish colours depicting images of a circus. Inside you can see people having a ball. There are strongmen, acrobats, monkeys, clowns, the lot. The circus folk are milling around on the platform, chatting to people, encouraging them to get on the train. One of them persuades you to join them, saying, “Your train does not leave for an hour. Come with us. You’ll be there in a trice. You can have all the fun of the circus. But don’t worry: we’ll get you back in time for your train.” You decide to take the clown up on his offer, and board the train. You take your seat, enjoying the amazing atmosphere. You close your eyes for a moment, and when you open them, you realise you’re inside a cattle wagon. There are no windows. The clowns, the acrobats, the monkeys are gone. There’re only the strongmen left, and they’re guarding the doors. The train moves off.

“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

Alcoholism: getting on the Metropolitan line thinking it’s a stopping train but then plastering your face pitifully against the window as it hurtles past West Hampstead and the terrifying thought occurs that you’re not going to be able to get out until Harrow-on-the-Hill.

“Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” (Page 30, Big Book)

Imagine a runaway train with broken brakes hurtling towards an abyss over which the railway bridge has collapsed.

The only solution is to pull the emergency brake (God). That’s behind a piece of glass. The piece of glass is self. Self must be smashed to pull the emergency brake.

Regular people can have a self and be fine.

Self is not part of my alcoholism.

For me, self stands between me and the solution.

“Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course.” (Page 2, Big Book)

“Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. Certain drinkers, who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics, are astonished at their inability to stop. We, who are familiar with the symptoms, see large numbers of potential alcoholics among young people everywhere. But try and get them to see it! As we look back, we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our will power. If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success. In the early days of our drinking we occasionally remained sober for a year or more, becoming serious drinkers again later. Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic. We think few, to whom this  book will appeal, can stay dry anything like a year. Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.” (Pages 33–34, Big Book)

“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience. Let us take another illustration.” (Page 39, Big Book)

“The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive. He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.” (Pages 23–24, Big Book)

As it turns out, the distinction between potential and real / true alcoholic is a little blurry. Also, it does not matter. Neither the potential nor the real / true alcoholic can stay stopped: the potential alcoholic has no advantage over the real / true alcoholic. The position is exactly the same in practice, the destination is the same in practice, and the treatment is the same in practice.

In other words, even a hint of being unable to stop places me in exactly the same position as the person who has been trying and failing for years. This is all very democratic.

“Post-war disillusionment, ever more serious alcoholism, impending mental and physical collapse, brought him to the point of self-destruction.” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

In the film The Happening, an airborne neurotoxin causes people to go into a trance and commit suicide.

They are not acting in accordance with their will but under an alien influence.

This is the desire for the first drink: an alien influence. Given where the first drink inevitably leads, the desire for the first drink is not my desire but the desire of my alcoholism.

The mental obsession: an often suddenly occurring, self-rationalising, overpowering impulse to drink.

“But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink.” (Page 37, Big Book)

In Greek mythology, the Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. After a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse at the behest of Odysseus and hid a select force of men inside, including Odysseus himself. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night, the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under the cover of darkness. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city, ending the war.

The Trojan Horse looked innocent. But inside were concealed the seeds of Troy’s doom.

The first drink looks innocent. This is the mental obsession: not preoccupation with alcohol but a false idea about alcohol on which I act.

But once I take the first drink, the gates are opened, and the city is overrun. That’s the physical craving. Once the city is full of enemy troops, I’m done for.

Those enemy troops seek the destruction of Troy.

Every action I take drunk seeks my destruction.

It is not my will. It is the will of the enemy.

“It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained.”  (Chapter One, Big Book)

Imagine getting into a cab at King’s Cross and saying, ‘Paddington’ to the cabbie.

Then imagine seeing Mornington Crescent go past and realising you’re heading to Camden Town.

The cabbie has no will of his own.

He merely follows instructions.

The cabbie must be able to hear someone else in the cab, who is giving him instructions.

There is an invisible person who is giving him instructions.

Paddington is my true will (peace, power, happiness, and a sense of direction).

Camden Town is alcoholic destruction.

In active alcoholism, the alcoholism is the invisible passenger in the cab who reroutes me, and there is nothing I can do about it on my own.

Its will overrides mine.

I’m not thirsty: my alcoholism is.

“I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

In other words, according to the doctor, mental control is indeed a factor. Once the first drink has been drunk, an automated process takes over. Before the first drink, the problem is mental not physical: “Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check.” (Page 37, Big Book). Impulse overwhelms reason.

Something needs to be superposed above reason to stop it being overwhelmed with impulse, and that something is spirit.

Spirit above reason; reason above impulse

As Grady O’H says, “God isn’t thirsty.”

“By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) 

“Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink,” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

Since taking the first drink is necessary an insane act (in a person, like me, who, when they drink, does so miserably and destructively), any reference to purpose or reason is ill-placed.

If I ask Sally, “For what purpose did you eat the cheesecake,” and she says, “Because I was hungry,” she has stated the purpose of her action, and it is reasonable. If Sally is known to be insane, her stated purpose may or may not be real cause of her eating the cheesecake. We have no way of knowing.

If I ask Sally, “For what purpose did you drink the bottle of vodka?” (this event causing a hangover), and she says, “Because I had a headache,” since the effect represents a magnification of the cause, she is clearly not indicating the real cause behind her drinking it (although she may well believe in her own ‘reasoning’). When insanity might be at play, the subject ceases to be a reliable witness.

Similarly, if I note the consequent (Sally got drunk) and infer a ground (she must have had a purpose), yet the scenario is one of apparent insanity, I’m employing reasoning fit for a scenario in which sanity and reasonableness are presumed: I’m using the wrong tool for the job.

When someone appears to be acting insanely, the reason they give themselves or report to others for the action must be entirely disregarded, and instead we are looking for cause, not reason (in the sense of purpose), and ground–consequent relations are also out of play.

What is the cause of my having the first drink?

(1) The thought of a drink occurs to me

(2) I obey the thought

What is the cause of my having the second and subsequent drinks?

(1) The thought of the next drink occurs to me

(2) I obey the thought

Why not collapse these?

The mechanism appears the same, but there is a fundamental physical difference between the two scenarios.

The first drink occurs when I am sober and renders me in a state where I cannot take the first drink again for some days. It cannot recur in a repetitive sequence like knocking at the door.

The second drink occurs when I have drunk alcohol and is capable of recurring in a repetitive sequence like knocking at the door: the door is restored essentially to the same state it was in before the knock. There’s thus little or no palpable difference between my condition with each additional drink. I go round in a circle.

“The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink.” (Page 43, Big Book)

In a healthy person, ideas present themselves and are reviewed, and action is then formulated and taken.

In me, drinking, this is what appeared to be happening. I appeared to be thinking of a drink, soundly assessing the proposition, concluding it was a good idea, and doing it. In other words, it felt like the normal formation and implementation of the will.

Drinking was bad for me, both on the occasions of drinking, the next day, and across my life. I was not, therefore, soundly assessing the facts and the proposal of a drink. The notion I was acting in accordance with my will was therefore an illusion.

For my alcoholism to get me to drink, it must first of all convince me that a drink is a good idea, then erase the awareness that it has done any convincing at all, in other words, it must cover its tracks so that I believe that the idea is mine, the idea aligns with my will, and the idea is as sound as any sound idea that I have.

It must thus do two things at once: convince me whilst concealing the fact it is convincing me.

Occasionally, I will have a vague sense that this is happening:

“I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart” (Page 36, Big Book)

However, typically, the alcoholism is so successful that its two-part play pays off entirely:

“We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Page 37, Big Book)

I can tell that my drinking was against my will not from how it felt to me when it was happening but by these five criteria:

(1) I drank more than I intended

(2) I did bad things drunk I would not do sober

(3) My drinking was harmful

(4) The next day I regretted my drinking and actions

(5) Over time, the trajectory was downwards

These are the five telltale signs I’m being hoodwinked.

Any one of those five will do.

What’s your experience?

“Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (page 23, Big Book)

“I wasn’t worried about what it was going to do to me. I just needed it to do something to me. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.” (recording of an AA speaker)

The second quotation is a statement I recently heard on an AA tape, which is typical of descriptions of alcoholism by alcoholics in AA.

However, the logic revealed is this:

- I saw a benefit in drinking

- I needed that benefit

- I did not care about any negative results

- I therefore decided to drink.

This is not a description of someone acting under compulsion, someone who has lost control, someone who is drinking against their will. The second quotation above contains a very clear statement that this was indeed in accordance with their will. Their will was misguided, perhaps, but their will it was. One cannot be drinking in accordance with one’s will and against it at the same time. If that is what one wanted, that was in accordance with one’s will.

That is not alcoholism.

To act in accordance with one’s own will is to determine an objective, determine a course of action designed to bring about that objective, then to take that action.

Anyone drinking because they liked the effect, they needed it, they were medicating their feelings, they enjoyed it, or because of any process of reasoning is by definition not alcoholic. Their drinking is in accordance with their will.

Alcoholics are people who will drink even though they do not like it, they do not need it (and, moreover, they need not to do it), they recognise that the drinking is damaging their emotions, and they do not enjoy it; they are drinking despite their reasoning, not in accordance with it.

How can we possibly explain the fact that most drinking narratives in AA set out the ‘reasons’ for drinking and motivations?

Well, someone drinking under the compulsion of alcoholism (mental obsession plus physical craving) is necessarily yielding to the uncontrollable, non-rational impulse to drink. That impulse is not irrational: it is not in the bounds of reason at all. A burp or a hiccough is not irrational. It is non-rational.

But to get me to drink, the alcoholism (if I may personify it) had to construct a lie: that I wanted to, that I needed to, that I liked it, that it helped, that it wasn’t too bad, that the consequences were bearable. Believing the lie, I drank.

How do we know it is a lie? I never woke pleased with how much I had drunk the night before. This splitting of the mind happened daily. Alcoholism mesmerised me into believing its lies, I drank, I drank too much, I woke up realising I had been wrong.

What is active alcoholism?

Either active drinking.

Or the obsession is still active, weaving ‘justifications’, ‘motivations’, ‘reasoning’ for the first drink.

One reason that the presentation of such justifications, motivations, and reasoning for the unjustifiable and unarguably destructive is so common in AA might be that the carriers of such justifications, motivations, and reasoning are in fact still suffering from active alcoholism. They’re just not drinking today. But the mental obsession is still alive, weaving away its narratives, so effectively the individual believes them.

A few weeks before I arrived in AA, I was still prone to such justifications, motivations, and reasoning. Then the scales fell from my eyes, and I realised all of the tales I was telling myself about why I was drinking were untrue: I no longer enjoyed my drinking; what I needed was not to drink; and yet drinking I was. It was then that I realised I was drinking under compulsion not in accordance with my will.

The reason why a madman performs a particular mad act are found in the fact of his madness, not the ‘reasoning’ the madman gives. The reasoning, by virtue of his madness, is, itself, mad. Such reasoning explains nothing. It is the madness, with its impulses, that is the cause; the reason the madman gives himself for the impulse is neither here nor there.

A few weeks of watching my own madness, powerless to stop it, and, bang, there I was in AA.

Once I identified with this line: “in their hearts they really do not know why they do it”, I stopped presenting justifications, motivations, and reasoning. Why did I drink? Because I was alcoholic. My childhood, emotions, reasoning, and surrounding life experiences then dropped out of the narrative about my alcoholism, leaving me with the horror of having the first and subsequent drinks against my will and interests, under the compulsion of a cold, unthinking, non-rational, non-reasoning, monstrous, bestial, fully automated, unstoppable, parasitic addiction.

What’s your experience?

 “We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

‘At certain times’ suggests that sometimes I can rely on reason to keep me away from drink and sometimes I cannot. The danger is that the some-time effectiveness of the mental defence lulls me into believing I can rely on it continuously. I then start to rely on reason not God, and, when faulty reason tells me that a drink is a good idea, I will drink.

“We doubt if many of them can do it, because none will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired, will find he can win out.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

It was very difficult to tell whether I was drinking in accordance with or against my will.

To drink a drink, I had to want to drink that drink. Every drink therefore seemed in accordance with my will. It appears impossible, therefore, for a person to drink against their will.

My will, properly speaking, is my overall desire in terms of the outcomes, direction, and course of my life.

In the moment, my wish, my wanting, my feeling, might be at odds with the outcomes, direction, and course of my life.

If such discrepancies occur, my life will lurch in all sorts of directions sequentially, like a taxi being directed in turn to different destinations by different occupants.

The best way to tell whether my action is in accordance with my will or against it (whether drinking or another behaviour) is this:

• Did I coldly intend to do what I did?
• Did I regret it afterwards?
• Did it work against my best interests?

If I acted against my cold intention, if I regretted it afterwards, if it worked against my best interests, then I have a problem: a rogue desire is operating, and, if the behaviour repeats, I am acting under compulsion, co-opted by that desire to do its will.

“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

Imagine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll has to understand that Mr Hyde cannot be brought under his control: if he takes the potion and becomes Mr Hyde, Mr Hyde is now in charge and will wreak havoc. The delusion that Mr Hyde can be controlled must be smashed.

But this knowledge alone will be insufficient, because Mr Hyde has acquired the ability to take over, against Dr Jekyll’s will.

The delusion that I will find a way to drink safely was what prevented me from seeking help, ultimately from a higher power, so the smashing of the delusion was necessary but it was not sufficient: I was just as much at the mercy of drinking again, just now without the intellectual justification for the experiment but instead with the terrifying awareness that I was the object of the process, not its subject: I was not in charge; I was not ‘deciding to drink’; the alcoholism was deciding to drink, and my choice was to yield or temporarily resist, and even that choice was largely out of my hands.

“In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

If I absolutely have to drink daily but stop at one without a care, I’m not alcoholic.

If I drink way too much but have no trouble staying sober, I’m not alcoholic.

The two conditions for being an alcoholic are (a) being compelled to have the first drink (b) being compelled to continue to excess.

These conditions are cumulative.

This means either is insufficient: both must be met.

Why does the book say ‘or’?

It’s possible it’s merely sloppy. There are other instances of sloppiness, for instance referring to ‘stopping drinking’ (which is really a process of going from daily drinking to sobriety via withdrawal and usually detox) when it obviously means not starting again, once one has detoxed. Another inconsistency: the section from pages 20 to 21 that sets out the diagnostic distinction between moderate drinkers, the ‘certain type of hard drinker’, and the real alcoholic sets the bar very low indeed: beginning to lose control once one starts to drink plus not being able to stop or moderate once good reason to do so arises, which is quite right, but then proceeds to give a caricature of only one particular type of very advanced alcoholic (the Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde type) as the archetype of all alcoholics. Sloppiness is certainly an option.

A story attributed to one of the first hundred, Oscar Weiss, reported by Joe Hawke and Mark Houston, is that this is a ‘drunk trap’, namely a trick to ‘catch out’ alcoholics reading the book. This has some plausibility, because I have often sponsored people who absolutely buy the mental obsession but are iffy about the physical craving or vice versa, even though they had been nodding compliantly all through the book up to that point; they see the ‘or’ and believe they can squeeze through the turnstile by admitting to just one of the two, and merrily continue with the process, ‘revealing’ misgivings about the more questionable of the two conditions, believing that, since only one condition must be met, the other can be left unresolved, so the reservation is ‘safe’ to reveal, as it will not be wrestled to the ground. Now that the secret reservation has been revealed, the sponsee and I can use the opportunity to settle the matter once and for all. The paragraph can indeed be used as a ‘trap’ to catch reservations. There are other traps, too: the ‘restless, irritable, discontent paragraph’ ‘traps’ alcoholics who believe that their negative emotions either cause or are credible reasons in the sense of motivations for their alcoholic drinking. Such traps force into the open and force into final resolution either fuzzy thinking or misconceptions. To go one step further, as Oscar Weiss reports Bill W’s design, and believe that such inconsistencies or difficulties were deliberately used to ‘trap’ alcoholics firstly has no corroborating evidence in anything I have read about AA history or the writing of the book and secondly runs against the stated purpose of the book: to explain AA in a freestanding manner to people who are on their own and are being encouraged to take the book, read it, and simply do what it says. To imagine material being placed in the book that will be particularly useful to the sponsor sitting with the sponsor is to read a present system into a past environment to which it is quite alien.

The last possibility is this: the book hedges on purpose (and there is evidence for this, in Bill W talking about the book), namely it avoids categorical statements and casts the net wide, at least when the authorial voice is speaking (categorical statements are left for the various doctors writing or reported in the book: ‘100% hopeless’). Instead, we have ‘rarely’, ‘probably’, ‘few’, ‘or’ rather than ‘never’, ‘definitely’, ‘all’, ‘and’. Myths abound that Bill W wanted to put ‘never’ rather than ‘rarely’ in the first paragraph of Chapter 5, but these are concoctions. Bill W’s language is considerably toned down between the earlier drafts and the final draft, and this language is consistent with the toning-down.

This, therefore, is the most plausible explanation: Bill W was merely casting the net wide to ‘get in’ as many potential and actual alcoholics into the lifeboat, on the basis that: better in than out. 

 ... can be found here.

See the front page for links to downloads ('TAPES') and podcasts ('PODCASTS').

“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

Imagine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll has to understand that Mr Hyde cannot be brought under his control: if he takes the potion and becomes Mr Hyde, Mr Hyde is now in charge and will wreak havoc. The delusion that Mr Hyde can be controlled must be smashed.

But this knowledge alone will be insufficient, because Mr Hyde has acquired the ability to take over, against Dr Jekyll’s will.

The delusion that I will find a way to drink safely was what prevented me from seeking help, ultimately from a higher power, so the smashing of the delusion was necessary but it was not sufficient: I was just as much at the mercy of drinking again, just now without the intellectual justification for the experiment but instead with the terrifying awareness that I was the object of the process, not its subject: I was not in charge; I was not ‘deciding to drink’; the alcoholism was deciding to drink, and my choice was to yield or temporarily resist, and even that choice was largely out of my hands.

“Or perhaps he doesn’t think at all.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

A bit of my brain notes when something hits the mark. Food, drink, drugs, romantic activities. It makes a list, and periodically sends up the request ‘for more’ (like Oliver Twist) to the command-and-control centre (CACC).

In a regular person, the CACC weighs the evidence.

In active alcoholism: not me!

The CACC was dimmed. Half asleep. Just flagging through the desire for a hit and converting it into action.

Brain scans apparently show this dimming effect in active alcoholics and addicts. The CACC is literally dimmer.

And figuratively dimmer: not so bright any more, not so clever.

“Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

I thought I was having the first drink because I was depressed.

But when I wasn’t depressed I had the first drink anyway.

I thought I was having the first drink because my circumstances were unfavourable.

But when they were favourable I had the first drink anyway.

I thought I was having the first drink because I liked it.

But when I didn’t like it I had the first drink anyway.

The same goes for any past experience, present circumstance, or emotion.

What terrified me was the realisation that I was not drinking, as an agent, as someone who decided to drink then drinks, as one might decide to board a train to Harrogate and board the train. I wasn’t drinking. I was being drunk through by something else. I was the instrument of my alcoholism. My alcoholism was drinking. I was the bucket into which the drink was being poured. That was a frightening realisation.

This is so frightening that I started to understand my credulity towards the specious arguments, the rationalisations, the plain nonsense that my mind would offer us as justifications for obeying the imperious impulse to drink.

What was even more frightening was the realisation, years into being in AA, that, even sober years in AA, I was talking about my past, my childhood, my upbringing, my conditioning, the values I was inculcated with, my circumstances long past, recent past, and present, and my emotions as having some sort of causal relationship with either the first drink or subsequent drinks.

Sober in AA, I was employing the same rationalisation mechanism deployed by my active alcoholism to justify drinking in advance to explain drinking in retrospect. Under the guise of ‘sharing’, of ‘carrying the message’, I was actually still propagating alcoholism in myself and amongst my fellows, an unwitting fifth column within AA.

The simple, boring truth is that the desire to drink arises because I am an alcoholic, and without a defence I will fulfil the desire.

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

If a fire starts in a forest, it can start for many reasons. Arson. Lightning strike. Campfire. Sunlight concentrated through glass. Discarded match. Car crash. Chemical spill. Once it starts, exactly the same mechanism causes the fire to propagate, out of control. How the fire propagates has nothing to do with the original cause.

It’s like that with my drinking. I might start for a dozen ‘reasons’, on a dozen different days, but the mechanism responsible for the second and subsequent drinks was entirely different to the mechanism responsible for the first. With fire, the second flame is caused by the first, regardless of what caused the first. With drinking, the second drink is caused by the first, regardless of what caused the first.

Turning to the first drink:

Looking for reasons for the first drink is a reasonable exercise when trying to explain why someone drinks moderately. These reasons (social awkwardness, unhappiness, boredom, tension) are arguably legitimate reasons for moderate drinking.

Once I developed the regular habit of very destructive drinking, whose destructive extent was never precisely what I planned, all such reasons became irrelevant. The legitimate reasons for moderate drinking cannot even be discussed when moderate drinking is not one of the options on the table. When the only two options on the table are sobriety and excessive drinking, such reasons are easily defeated: excessive drinking brings increased social awkwardness due to my behaviour drunk; excessive drinking brought huge unhappiness, was often profoundly boring, destroying any real ability to take an interest in interesting pursuits or subjects, and drinking excessively often made me nervously aggressive.

Any ‘reasons’ I give for such drinking are therefore insane rationalisations. The only reason for having the first drink is that I have the impulse to drink and lack a mental defence against it. 

 “It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

The Big Book makes a distinction between hard drinkers, for whom self-knowledge is sufficient to achieve sobriety, and real alcoholics, who will return to drinking through the ‘peculiar mental twist’ / ‘strange mental blank spot’ unless they have the protection of God through being in the 24-hour-a-day service of God.

Which one am I? This is not a no-brainer question for a person to ask themselves, because one cannot tell simply by examining the drinking: the certain type of hard drinker, as described above, will look like an alcoholic, in terms of both alcohol consumption and impact, and their drinking might also seem insane.

This is also a major question, because how I live my life, based on self or based on God, is really the primary structural question, which must be resolved before anything else is decided upon.

In principle, the certain type of hard drinker might continue to go to AA (after the initial stages where AA was necessary to get the person back on track), simply because it conveys some good common sense, a pleasant network, and a little insurance against silliness about drinking. But is a vital experience necessary to remain sober? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve had many friends and acquaintances over the years who do a slim form of AA, stay sober, and are happy, successful, and stable. God might even be in the picture, somewhere, but they’re good to go, they really are, and my hat is off to them! I have even been sponsored by such people, and they couldn’t help me, because I couldn’t understand how they were OK, and they couldn’t understand why I was not. They were using the tools of the programme to live their lives. I tried the same, and I felt awful.

I’m definitely the real alcoholic. Unless I’m firmly nested in God, I skunk [cause external mayhem] and turtle [retreat neurotically into self], engage in addictive behaviours, and then drink. I’m on a short leash, but, more importantly, when I get ideas above my station, when I forget God, when I re-enthrone self (my perceptions, my understanding, my this, my that, my life), I start to feel very bad, very quickly. Arguably, this is something of an early warning system for drinking. The feelings don’t cause the drinking: they are merely the signs that I’ve strayed outside my Divine Defence System.

I don’t think everyone has this early warning system, though. I’ve known many people over the years in AA who have drunk out of the blue. No warning signs. Things going OK or things going well. Admittedly, they had usually left AA or put AA on the back burner, still ticking away, but AA was not central. Some were even properly embedded in AA, at least in the fellowship part. But they really were doing well in life, often better than the people working very hard at the programme (people like me, who are evidently starting from a much lower base).

The real alcoholic might arguably fall into two categories. There is the real alcoholic who, without a solid programme based soundly on God, will drive themselves nuts very quickly. They might fool themselves, like the boy whistling in the dark ...

“‘I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.’ As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

... but the profound problems are not far from the surface.

And then there is the real alcoholic who, although needing a solid programme based soundly on God to ensure sobriety, in terms of everything else, is basically ‘good to go’. No particular neurosis. No maladjustment. Fine. Fred (pages 39 to 43) seems to be this sort of character. There’s no very obvious indication that he’s going to drink again, and, out of a clear blue sky, no cloud on the horizon, he drinks.

I recently spoke to someone and I asked whether he thought that, over the preceding months, he had been at risk of drinking. He replied, ‘I haven’t thought of a drink.’ The boy whistling in the dark might have thought of a drink. The person who is already gripped by the mental obsession, is fighting it, and is therefore restless, irritable, and discontented might have thought of a drink. The unhappy neurotic (me) who is off their programme might have thought of a drink or started to feel the call of the gay chatter of active addiction:

“Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

... but there’s the Fred type (and also Jim), for whom there was no thought of a drink before the overwhelming impulse arose.

I’m definitely the real alcoholic, and I appear to have an early warning system, but I cannot rely on it absolutely: I need to work the programme as though I need the defence against the first drink, today.

 “... if you feel like a drink, play the tape forward, remember your last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc. ...”

That’s a common piece of advice, and it’s commonly reported that someone felt like a drink, took these actions, and was ‘saved’. I’ve certainly had the experience where the sequence of events was:

(a) Felt like a drink
(b) Took the right action
(c) The feeling disappeared.

Just because (c) follows (b) and (b) follows (a) does not mean that (a) causes (b) and (b) causes (c).

If, when the thought of a drink occurred, all I had to do was X, Y, or Z, I would not need AA or the programme. This approach is based on the assumption that the thought of a drink is a simple obstacle, the remedy to be deployed is greater than the obstacle, and I am greater than both: I stand above the two, noticing the obstacle, reaching for the remedy, applying the remedy, and Voilà!, problem solved. Have an itch? Apply this cream. Raining? Put up an umbrella. Train cancelled? Get a bus. Feel like a drink? Go to a meeting.

The truth is radically different. The point of the impulse to have the first drink is firstly that it is typically accompanied by an insanity that presents the drink as perfectly rational, reasonable, and sane, and secondly that it is overwhelming. In a state of insanity, I lack the sanity required to observe I am in danger, sift my mind for possible remedies, and commit to such a remedy. Even when I would commit to such a remedy, the impulse would overwhelm me, and I either would find myself unable to deploy the remedy, or I would deploy it and it would work only temporarily, or I would deploy it and it would work not at all: I succumbed and had a drink.

I’ve had many more experiences of knowing I shouldn’t have a drink (or do P, Q, or R), knowing the consequences, knowing it’s nuts, knowing the remedies, but lacking the will or ability to do something about it.

The AA toolkit for what to do when the impulse, the insanity, the mental obsession strikes is of no more use than the ordinary toolkit of common sense that I would try and deploy before I got to AA. Bringing God into it is of no more use than bringing common sense into it: being a good church member did not help Rowland Hazard (the certain American businessman), and being a good Oxford Group member did not help Dr Bob until he completed his amends.

What I need is a defence system that is larger than me and larger than the impulse, the insanity, the obsession. It has to be all-encompassing. The solution is not something ‘the great self’ picks up to deploy but something in which ‘the small self’ lives, safe and sound.

So what is happening when, on the impulse to drink arising, I play the tape forward, remember my last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc.?

I am not doing those things: God is activating those pathways for me. They are indeed the path out of the cul-de-sac, but they’re given to me: they’re the lifebelt thrown to me from the shore. I do not activate them as an act of the will: the right thought occurs to me (I do not go and fetch it); the ability to follow through on the right thought, i.e. the right action, is the path along which I find myself compelled to walk, drawn and empowered by God.

I’m not doing this. God is.

However, I do have a responsibility, to work to establish the conditions in which I am placed within God’s bailiwick of safety and security.

The remedy does, therefore, ultimately reside with me, but not in the moment: in the whole way I live my life.

"I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business. And so I did.

Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that." (Chapter 1, Big Book)

Appalling lack of perspective

Hammer man (HM) (read page 23, Big Book)

• The small relief (from the hammer-hitting) looms large
• The major consequence (the worsening of the problem) recedes into the background
• Relief 'wins' over consequences
• He continues the behaviour

Jaywalker (JW) (read pages 37 to 37, Big Book)

• The small thrill looms large
• The major consequence (back broken) recedes into the background
• Thrill 'wins' over consequences
• He continues the behaviour

Bill: the pleasure of a drink (relief plus thrill) wins over the consequences

HM: the relief wins over the consequences

JW: the thrill wins over the consequences

HM + JW = Bill

“If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. … the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon. … I ordered a cocktail and my meal.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

Sometimes the idea is presented that alcoholics have bad feelings, and they drink because of the bad feelings. They think: “I’m having a bad feeling. A drink will solve that. Therefore, to solve that, I will have the drink.” And then they have the drink. Seems plausible, right?

This looks like the operation of reason. Yet, both overall and in most individual situations, the relief of bad feelings afforded by drinking is actually outweighed by the bad feelings generated by drinking, if not during the bout, certainly in the immediate aftermath, and that’s before one considers the aggregate effect of alcoholic drinking in terms of emotional state.

As the readings above show, moreover, this ‘reasoning’ was typically grossly inadequate (and in my experience fleeting: the thought of a drink would occur, apparently in response to a ‘bad feeling’, and the plan would immediately present itself. This is not consideration or contemplation in the ordinary sense of decision-formulation.)

Furthermore, I did not think of a drink every time I had a bad feeling. And I thought of a drink when I did not have a bad feeling.

The idea that I drank because of bad feelings is now starting to look very shaky indeed.

It’s very clear that the reason I gave myself for drinking—bad feelings—was not the reason in the sense of the primary ground in a logical system.

It’s very clear that the system was not logical. The system was not sound. The system was not sane. In a system that is not logical, sound, or sane, it makes absolutely no sense to talk of reasoning, because what appears to be reasoning is really rationalisation: the presentation of superficially plausible but ultimately specious reasons for a course of action. If the course of action is not driven by reason, by ordinary mental processes of the higher parts of the mind, it must be driven by something else.

What is driving it, then? Short answer: alcoholism. There’s part of my brain that seems to throw up the idea of a drink periodically. The occurrence of such a thought might be brought forward by a general dissatisfaction with life sober (cf. the boy whistling in the dark, Bill with his “waves of self-pity and resentment” which “sometimes [but not all the time] nearly drove me back to drink [but did not]”, and Fred, whose attempts to live life sober were apparently unsatisfactory, even though he at the time was not actually aware of that: “My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could”), but there are as many examples of characters in the Big Book who are not unhappy or who are not aware of how relatively unhappy they are (CAB: “His physical and mental condition were unusually good.” MOT: “retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career … Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle.”)

What we’re therefore left with is simply the phenomenon: come rain or shine, the thought of a drink will occur.

“The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

We therefore need a relationship with God to stay sober.

And this is where resentment (accompanied by all its friends) comes in:

When I’m resentful, I’m adopting the position: “I’m in charge. I know how things should be. And this is not how things should be.” I’m playing God, and, when playing God, I’m cutting myself off from God.

This is why resentment (and all its friends: cynicism, fear, anxiety, depression, self-loathing, despondency, despair) lead to a drink. They may or may not prompt the thought of a drink to occur. Maybe the thought would have occurred anyway. Maybe the opportunity would have presented itself anyway. But they sure as hell block off the defence against following though and actually drinking.

To drink, two things must happen:

Firstly, I must think of a drink.

Secondly, I must take the drink.

Resentment may or may not trigger or accelerate the onset of the first, but its absence is no defence against the thought of a drink.

Resentment will block me from the only Power that can stop thought converting into action.

That is why resentment is the number one offender.

“potted, adjective: slang: drunk” (Merriam-Webster)

“Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.” (Chapter 2)

“He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.” (Chapter 1)

“Giving, rather than getting, will become the guiding principle.” (Chapter 9)

“Suggest how important it is that he place the welfare of other people ahead of his own.” (Chapter 7)

“Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity.” (Chapter 4)

“Perhaps he could handle, say, three drinks—no more! Fear gripped him. He was on thin ice. Again it was the old, insidious insanity—that first drink. With a shiver, he turned away and walked down the lobby to the church directory. Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar. But what about his responsibilities—his family and the men who would die because they would not know how to get well, ah—yes, those other alcoholics? There must be many such in this town. He would phone a clergyman. His sanity returned and he thanked God.” (Chapter 11)

The order here is very interesting:

1. The insanity (the belief a drink is safe) returns.
2. He takes programmed action (smart feet walking away from danger).
3. A thought occurs to him about the welfare of others.
4. He takes further programmed action (seeking out an alcoholic to help).
5. Sanity returns.
6. He says a prayer of gratitude.

The programmed action takes place before the return of sanity and even before the thanking of God.

This can happen only if the individual is ‘dominated’ by a new set of ‘conceptions and motives’ (‘a new soil’, ‘giving, rather than getting’, ‘place the welfare of other people ahead of his own’).

It cannot be invoked as an act of the will, which is why instructing people what to do in such situations, namely to invoke the will to do (a) not (b), will always ultimately fail: either the programming kicks in or it does not.

Once the new system is in place, once the individual is re-potted in ‘new soil’, all of this is automatic.

To amplify, it is no good giving people instructions what to do ‘if the insanity returns’, because, in that situation, the person is insane. Only domination by a new set of conceptions and motives will do the job.

In order to help someone who is at risk of the insanity, returning, therefore, what is needed is not little tips, tip-lets, but the following injunctions (Chapter 1):

“It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.” (Bill’s Story)

“There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.” (Bill’s Story)

... and everything that flows from these.

The above is my experience, too.

What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic’s plight is, in my opinion, correct. As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help.  (Big Book)

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems ... (Big Book)

All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession. (Big Book)

An alcoholic is someone who, if they do not have divine help, activated through work and self-sacrifice for others, will drink, and, if they drink, they might never stop, and die an unpleasant alcoholic death.

Someone who recognises they are an alcoholic will act on this information. This can be discerned by observing the conduct: does the conduct consist in a good dose, each day, of abandonment of self, of work and self-sacrifice for others?

Someone who does not recognise they're an alcoholic but believes that AA might help them improve their life, will do AA Lite. A little this, a little that, but no completion of the programme, and no centrality of AA, recovery, and the service of God.

Someone who does not recognise they're an alcoholic, but does not believe that AA can help them, will stop going to AA altogether.

There are three basic groups: AA Full Throttle, AA Lite, and No AA. One can tell what one believes from what one does.

 Definition of alcoholism:

In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. (Big Book)

Uh oh. No spiritual malady mentioned. No mention of the spiritual malady anywhere in the Step One part of the Big Book. Maybe Bill got it wrong.

I bet he corrected himself in the Twelve and Twelve.

Let’s see:

The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that ensured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. (Twelve and Twelve)

Uh oh. No third edge to the sword. No spiritual malady. Did he not listen to speaker tapes?

So, there’s no spiritual malady involved, right? Wrong. It’s very involved.

Here’s how:

It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove it from us. (Twelve and Twelve)

Turns out we’re mad and need God to take charge (and remain in charge).

When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.

Aha! So, the spiritual malady is part of alcoholism.

Well, alcoholics have it. But so does pretty much everyone else.

The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. (Big Book)

We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. (Big Book)

Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he certainly had me. (Big Book)

Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired businessman who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity? (Big Book)

But aren’t the bedevilments the elusive third part of alcoholism?

We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn’t apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people—was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was.

Sure, we’ve got ‘em. But the Big Book describes these as human problems.

Turns out I’m an alcoholic and a messed-up human being with a spiritual malady, and, unless the spiritual malady is dealt with (and dealt with first, once I’ve been detoxed), I have no hope of recovering from my alcoholism.

The following passages from the Big Book contain descriptions of five people. One of them stays sober. The other four drink. One of them has had a psychic change. The others have not. One is spiritually fit. The others are not. Which is which?

(1) His physical and mental condition were unusually good.

(2) He is a good salesman. Everybody likes him. He is an intelligent man, normal so far as we can see.

(3) I was not too well at the time and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment.

(4) … he … retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career.

(5) Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.

No. 1 has not had a spiritual experience:

“Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description.”

He drinks again.

No. 2 “failed to enlarge his spiritual life”.

He drinks again.

No. 4 drinks again.

No. 5 “would not believe himself an alcoholic, much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem”.

He drinks again.

No. 3 has had a spiritual experience, is in fit spiritual condition, as he continues to “perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others”.

“... but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.”

He stays sober.

I see from this that spiritual condition has nothing to do intrinsically with character, circumstances, physical condition, mental condition, or emotional condition. It has to do with whether one is serving God or self.

This takes the pressure off, as I do not need have good character, good circumstances, or a good physical, mental, or emotional condition to stay sober, although, if I serve God, these will all likely improve in God’s time from whatever the baseline is for these five parameters.

Rather, this gives me a simple project for the day: Serve God. When? Today. When is it today? Every day.

This isn't a new point for me, but something recently struck me with regard to the gap between the description of alcoholics in the Big Book and the description of alcoholics in meetings.

Check this out (from Chapter Two):

His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature but little. He may be one of the finest fellows in the world. … He is often perfectly sensible and well-balanced concerning everything except liquor, ... He often possesses special abilities, skills, and aptitudes, and has a promising career ahead of him. He uses his gifts to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself, …

In other words, this is not someone who is dumb, mad, neurotic, disorganised, incompetent, antisocial, traumatised, or otherwise a failed human being. His drinking may cause him to display such characteristics, but these are at odds with his basic disposition.

There are several important points that I learn from this:

(1) Step One's unmanageability describes the problems arising out of being an out-of-control drinker, not the individual's general disposition or life-skill level.

(2) If one happens to have problems in other areas, that's too bad, but it's not alcoholism. Not all alcoholics have such problems; not all people with such problems have alcoholism.

(3) Treating alcoholism requires building a relationship of trust and service with God, and that requires turning anything else going on in one's life over to God, along with the alcoholism. The universal spiritual malady (which varies greatly in manifestation and extent from person to person), essentially the enthronement of self in the place of God, is co-occurring with, not a component of, alcoholism.

(4) The God-based approach to life will coincidentally solve all of the other problems as well.

(5) Any sponsee that is apparently reasonably sensible and well-balanced in their life generally may well be telling the truth. They do not need to be brought down a peg or two or induced to construe themselves as incompetent at living in order to take Step One and then proceed with the programme.

(6) This brings alcoholism down to its two components: the madness of having the first drink and the virtually unstoppable vicious circle once the first drink is taken.

It's very hard to carry the message in AA, because counter-messages abound. Poor newcomers! No wonder people are so confused.

Let's look at the notion of insanity. I was at a meeting recently where someone declared (and others agreed) that drinking the second and subsequent drinks constituted 'the insanity of alcoholism'.

Nowhere in the Big Book does it use the notion of insanity to describe what happens after the first drink. Au contraire: this is presented as an automated process with physical foundations, over which processes of reasoning are powerless. This physical craving for the second and subsequent drinks is not an example of failed reasoning or irrationality but an example of compulsion over which the individual has little or no control. Reasoning, sane or insane, is simply not involved.

Cf. The Doctor's Opinion:

They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. (My emphasis)

In the basic text part of the Big Book, the terms insane and insanity are used three ways: firstly, as a subjective description of how a drunk alcoholic's behaviour appears to others.

He is always more or less insanely drunk.

Secondly, there are several references to Korsakoff syndrome, namely the wet brain phenomenon at the late stages of alcoholism (read this and this):

When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he has probably placed himself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently insane.

Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity.

Sometimes there were screaming delirium and insanity.

All other references, however, are to the insanity of having the first drink, which, it should be recalled, occurs when the individual is sober. That's all.

But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out.

In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened.

However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.

Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again.

Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk! Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?

I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.

The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again.

Again it was the old, insidious insanity—that first drink.

To be clear: if a drink can lead to a bout of days, weeks, months, or years, with all the attendant difficulties and loss of control over the course and content of one's life (= unmanageability), to have that drink is insane.

[Broadly speaking]

What's going on is that a part of the physical brain, having recently had a 'hit', and having correlated the hit with a behaviour, sends out the message 'do [insert behaviour] again'.

That's all. It's a signal.

The signal, however, comes 'wrapped' in flavoursome packaging: the recollection of pleasure and the anticipation of pleasure, with the associated anticipated 'pain' of such pleasure being withheld.

Here's the strange thing. You can be absolutely fine, then a withdrawal signal is received, and suddenly you're in 'pain'. Pain is not the description of the state you were in before the signal. It's the description of what is induced by the desire accompanied with the prospect of not giving in to it.

You can be perfectly comfortable, and then, suddenly, you think of using, and now you're really uncomfortable. The discomfort is not the description of the non-using state. It is the description of the state of someone who is not using yet who has thought of using and is conflicted about it.

In other words restlessness, irritability, and discontentment are not the description of sobriety, the state of being without alcohol.

They are the description of the state occurring between desire and fulfilment of the desire.

If there's no gap because the fulfilment of the desire occurs straight away, there's no time for restlessness, irritability, and discontent to develop. As Grady O'H says, you have to withstand the desire for the first drink to realise you have the obsession [in the broad sense of the pre-drinking frame of mind rather than the specific sense of the associated delusion], and you have to withstand the desire for the second or subsequent drink to realise you have the craving. If you immediately give into the thought of a drink then immediately give into the desire for the second and subsequent drinks, you never experience the obsession or the craving as a lived state.

This explains why Silkworth, in the Doctor's Opinion, refers to alcoholics being restless, irritable, and discontent (he's describing alcoholics who are trying to avoid the first drink) yet no such state is described in respect of the certain American businessman (perfect mental health), the man of thirty (happy as Larry), the jaywalker (he just jaywalks whenever he damn well pleases), Jim (ordinary day), Fred (perfect day). None of them held out, so none experienced the pain of doing so.

The impulse to drink arises.

It is sent to the Command and Control Centre (CACC).

It is powerful.

The CACC normally assesses the pros and cons of ideas.

With the impulse to drink:

(1) The CACC is knocked out altogether or

(2) The CACC activates but cannot see straight: reasoning 'concludes' a drink is safe or

(3) The CACC activates and realises the truth but the impulse effects a manual override

In all three cases, the impulse converts into action: a drink.

From the Big Book (the only three references in the basic text):

There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game.

The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.

There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heart-breaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it.

The obsession, thus, is not preoccupation in the sense of constantly thinking about alcohol but the persistent delusion that to drink is safe.

When it's a hot day and one craves a cold drink, the order is this:

desire > consumption > satisfaction [end]

The physical craving with alcohol is different:

consumption > desire > consumption > desire > [repetition until crash]

The phenomenon first arises after the consumption, not before.

It's a physical craving because it was triggered by physical event.

Consumption, rather than satisfying the desire, amplifies it.

This is what produces the runaway-train effect.

 When I have truly taken Step One on a situation and I ask for help, the person from whom I have sought help will present information and explain things.

If I run through what they're saying to assess whether I buy it, I'm sunk: I'm using what I have admitted to be a defective system to screen incoming information.

When I'm being a sponsee, my job is to make notes of what is said, say 'yes' and 'thank you', and then go away and assimilate the information. If I am able to assimilate the information, I go back for more.

I do not assess the material first. If I've decided I trust the person, I trust what they say.

Assessment is the sure-fire way to admit only what will not disturb the non-functioning system and repel anything that might act as a corrective or a remedy.

On the other end of the exchange, I listen out for how people say yes.

If they use the yes that means Keep going. I technically understand the words you're saying but I don't fully buy it; you'll have to try harder, and I feel impelled to re-explain, amplify, or convince, I stop the conversation right there.

I was once interviewed by a potential sponsee, beyond the perfectly legitimate questions about my experience, recovery practices, and how the sponsorship might work, to a detailed auditing of how I approached particular steps, to make sure that I came up to scratch.

I've since learned to back out as gracefully as possible when such scrutiny kicks in.

When I'm hungry, I eat the soup. If I trust the chef, I don't ask what's in the soup or fish things out of it and leave them on the side.

The course must be completed as it stands to take full, or sometimes any, effect.

When people say they drank because, and then cite external circumstances, emotions, or really anything but the bare mental obsession, the bare physical craving, the twin compulsions sober and drunk, as the reason for having a drink or having another drink, they are saying not that they were powerless but that they were operating on the basis of reasoning, albeit admittedly faulty reasoning: they were in the driving seat.

The twin diagnostic features of alcoholism—the (mental) compulsion to have the first drink; the (physical) compulsion (acting through the mind) to have the next drink—are best foregrounded not by the situations that appear to explain the drinking through perception, goal-establishment, and actions designed to achieve that goal (e.g. 'I drank to escape my feelings') but by their opposite:

I had the first drink despite what I felt, believed, thought, or wanted. I had the second and subsequent drinks even though [insert list of interests, considerations, anticipated consequences].

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. …

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. (Big Book)

Unmanageability is the corollary of powerlessness. If alcoholism could require me to drink and then continue to drink, I am not in charge. If I am not in charge, I cannot manage my own life. Note the rewording in the book itself. Our lives had become unmanageable is referring not to any intrinsic 'unmanageability' of 'people, places, and things' or to any actual consequences that might have manifested. It is not referring to any other personal defects or shortcomings. It is the automatic consequence of powerlessness over alcohol. An active alcoholic is not in charge of their life.

But upon entering AA we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

Absolute humiliation

Humiliation: being brought to ground level.

Absolute humiliation: being brought absolutely to ground level: not a millimetre above or below.

Humility is the state of being at ground level.

Humiliation is the process of being brought there.

This can be and upward or downward motion, from morbid self-abasement or from conceit.

Utter defeat

= complete defeat (first paragraph)

Personal powerlessness

The powerlessness is powerlessness when I am left to my own devices. I'm not powerless in reality, because power is available.

Purposeful

The purpose is there but is not mine to discern. Per Step Eleven, I find out only what to do today. When I look back, each decade actually took care of itself. Each passes and disappears and takes with it all its drama. Even the bulk of the memories of each fade. All that is left is fridge magnets. All that seemed so important is gone. What remains is God's purpose, and that cannot be discerned, even in retrospect.

We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins AA unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbles himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious. Of real happiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt by an immense experience, this is one of the facts of AA life. The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.

Good can come

The good does not arise from within the illusory material world. It breaks into it like a dawn into darkness. The darkness was merely the lack of light. Good does not come from within darkness. This is why Steps Four and Eight are about disclosure not analysis: there is no treasure in the darkness. The treasure is what is left when the darkness is dispelled. This is why any form of mental healing ('psychotherapy') that does not involve the abandonment of the entire illusory thought system and its replacement with recognition of and engagement with a higher reality, namely the only true reality, is doomed. You can rearrange the darkness all you like, but the light, the good, must come from without. It does not emerge from the broken system itself.

His devastating weakness and all its consequences

Weakness = reliance on the ego and its direction (of which the impulse to drink is but one manifesting aspect)

Consequences = the progressive self-consumption of the mind starved of external input. Alcoholic drinking, yes, but, even if that is eliminated, there are a thousand other obsessions, preoccupations, and destructive patterns that are persistently returned to.

The alcoholic drinking is the symptom of the underlying problem: the reliance on self, on the wrong mind's mis-creations. Until that reliance is broken, the prospect of a return to drinking is ever-present.

In fact, in the presence of any activity that dulls the mind and its ability to realise its categorical error in choosing separateness, identity, materialism, the ego can delay almost indefinitely the admission of complete defeat. Any mood- or mind-altering chemical, whether licit or illicit (the biochemistry does not care); any acting out, particularly with sex and romance, food, and gambling; the obsessive use of devices and apps ... all of these will daze the mind and prevent it from focusing accurately.

The full horror must be seen and felt, and this cannot be circumvented.

Anything that holds me a millimetre above ground level, the place of humility, might as well be holding me a thousand miles above it. I must be locked in place for the device to be activated, for truth to become apparent in a way that mobilises my action.

When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached AA expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that, so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will.

Personal conquest of this compulsion

The wrong mind that tells me to drink, or hate, or worry, if it is the only mind I have available, will not sign its own death warrant; it cannot and will not argue itself out of existence. If one drop of the poison remains in the system, if one 'lurking notion' remains to propagate itself, relapse a matter only of time.

In a corrupted version of Othello with the ego's rules, if there are any black tiles left, all of the tiles will eventually turn black. White cannot win against black. The only solution is for the game to be abandoned.

No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete.

No other kind of bankruptcy

Oh, but many other kinds of bankruptcy: not commercial bankruptcy, but any addiction, any mental obsession.

The rapacious creditor

Anything that takes my attention, my mind, and grips it, is literally taking everything from me, because my mind is the only thing I have. If it is occupied, preoccupied, occupied to capacity, with the obsession (whether or not that leads to action), my life is suspended in its entirety. There is no life: only the endless circling of the maypole, round and round, the ribbons becoming ever more tightly wound.

Self-sufficiency

Firstly, it is right to observe that I am bled of all ability to direct my thinking and therefore action.

However, that self-direction, in the illusory world of the material, is itself part of the illusion: driven by the dictates of the material world I believe I live in, all 'decisions' are actually automated, entirely predictable outcomes of a closed algorithm. The laws of science govern the movement of the billiard balls on the table, and they move entirely predictably in accordance with those laws unless a deus ex machina picks up a billiard cue and intervenes; then, the outcome cannot be predicted. The laws of science are still obeyed, but the wildcard has been played, and the outcome is in the hands of the cue-holder.

It is right and good that I be bled of self-sufficiency, that I stop relying on myself, namely the predictable, automated mechanisms governing my actions, and seek reliance on something from outside the internally closed system. The system is closed from the inside: the billiard balls cannot affect anything outside the system. But something from outside the system can be called in, invoked, to intervene.

That's precisely what I'm called upon to do: ask God for help.

All will to resist its demands

What's the demand of the obsession: Think about me!

Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete

The bankruptcy is technically complete once it's complete in fact. Our acceptance or denial of the fact does not change the state of affairs. But the bankruptcy can be acted on only once accepted.

Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove it from us.

Complete defeat

This means we're at war, and the war is over, although, of course, it's possible to continue attempting to fight even though it is to no avail.

Natural instinct

If natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness, and the admission of personal powerlessness is the prerequisite for progress, then the natural instincts are malfunctioning; the natural instincts are to be disregarded. What is required is an unnatural approach to the situation. Combined with the practically no one, we are being enjoined to react differently to this proposal in Step One differently than almost everyone else would. We are asked to go resolutely against the grain.

Truly awful

Not only is this very awful; the awfulness is true. Step One is not supposed to be pleasant and jolly.

We have warped our minds

From within the mind that is warped, once jot of sense is still required: the jot that correctly identifies the warping of the mind is the last jot of sanity that must be clung onto. Furthermore, it is we who have warped our minds. No one else has done it for us. Nothing is to be trusted except this admission of defeat. The rest of the programme will be about the unwarping of the mind.

Obsession for destructive drinking

The thought that won't let go, namely the desire to drink, is a thought that is insane, because such drinking, if it occurs, will be destructive.

Act of providence

This is Divine guidance and care and takes the form of an active intervention in a mechanism that will otherwise bring destruction.

Remove

The obsession needs to be removed, not managed.

Note that the same dynamics and mechanisms apply to any problem other than alcohol.

Step One: The building is burning.

Step Two: There is a stepladder leading out of the burning building.

Step Three: Climb down the Steps to safety.

• No one likes to admit defeat

• Also: hard to admit defeat, even in the face of evidence

• What are we defeated by?

• Two-fold nature of alcoholism ('double-edged sword')

  • The mind is obsessed with drinking
    • 'The insane urge' (to have the first drink)
  • Yet that drinking is destructive
    • 'Allergy' = 'sensitivity' = compulsion to continue (after the first drink)

• The mind cannot fix itself

  • Self-confidence is a liability
  • Willpower is of no use when directed at the obsession
  • [Though vital when directed at the programme]

• The outcome, if the process is unchecked, is death

  • 'Ultimately destroy ourselves in the process'

• Something external must do so

• The defeat is total

• Admission of defeat is the prerequisite for recovery ('bedrock')

• Sobriety impossible or precarious without it

• Real happiness impossible without it

• The steps ('attitudes and actions') are too hard otherwise

  • Rigorous honesty and tolerance
  • Confession
  • Restitution
  • Higher Power
  • Meditation / prayer
  • Sacrifice of time and energy

• Alcoholics are self-centred: we will do this only for survival

• If defeat is admitted:

  • Lay hold of AA principles
  • 'With all the fervour with which the drowning seize life preservers'

• Promise: 'they almost invariably got well'

• How to admit defeat when not all has been lost:

• Required: admission of unmanageability

• Recognise: losing control precedes the realisation thereof

• Drinking (for us) is no mere habit

• It is the beginning of a fatal progression

• Prove this by trying controlled drinking

• No need to wait for 'extreme difficulties'

• Once we have admitted this

  • The mind opens
  • We are ready to do whatever is necessary
  • ... to lift the merciless obsession

I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control. I have had many men who had, for example, worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which was to be settled on a certain date, favourably to them. They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. (The Doctor’s Opinion)

If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk. (There Is A Solution)

Once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. (There Is A Solution)

His physical and mental condition were unusually good. Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time. More baffling still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall. (There Is A Solution)

So he returned to this doctor, whom he admired, and asked him point-blank why he could not recover. He wished above all things to regain self-control. He seemed quite rational and well-balanced with respect to other problems. (There Is A Solution)

The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. (More About Alcoholism)

He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop. An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has—that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle. (More About Alcoholism)

This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it—this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish. (More About Alcoholism)

Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk. “Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn’t hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn’t seem to bother me so I tried another.” (More About Alcoholism)

But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. (More About Alcoholism)

In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be. (More About Alcoholism)

Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon. I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner. As I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner. That was all. Nothing more. I ordered a cocktail and my meal. (More About Alcoholism)

They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drink. (The Doctor’s Opinion)

Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity. (We Agnostics)

If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. (Into Action)

Of course he couldn’t drink, but why not sit hopefully at a table, a bottle of ginger ale before him? After all, had he not been sober six months now? Perhaps he could handle, say, three drinks—no more! Fear gripped him. He was on thin ice. Again it was the old, insidious insanity—that first drink. With a shiver, he turned away and walked down the lobby to the church directory. Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar. But what about his responsibilities—his family and the men who would die because they would not know how to get well, ah—yes, those other alcoholics? There must be many such in this town. He would phone a clergyman. His sanity returned and he thanked God. Selecting a church at random from the directory, he stepped into a booth and lifted the receiver.

- In the doctor’s judgment he was utterly hopeless (The Doctors’ Opinion)

- Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. (We Agnostics)

- We thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready; that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him. (How It Works)

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

There are page numbers quoted below. The number after the colon (:) is the paragraph number. '21:1' therefore means page 21, first full paragraph (any run-on paragraph from the previous page is counted as part of the previous page). Sometimes the reference is to a particular story (e.g. 'Jim'), where the story might extend across up to four pages.

The discussion below concerns alcohol. If your problem is sex, food, gambling, etc., just make the necessary substitutions.

To start off, quickly read through the book up to the middle of page 44, to get an overview. If you have recently read up to the end of Dr Bob's Nightmare, in order to get an overview, you can skip this step. Rereading these pages will not hurt, in any case.

Step One reads:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

This breaks down into the following ideas:

Physical craving

Key idea

Once we alcoholics start drinking, we're (often, usually, or always) compelled to carry on and on, regardless of consequences. This is not because of circumstances or emotion; this is not because we're dumb or mad; it's because we're built that way. We might always have been like that, or maybe that's how we've become. In any case, that's how we are now. This means we cannot moderate, and we cannot drink safely. Once we alcoholics have had the first drink, we are powerless over how much we drink and what we do.

Relevant passage(s)

• Doctor's Opinion (in general)
• 21:1
• 21:2
• 22:4
• 31:3
• Man of thirty (32)
• 44:1

No such thing as a safe slip

Key idea

When we relapse, we might never stop drinking, even if we've stopped drinking before. Even one relapse could be fatal, because it could lead to us continuing to drink until we die. When we alcoholics relapse, we are powerless over the duration of the relapse. It could be a day, a month, a year, or forever.

Relevant passage(s)

Man of thirty (32)

Mental obsession

Key idea

The mental obsession is the persistently recurring, overpowering impulse to drink despite the consequences. We alcoholics, untreated, will experience this impulse, and sooner or later we will surrender to it. Then, the physical craving kicks in, and we won't be able to stop. We alcoholics—if untreated—are powerless over whether we drink the first drink. This is the insanity from which we are restored in Step Two.

Relevant passage(s)

• 20:6
• 23–44 (in general)
• Man with the hammer (23)
• Certain American businessman (26)
• 24:1
• 24:2
• 24:3
• 30:1
• 34:2
• Jim (35)
• 37:3
• Jaywalker (37)
• Fred (39)
• 44:1

Unmanageability

Key idea

To manage one's life means to manage one's schedule and actions. If we are powerless over the first drink and over subsequent drinks, we are not in charge of our schedule or our actions: the impulse to drink and the compulsion to continue drinking are in charge. We are not managing our life; our alcoholism is: it's in charge, rather than us. Terrible consequences are a good sign of unmanageability, but some of us have orderly lives and yet our lives are unmanageable, because we're not calling the shots; the mental obsession and the physical craving are calling the shots.

Relevant passage(s)

• 18:1
• 21:2
• Page 3 of Step One in 'Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions':

'Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trend grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely more than potential alcoholics. They were spared that last ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone through. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters we could say, "Perhaps you're not an alcoholic after all. Why don't you try some more controlled drinking, bearing in mind meanwhile what we have told you about alcoholism?" This attitude brought immediate and practical results. It was then discovered that when one alcoholic had planted in the mind of another the true nature of his malady, that person could never be the same again. Following every spree, he would say to himself, "Maybe those A.A.'s were right . . ." After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us.'

Progressive, fatal, incurable

Key idea

Alcoholism gets worse as the alcoholic gets older. The mental obsession and physical craving strengthen. Alcoholics tend to die decades early. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Only abstinence can arrest the process. Self-will fails to do the job. Only a spiritual awakening can keep us away from the first drink permanently. Otherwise, the situation is hopeless.

Relevant passage(s)

• 24:4
• Certain American businessman (26)
• 30:3
• 31:2
• Man of thirty (32)
• 33:3
• 34:1
• 38:3
• 39:1

Necessity of a spiritual awakening

Key idea

The alcoholic's mind is fatally flawed: there's a part of the brain that seems hard-wired to want a drink. Unless we turn our will and life over to a Higher Power, we will drink again. That surrender to a Higher Power then enables the other underlying problems to be gradually sorted out. But it is the surrender that enables us to remain sober, even if the impulse to drink arises.

Relevant passage(s)

• 25:3
• Certain American businessman (26)
• 38:3
• 39:1
• 42:2
• 42:3
• 43:2
• 43:3
• 44:1

Exercise 1: Powerlessness

Take each key idea above, find quotation or two from the book that helps you remember this, then write a couple of examples of where you have observed this in yourself. Be specific and brief. With most questions, you'll have recourse to your experience. With the question of fatality, you're looking for situations that were potentially fatal or how fatality might play out.

Exercise 2: Unmanageability

Write a list of the top ten things that resulted from drinking that you would prefer not to have happened.

Extra reading

Here are some links to the blog:

https://first164.blogspot.com/search/label/Step One

https://first164.blogspot.com/search/label/Physical Craving

https://first164.blogspot.com/search/label/Mental Obsession

https://first164.blogspot.com/search/label/Step One (insanity)

https://first164.blogspot.com/search/label/Unmanageability

Some people find these articles helpful. If they help, great. If they make things more confusing, don't worry. They overlap a lot, so maybe just read articles until the ideas are clear. If you want to read them all, that won't hurt, so be my guest.

To drink or leave AA I would be uprooting myself. Sure, in principle it's possible to come back. However, anyone who has re-potted plants will know that, when you re-pot a plant, it does not necessarily 'take': the roots do not necessarily re-establish themselves. If I were to leave, I could not guarantee that I would come back, and, if I came back, I cannot guarantee it would 'take'. I had better stay sober, therefore.

'The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.' (Page 30)

'But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. ... But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened.' (Page 37)

'Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again.' (Page 8)

'Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?' (Page 37)

'However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane. It’s strong language—but isn’t it true?' (Page 38)

'I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.' (Page 40)

'But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.' (Page 66: note that the insanity, here, precedes the first drink.)

'... those insanely trivial excuses to drink.' (Page 120)

'He was on thin ice. Again it was the old, insidious insanity—that first drink.' (Page 154)

What does not help matters is that the word 'insanity' is also used to denote two other phenomena: how insane we are or appear when drinking or the insanity of late-stage alcoholism:

'Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity.' (Page 9)

'He is seldom mildly intoxicated. He is always more or less insanely drunk.' (Page 21)

'The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.' (Page 30)

'Sometimes there were screaming delirium and insanity.' (Page 107)

'He is violent, or appears definitely insane when drunk.' (Page 110)

Step One (page 58, Big Book) states:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

There are some popular misconceptions about this. First of all, we need to understand what unmanageability is not.

It's not generalised or pre-existing incompetence, neuroticism, disorganisation, or external chaos, distinct from the effects of drinking. Firstly, the Big Book nowhere glosses unmanageability as these; secondly, it's patently not true of all alcoholics; thirdly, plenty of non-alcoholics are these things; and fourthly, the poster boys, Jim (page 35) and Fred (page 39), do not fit this description except in as far as their drinking is directly causing these. If the Steps require such an admission, many alcoholics would be barred from continuing.

Bill explained unmanageability in the chapter Step One in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression.

The person is powerless; the person's life is therefore unmanageable. We've lost control of drinking and therefore our lives. Unmanageability is not a second, additive condition. This relationship is one of entailment. If (a) is true, (b) is true. (a) entails (b). In US American English, an unspaced em dash conveys this relationship. In words, we could replace the dash with 'and so', 'and consequently', 'and thus' etc. Step One is not a cumulative test with two parts; it is a single test.

If I am powerless over alcohol (doomed to drink, doomed to drink too much), I am not in charge of my life: the rat-and-lizard brain is in charge, and unless it's knocked out by an intervening God, I'm toast.

The Big Book is not written entirely like a textbook. The material on Step One is scattered throughout the first few chapters and into the chapter We Agnostics.

There are various aspects to Step One: the physical craving, the mental obsession, the fact there is no such thing as a safe slip, alcoholism's fatal, progressive, and incurable nature, unmanageability, uand the fact that, for most alcoholics, a spiritual solution is required.

This little spreadsheet may help locate where these quotations are. You can use the filters at the top to select particular topics.

https://cutt.ly/BigBookStepOneQuotations

Here are some notes I did for a talk. They can double as a rough guide to the first three Steps.

Introduction

Newcomers to the fellowship or newcomers to the programme? Sometimes people are years sober and are newcomers to the programme. The approach is largely the same with these!

Newcomers to the Steps, or newcomers to the Steps as they are set out in the Big Book? Sometimes people have great experience of some Steps, but with ideas that are fundamentally at odds with those set out in the Big Book, and likewise missing some ideas in the Big Book.

Preface / Forewords / Doctor's Opinion + up to 63: a lot of material!

If the approach is not detailed enough:

• Risk of missing important points
• Without a sufficiently deep experience, there might not be the motivation to get through the harder Steps

If the approach is too detailed:

• People lose steam and give up
• Missing the wood for the trees

Variation:

• There are different approaches for different people
• I've grown, so how I sponsor changes over time, too

This is how I sponsor presently.

Step One (up to page 44)

Six points to cover:

• Physical craving: powerless after the first drink
  • How do I know I'm powerless?
  • If I keep drinking 'too much' (= giving rise to more consequences than I'm comfortable with), the only reasonable explanations are:
    • Stupidity
    • Madness
    • Powerlessness
  • If I am neither dumb nor mad yet keep drinking too much, that's powerlessness
• Entails: no such thing as a safe slip
  • I might do a terrible thing on the slip
  • I might go into a fog that never lifts
• Mental obsession: doomed to have the first drink
  • 'The recurring overpowering delusion that a drink is a good idea'
  • If I keep getting bad consequences yet keep returning to the first drink (which seems a good idea at the time), the only reasonable explanations are:
    • Stupidity
    • Madness
    • Powerlessness
  • If I am neither dumb nor mad yet keep having the first drink, that's powerlessness
• Fatal / progressive / incurable
  • If you drink way too much repeatedly, it'll likely kill you early
  • According to a German doctor I know specialising in alcoholism, you're looking at shortening your life on average by more than 20 years
  • It got worse as I got older and so will likely continue to do so
  • My response to alcohol will never fundamentally change
  • My propensity to bad decision-making will never fundamentally change

• Unmanageability

  • If I can't choose when I drink and I can't choose how much I drink when I drink, I am not in charge of the course of the day
  • I'm not in charge of the course of the day, I'm not in charge of the course of my life
  • That is unmanageability

  By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression. [After a few such experiences,] often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, [he would return to us convinced.] (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

  • Unmanageability is therefore not about consequences but about being trapped in a downward spiral
  • Unmanageability is not disorder, incompetence, or neurosis: these are not singular to alcoholics nor universal amongst alcoholics
  • Being trapped in a downward spiral of alcohol is both singular to and universal amongst alcoholics
  • Powerlessness thus entails unmanageability
  • Powerlessness is the cause; unmanageability is the effect
• Necessity of the Higher Power
  • What happens after the first drink can't be fixed
  • My only hope is to stay away from the first drink
  • If I can't, necessarily something else must empower me, if I am to do this
  • I need a Higher Power to ensure my survival: and that needs to kick in today

Step Two (Chapter 4)

• I need direction and power (this is entailed by Step One)
• Establishing the existence of that power:

In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements. (Page 50)

• Were others powerless?
• Have others accessed power?
• There is a Power Greater Than Them!

Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself? (Page 47)

• Either I am greater than other people's Higher Power
• Or other people's Higher Power is greater than me
• Let's test this out: can I get anyone sober?

That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (Page 60)

• Other people couldn't get me sober; I can't get other people sober
• If that Power exists, it is by definition greater not just than them but greater than me
• Relevant scope of that Power: direction and power to stay sober and thrive

God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? (Page 53)

• If power and direction are available, they're available universally, not selectively: they're available to me

What I leave out of Step Two:

• The definition of 'God'
• Theodicy ('the vindication of divine providence in view of the existence of evil')
• The how of it, other than: activating all three sides of the AA triangle is sufficient to access that Power
• Religion in general
• Anything else that gets in the way

These questions are set aside for now and can be returned to later. Generally, they resolve themselves automatically once the Steps have been completed.

Step Three

How it works

Key points to consider (from pages 58 to 60)

If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.

Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

Half measures availed us nothing.

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. (b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (c) That God could and would if He were sought.

Step Three Requirement (pages 60 to 62)

We've already decided we have to have God in charge: we cannot be trusted.

Wouldn't it be easier if we turned out lives over gladly?

The point of these two pages: not only is staying sober through God being in charge necessary; it's also the only way of producing effectiveness and contentment more broadly.

We had to let go of all of our old ideas: the whole basis of life must go!

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.

This means that living life believing we have to arrange circumstances to our liking fails every time.

Either we get what we want, and we're disappointed and want something else.

Or we don't (yet) get what we want and we're frightened and angry.

The whole system produces despair.

Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?

I create my own unhappiness, both externally (where I play a contributory role), and internally (where my emotional response to life is 100% down to me).

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

'I' am the problem, and the 'I' has to go.

Step Three Idea

I remain in the driving seat.

But: God is the power and direction.

GPS + GAS.

I have to take action! That's down to me.

You gotta take action to activate your faith: God ain't gonna slide no hotdog under your door.

The contract:

He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well.

Taking Step Three

• Am I willing to complete the process I start?
• Am I willing to do so, putting hours a day into the process until it's done?
• Am I willing to maintain the structure of Steps Ten through Twelve as I'm doing it?

If the answers to these questions are satisfactory:

• Adopt the position of God being in charge (an internal matter).
• Say the prayer (sealing the deal / signing the contract).

What next?

Establish / reaffirm the daily routine of Steps Ten through Twelve.

Start Step Four under a sponsor's guidance. 1+ hour a day on a workday. 2+ hours a day on the weekend.

Sometimes people in AA define unmanageability as being unhappy, disorganised, or incompetent and suggest that, to take Step One, we have to admit we are these three things (or at least one of them). We have to admit that we can't turn up, that we are neurotic, that we cannot hold down relationships or jobs, and other disagreeable facts. However, Step One is about alcoholism.

According to page 30 and page 59:

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step One is therefore about the characteristics of alcoholism and what makes us different from non-alcoholics.

To admit we are alcoholics is therefore to admit we have the characteristics of alcoholics. These are twofold:

If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.

To put simply: I keep starting, and when I start, I carry on.

How does this relate to unmanageability? The basic text does not explicitly shed light on this, but Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions does:

Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression. ... After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced.

Unmanageability is simply the consequence of powerlessness. It is not a separate characteristic. If I have no power to stay away from the first drink, I am not in control of the course of my life: my life is unmanageable. If I have no power to lift the shopping, I cannot manage it. If I have no power to turn the steering wheel, I cannot control the course of the car. If I have no power over my employees, I cannot control what they do. If I have no power in my kitchen, I cannot cook my dinner. A entails B. B is the consequence of A. Powerlessness entails unmanageability. Unmanageability is the consequence of powerlessness.

According to Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. 

Alcoholism is therefore twofold. Not threefold. No hidden clause about being neurotic or unreliable.

Now, most alcoholics when they get to AA are unhappy, disorganised, and incompetent, but these are not features of alcoholism. They're features of most humans. And they're not even necessarily features of all newly sober alcoholics in AA. I've met plenty of AAs who, even when they are new, are reasonably cheerful, well organised, and even highly effective in their lives. The AA literature supports this (read Fred's story on page 39 of the Big Book onwards). Unhappiness, disorganisation, and incompetence are features of most humans (read the newspaper from page 1 onwards).

Of course, people can construe the Steps however they like, but it is important to realise that the construal of the two parts of Step One as entirely unrelated notions (which can be traced back to a number of 'schools' of AA from the 1990s and before, whose ideas were propagated through popular tapes) was not what was intended by the authors of the Big Book.

To say that the unmanageability of alcoholism is definable solely with reference to circumstances or emotions is as nonsensical as saying that a cat is an animal with fur. Sure, most cats have fur, but some breeds of cat have no fur, and many non-cats have fur. The observation that cats have fur is a trivial one and does not help anyone who is not aware of what a cat is to define one. Similarly, to say that alcoholics are people with out-of-control emotions and whacky circumstances firstly leaves out of the definition many people who are genuinely alcoholic and brings into the definition many people who are not. It teaches us nothing about alcoholism, and admitting one is unhappy, disorganised, and incompetent no more reveals one to be an alcoholic than Fido or Spot admitting he has fur reveals him to be a cat.

The reason this is not a trivial or academic point is this: many people in AA do not realise that, without a spiritual awakening achieved through utter surrender and the brisk and then continued performance of a number of actions, they will drink again. It is believed by many that the Steps are there to help them become more effective at living, namely happier, more organised, and more competent. Now, the Steps will achieve that, but that is not their chief purpose: that's a felicitous by-product. Not realising that the Steps, practised promptly, rigorously, and in perpetuity, are vital for guaranteeing sobriety itself I believe is the chief reason why people do not take them. I only took them when I started to realise my life depended on them, regardless of the fact I was actually started to sort out my life externally pretty well, a few alcoholic slips notwithstanding.

Let's get back to the nuts and bolts of alcoholism: the fatal consequence of relying on one's own mind to direct the course of one's life, and the unavoidability of alcoholic self-destruction without reliance, instead, on a Higher Power.

So, you go to the railway station, and when you get there, there are lots of trains at different platforms, so you pick one and board it, but to your horror you discover it's a runaway train and can't stop. It crashes into the buffers at another station, way further than you intended to go, and you're slightly injured. But no fear! It was just a runaway train. So you try again, go to the station, and board a different one. This one turns out to be a runaway train, too, but, after a nail-biting few hours, it gradually slows to a stop because of a gradient in the line. Relieved, you try again, and, this time, the train is a perfectly ordinary train, and arrives on schedule: no problems. The brakes work on this one. Thinking you were silly to discern the hand of fate in a run of bad luck, you go to the railway station again, but today's train is indeed another runaway train, and this time it tumbles down a ravine and you break multiple bones. On discharge, you decide to take the train back from the hospital, and, still suffering from multiple fractures, another runaway train takes you on an unexpected trip round the country. This must be really, really bad luck, you think, because, every day, almost every train arrives at its proper destination without incident. The problem just seems to be with the trains you happen to board. That makes no sense, though. It's not just the intercity trains, the suburban trains, the underground trains, the international trains. It could be any of them or none of them. There's no discernable pattern. The worst aspect: it's happening more and more often, and incidents are becoming ever graver. You're baffled and dejected.

One day, on the way back out of the train station after another hair-raising adventure, a gentleman approaches you and asks if you can help him. He would like to tell his story, just for a few minutes, and it will save him from getting on a runaway train. You see some of the scars on his face, and it would be heartless indeed to refuse. So you listen. And he tells you the strangest story. He says: the problem is not the trains. It's the passengers who are the problem. There are certain travellers who actually cause the trains to become runaway trains. These people are attracted to each other, so, on any given runaway train, the passengers will largely comprise a lot of people with this difficulty. They always take a few others along with them who suffer because of the runaway train through no apparent fault of their own. There are those, too, who, curiously, are actually attracted to the runaway-train people. They're just as bashed up and baffled as the runaway-train people themselves. Anyway, here is the bad news: you cannot board a train, as you currently are, without it becoming a runaway train. This information would be sufficient to avoid disaster, except for two reasons. Firstly, it is no good trying to avoid trains altogether: after all, travel is unavoidable. Secondly, and more alarmingly, such people seem strangely obsessed with trying to solve this problem head-on. Some just want the trains they board to be normal. Others quite like the runaway train adventures, except when they go literally off the rails. But either way: they think there's some way of figuring out which train is going to be safe today, and that there's a way of balancing risk and reward. Unfortunately, he goes on to relate, this heartbreaking obsession is both deadly and incurable.

Deadly? Incurable? 'Why aren't you dead yet?', our friend joshes the gentleman. 'Well,' says the gentleman. 'There is actually a solution.' He goes onto explain a programme of actions that have nothing to do with trains, which rearrange the psyche, the mind, of the individual. And then, provided that the individual maintains a few daily habits, he can go to any train station in the world and get on any train, and it will always arrive at its proper destination. You see, the problem lies 100% in the individuals. It's not and was never about the trains.

 

Can AA's share their experience on the Big Book and the Steps it contains with members of other fellowships, e.g. Al-Anon, S-Anon, and guide them through the technical mechanics of the Steps?

The solution to alcoholism is the service of God through Step Twelve.

This means that being in the solution means being in Step Twelve (with Steps Ten and Eleven as the method), the first nine Steps having been completed.

To this end, the first nine Steps must be completed swiftly.

If an individual is not completing the first nine Steps swiftly, the goal of practising Step Twelve as the urgently required solution for alcoholism is not being pursued.

The solution is required urgently for alcoholics: the state of untreated alcoholism is one in which the individual could drink at any time and, if they drink, might never stop.

Any dallying means that Step One is not understood or not believed or that the individual does not care whether they are consumed by alcoholism.

Step One says I'm powerless over alcohol & my life has become unmanageable.

That means I'm powerless over alcoholism.

That means I cannot manage it.

By extension:

If I do not accept the things I cannot (and should not) change, I will be angry and/or controlling*, amongst other things. That's a failure to recognise powerlessness. It's also unmanageable.

If I do not change the things I can and should, I will be guilty and/or neglectful*, amongst other things. That's a failure to exercise or access power. It's also unmanageable.

If I do not discern which is which, I will be confused and/or paralysed*. That a failure to exercise or access power. It's also unmanageable.

Exercise:

Where I am angry and/or controlling about the things I cannot (and should not) change?
Where am I guilty and/or neglectful about the things I can (and should) change?
Where am I confused and/or paralysed about which is which?

Do I recognise my powerlessness?
Do I recognise my unmanageability?

*Substitute other negative emotions and unhelpful (non-)behaviour as appropriate.




.

The Big Book suggests that, for us, to drink is to die.

Obviously, this does not mean that if I have a glass of whiskey I shall be dead by 8:22 (it is 8:21 now, and there is some whiskey in the cupboard, which belongs to my other half).

What it means is this: if I drink, I could trigger a process I cannot stop, and that process could kill me.

If I had a parcel on my lap, and I was 100% certain it was a bomb that could blow up and kill me at any time, I would promptly remove it to a safe distance.

If I had a parcel on my lap, and I was 1% certain it was a bomb that could blow up and kill me at any time, I would promptly remove it to a safe distance.

The likelihood is irrelevant: the possibility is sufficient.

Therefore, the urgency with which I seek to have and maintain a spiritual awakening is the same regardless of the likelihood: a 1% likelihood (as opposed to a 100% likelihood) does not command 1% urgency: it commands 100% urgency.

Think: Russian roulette, faulty aeroplanes, seat belts, undercooked chicken: a small risk is treated as gravely as a 100% risk.

Here's a simple breakdown of Step One.

• I am powerless after the first drink (i): on any drinking occasion, if I start, I am at risk of drinking too much and taking actions I will regret.
• I am powerless after the first drink (ii): if I start drinking, I might stop after one drink, thirty years, or never.
• I am powerless before the first drink: left to my own devices, my mind will suggest a drink and I will obey.

The above constitutes alcoholism.

What does that mean?

• My life is unmanageable: its course is determined by whether or not I drink (over which I am powerless) and then by how much I drink and what I do (over which I am powerless).
• I have a condition that is fatal.
• I have a condition that is progressive.
• I have a condition that is incurable.

If I'm upset it's because I think I need to get my own way to be OK.

No upset comes from outside of me: all upset comes from comparing my interpretation with my plan.

This cannot be dislodged until I recognise its insanity.

Step Two is viable only if I admit I am wholly wrong.

So everything is really a Step One issue.

To undo upset:

Recognise: if I'm unhappy I did it to myself.

I did it to myself by choosing my interpretation of the situation and comparing it to my plan.

I devised both by asking myself (the ego) questions: How do I see this? What do I want?

I must de-ask the questions. If the questions are de-asked, the false answers are dissolved.

Having de-asked the question I step back from the self (the ego) and say:
'Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.'

I measure the effectiveness with which I have implemented Step Three in my life by looking at my actions in the Step Eleven review: am I maximising the use of the 16 waking hours every day in the service of God, with some time to take the necessary actions to keep the show on the road and to enjoy the ride, as well?

If the answer is yes, and I am indeed fitting myself to be of maximum service, then great!

If not, the problem always lies somewhere in Steps One or Two.

Step One problem: I believe I'm an alcoholic but do not need a full-blown, ongoing spiritual experience to stay sober, i.e. I can adulterate the above attitude and approach to life with admixtures of sloth and purely selfish pursuits; I believe I can have my cake and eat it; I don't believe that the only two options are a spiritual experience or a potentially unstoppable return to active addiction; I believe that half measures will available me just about enough, thank you very much.

Step Two problem: there's no point in throwing myself fully into a wide-eyed trust of God and deployment of my time in His service because it won't work: I have special problems that God cannot solve, because I'm different; God is not omnipotent; in fact, my emotional or practical difficulties stem from beliefs, thinking, and behaviour that God cannot change, because God is actually less powerful than me, maybe five foot two tall, and certainly not as smart as me. So if anyone presents me with an alternative way of believing, thinking, and behaving, which will solve my problem, I'm not going to trust them, because I'm smarter not just than them but than the aggregate of people in AA and people on a spiritual path, and indeed God: I'm not going to give up my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, because I'm literally the smartest person I know and refuse to give any of these up because I'm right.

The answer in both cases is facing reality: go to AA long enough, and pay attention enough, and you'll soon discover that alcoholism is a patient, nasty disease, and that half measures do eventually avail nothing; go to AA long enough, and pay enough attention, and you'll soon discover that God is a patient, benevolent God, and that full measures do eventually avail everything.

I drank too much. In fact, I drank way too much for way too long. How much is too much? Enough to give rise to consequences that were unacceptable to me. It did not matter that the consequences might have been taken by others in their stride. What mattered is that they were important to me, and yet they were insufficient to bring about consistent moderation or stopping. When and how hard I tried to moderate or stop are actually irrelevant: the fact that I didn't is sufficient evidence for me. If a person keeps driving into brick walls, the question of whether they're not hitting the brakes or whether they try hitting the brakes but the brakes fail is neither here nor there: either way, they keep hitting the wall despite intending not to, and unless something changes they're going to die. That was the position I was in when I came to AA. I drank too much, I didn't moderate, and I didn't stop. Powerlessness over alcohol means powerlessness over whether I have the first drink and powerlessness over how much I then drink and for how long. If I'm powerless at these two levels, my life is not manageable by me: it is being managed by my desire for the first drink and my subsequent desire for more. Unmanageability has nothing to do with having a chaotic external life or being neurotic, emotionally immature, or incompetent. Plenty of people fit that description yet are not powerless over the first drink; plenty of people have an orderly external life and are perfectly balanced, emotionally mature, and competent yet are indeed powerless over the first drink. The problem lies deeper: self-centeredness and the sense of separation that can be overcome temporarily by alcohol or permanently by God. If I'm to stay sober, I need a power greater than the desire for the first drink, and God is the only power I've encountered that is powerful enough to trump the desire over the first drink. That's why a spiritual experience is necessary for an alcoholic of my type and has been working for me for the last quarter of a century.

The Big Book, on page 35, says:

'So we shall describe some of the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem.'

The states are:

• A peculiar mental twist (page 33, cf. Jim, falsely believing that milk combined with whiskey renders the whiskey safe)
• A strange mental blank spot (page 42, cf. Fred, truthfully anticipating that two cocktails with dinner would be nice but failing to anticipate further consequences)
• Beginning to drink deliberately not casually (page 37)
• Little serious or effective thought (page 37)
• Not thinking at all (page 24)
• Two trains of thought running in parallel (page 37)

One way of rewording the 'powerlessness + unmanageability' combo for any problem:

Step One: I persistently return to destructive patterns.

That could be alcohol, sex-related acting out, romance-related acting out, gambling, pills, drugs, starvation, binging, purging, etc. Some of these are mine.

In Al-Anon: there are four destructive patterns (with variants) I see in my case:

(1) Taking responsibility where it's not my mine to take

• Trying to control your addiction, recovery, or life
• Offering you solutions you already have
• Working those solutions for you
• Creating a crisis
• Martyrdom, mothering, managing, manipulation

(2) Not taking responsibility where it is mine to take

• Neglect of my own needs, duties, and enjoyment of life

(3) Giving you responsibility where it's not yours to take

• Blaming you for what is not your fault
• Asking you to rescue me
• Relying on you for energy, creativity, spontaneity, and passion

(4) Denying your responsibility where it is yours to take

• Permitting unhealthy behaviour beyond reasonable bounds of tolerance / not setting boundaries
• Making excuses / covering up
• Denying the effect of your conduct on me
• Preventing a crisis when it is in the natural course of things

That's the baseline, and that's what the Steps, Traditions, Concepts, Fellowship, and Service have solved for me.

The Doctor's Opinion:

'The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.'

'Elusive'?

The feeling that alcohol gave me was elusive in three ways:

• It was hard to achieve;
• It was hard to describe clearly;
• It was hard to keep the full picture in mind: at critical moments I could recall the ups but not the downs.

The pre-Al-Anon recovery state in me:

I take responsibility for things I am not responsible for.

Manifests as: control, interference, bulldozing, worry, plotting, scheming, fretting, belief I have caused everything that goes on around me, including how other people think, behave, and feel.

I feel: frightened, high on the perceived power, angry, frustrated, disappointed with others, critical.

I do not take responsibility for things I am responsible for.

Manifests as: neglect of my own life because I'm too busy with the above.

I feel: claustrophic, guilty and ashamed, embarrassed, empty, despairing that anything will ever get sorted out, frightened that there will never be any time for me.

I deny your responsibility for things you are responsible for.

Manifests as: caretaking, worry, plotting, scheming, fretting.

I feel: loved, needed, wanted, but frustrated when things do not work out and increasingly angry at the person I caretake, plus raging when I stop caretaking but am faced with careseekers and/or their reactions to my new boundaries.

I give you responsibility for things you are not responsible for.

Manifests as: careseeking, blame, and manipulation.

I feel: looked after, vindicated, relieved of guilt, but angry when you don't behave how I want.

The solution I've found through Al-Anon friends, tapes, and literature:

I am 100% responsible for my beliefs, thoughts, actions, and feelings. You are 100% responsible for yours. In joint situations I have a part to play, but ask God for that part. Outcomes are none of my business. My chief responsibility is to look after my own recovery and wellbeing then devote spare energies to serving God in ways which don't (a) go beyond the scope of my duties or (b) deny your responsibility for your own life. I set boundaries kindly and stick to them. I do not blame anyone for how I am feeling. I recognise that the destination is printed clearly on the ticket whenever I have become entangled, and I have invariably made a decision based on self that has later placed me in a position to be hurt. Ultimately, I rely on God not others, but God works through others.

On a good day I can achieve this. On a bad day I can learn how best to walk towards this ideal tomorrow.

Fred's story in the book Alcoholics Anonymous (pages 39 to 43) is interesting because he's smart, nice, competent, emotionally mature, successful, and having a nice day.

Then he drinks again.

That means he did not drink again because he was stupid, nasty, incompetent, emotionally immature, unsuccessful, or having a horrible day.

It also means that, for me to get and stay sober, I don't need to become smart, nice, competent, emotionally mature, or successful or have a nice day, although these may be by-products.

To get and stay sober I have to drop my old ideas, go to God like a child, and be led.

... wanting more even if more does not bring benefit.

The mental obsession ...

... the persistently recurring, overriding thought: 'this time I'll get away with it.'

'The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.' (Page 30, Alcoholics Anonymous)

What this means to me:

In active addiction, there is usually some degree of control possible, although it will be eroded in time. This may be reflected in periods of moderation or periods of abstinence.

However, if this is not 'enjoyable', it will not be sustained.

However, if one is 'enjoying' the addiction, i.e. 'relaxing into it' fully with no attempt at abstinence or moderation, it will produce consequences that outweigh the enjoyment.

In active addition, the two modes are miserable control or enjoyment which ultimately produces misery due to the consequences of being out of control.

What the authors intended when they wrote that on page 59 of the Big Book is pretty clear: if I can't choose whether or not I have the first drink and then can't choose when I stop, I'm not in charge of my life, the impulsiveness and compulsion are in charge of my life. I'm literally not able to manage my life, if management means deliberately directing the course of something.

There is another meaning, which, although not intended or elaborated as part of Step One by the authors, is useful, and actually vital.

So, to manage is to deliberately direct the course of. Unmanageable could therefore mean 'I am unable to deliberately direct the course of my life'. It could also mean 'I am unable to direct the course of my life successfully.' In a sense the meaning is actually opposite: it means I am deliberately directing the course of my life, but the results are dreadful.

Why would the results (material outcomes and emotional experience) be dreadful? Because of the actions I am taking. Who decides those actions? I do. How? By making decisions. Where do those decisions come from? My judgements. Where do my judgements come from? My analysis. What is the analysis based on? My beliefs and my perceptions.

'My life is unmanageable', traced all the way back, therefore means my beliefs and perceptions suck, and there are probably issues with my analytical skills, too.

That means, for the material outcomes and emotional experience to change, my beliefs and perceptions need wholesale replacement.

So, I find someone who is getting better material outcomes and a better emotional experience and adopt their beliefs and perceptions. Better: I find someone that points to a spiritual system of thought that gives me a whole world of alternative beliefs, perceptions, analyses, judgements, decisions, and actions.

If resist these new beliefs, perceptions, analyses, judgements, decisions, and actions, I'm really saying, 'I do not want the cause (my beliefs, etc.) to change, but I do want the results to be different. Tell me how I can do that.'

Which is nuts.

Step One. Ta-dah.

Step One is not 'I have a major problem'. Here, the 'I' is still bigger than the problem, and the possession of the problem suggests that the possessor must solve the problem. Self-reliance is still in place.

Step One is 'I am a major problem'. The only solution is a Higher Power: abandonment of all last vestiges of self-reliance.

If you're sober (or clean, or abstinent, or whatever) right now, it's working. You may feel awful, your life may be in tatters, and you may have lots of rubbish thoughts going on, but it's working.

To say that recovery does not work because you feel awful, your life is in tatters, and you have lots of rubbish thoughts going on is like saying the train does not work because you don't like the scenery that is coming past you at eighty miles per hour.

Even more insane is getting off the train, whilst it is moving, sustaining serious injuries in the process, and then telling anyone who will listen that you got off a moving train because it was not moving (as it disappears into the distance with everyone else still on it).

Then again, the hallmark of addiction is insanity, so insanity is to be expected.

Correction: insane thinking is to be expected. The smart people recognise that their thinking is screwy and don't make decisions based on it. Sanity is not sane thinking: sanity is letting someone else's common sense prevail over one's own best ideas.

Or even better: invoking God's strength and power to take the next indicated action regardless of how one feels or what one thinks.

I can't stay sober based on a Step One based in turn on the consequences of my drinking.

This logic:

• If I drink, bad things happen,
• If bad things happen, I feel bad,
• I don't want to feel bad,
• I must not drink,

The only step you can complete perfectly, is it said, is Step One.

I would question this statement.

Step One is an admission. What is a perfect admission? Presumably an admission without any caveat, proviso, or reservation. Certainly, the Big Book says that there must be no reservation whatsoever. So far, so good.

However, what we’re dealing with in Step One is an alcoholic mind. An idea that can be clear, and wholeheartedly accepted, at ten past eleven in the morning can be joined by other, conflicting ideas by four-thirty in the afternoon, and completely displaced by seven in the evening.

The perfect execution of Step One would be such an admission which, 24 hours a day, for the rest of one’s life, remains perfectly untainted by any contradictory or conflicting thought. Frankly, I seriously doubt that anyone in AA has managed to keep their minds clear of any thoughts that contradict or conflict with Step One, for the rest of their lives.

In fact, it’s axiomatic that AAs, even those who are well recovered and decades sober, will exhibit moments (at the very least), if not hours, days, weeks, months, or years, of self-will, thus back-tracking brazenly on the second part of Step One, the admission that ‘we’ (the ‘small s’ self) cannot (successfully) manage our own lives.

Pretty much everyone I have sponsored, when completing Step One, whilst confident to proceed on the basis that its two propositions are true, concedes the presence and allure of stray thoughts. In fact, the presence and allure of such thoughts is precisely the insanity that the remainder of the steps is designed to combat, so one could expect the elimination of such thoughts only in tandem with the completion of the remainder of the Steps. If their permanent and perfect elimination were secured by the mere taking of Step One, the remainder of the steps would not be necessary.

So, my view is that taking Step One perfectly is an ideal, not an attained state.

Can other steps be taken perfectly? Steps Two, Three, and Six are unmeasurable, and Steps Four, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve are open-ended, with almost unlimited possibilities for expansion in time and scope. Let’s cross those off the list of steps that might be taken perfectly.

That leaves us with Five, Seven, Eight, and Nine.

Seven is a good candidate for perfect step-working. It’s a pivot point in the Steps, a one-off moment, and either one has said the prayer sincerely or one has not. So, Step Seven can be worked perfectly (although one might rightly argue that ‘humbly’ has degrees, and that no one is perfectly humble).

Steps Five, Eight, and Nine, provided that we use what in auditing would be called a ‘materiality threshold’, can be completely perfectly, and a failure to do so will likely result in relapse.

When auditors audit a firm’s accounts, they are not looking for every single error; they are looking for errors that result in material misstatement of the accounts. A threshhold is applied, below which errors are ignored as immaterial.

Similarly, in Step Five, every single manifestation of every character defect (in thought, word, and deed) is not trotted out. To do so would be impossible (for reasons of memory alone) and counterproductive: the purpose of the steps is not to stay locked in self-examination but to clear a path to allow God’s power to flow through us into right action on His behalf for our fellows.

A perfect Step Five is one in which the individual conveys all of the character defects she or he has, and character defects, in enumeration, are finite. The St Augustine Prayer Book contains a great listing, and that’s comprehensive but reassuringly finite. Apart from ‘twists of character’, we are to convey ‘dark crannies’ of the past. I take this to be the shameful and difficult secrets. Again, these are finite. If one works down from the worst, one fairly soon arrives at a point where the remaining secrets are merely minor indiscretions, and there is essentially nothing left hiding in the closet that has not in substance been conveyed already.

In practice, therefore, it’s perfectly possible to effect a perfect Step Five.

Similarly, with the judicious application of a materiality threshold, Step Eight is finite, and that sets the bounds of Step Nine: either one has done one’s utmost to set right these wrongs or one has not. The result is measurable, and perfection is thus attainable. The perfection is not one of outcome but effort.

In my case, the threat of relapse did not subside until I had done a reasonably good job on Steps Five, Eight, and Nine, and in particular the entry into the world of the spirit did not occur until, some years later, I completed Steps Five, Eight, and Nine much more satisfactorily, in each case leaving nothing significant inside that was not conveyed and, where applicable, amended.

Diseases have symptoms. Those symptoms are not permanently, universally present. Some people have back problems. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it does not. Just because, on a particular day, it does not hurt, does not mean that the problem has gone away. If you have a chest infection, you will cough. But not constantly. Just because you go one hour without coughing does not mean you have no chest infection.

But if your back regularly hurts; if you are coughing a fair amount, there is definitely something wrong.

So, if you ever lose control when you drink, you have a problem, even if it's only some of the time. All of the times you didn't lose control are irrelevant.

What does it mean if you have this problem (in conjunction with the propensity to return to the first drink despite the consequences)?

It means you have alcoholism, which is a disease that is progressive, fatal, and incurable, and, what's more, has an invisible line marking the point of no return, and that line can occur at any point during the course of a person's alcoholic career. Ever seen someone in AA slip in their 20s and then fail to make it back into AA, for decades, as they slip further and further into alcoholism? I have.

This means that, if you've stopped, you had better stay stopped.

So enough already with the it didn't happen every time!

To be clear:

Physical craving: this is the powerful urge to continue drinking after the first drink, regardless of whether or not I am having a nice time, enjoying the drinking, feeling ill, acting anti-socially, or the threat of consequences. The physical craving refers to the effect of having the first drink and therefore to the effect of alcohol on the body and mind. It is physical not in the sense of being perceived physically but in the sense of being triggered by a physical change, namely the introduction of alcohol into the body. Wanting the first drink, even badly, or being preoccupied with the first drink is not an example of the physical craving.

Mental obsession: this is the thought that prompts the first drink, namely the idea that a drink would be a good idea (and the absence of effective counterargument). This is separate from a desire to drink and certainly distinct from the physical craving. It is termed an obsession because it persistently recurs, not because it is necessarily associated with powerful emotion, preoccupation, etc. It can be merely a passing thought that allows a person to take a proffered glass of champagne, 'accidentally' order a pint rather than an orange juice, or unexpectedly put a bottle of wine in a shopping trolley. It need not occur often to be fatal.

Preoccupation: this is sometimes referred to as 'craving' or 'obsession', but this causes confusion, as these two terms, in the Big Book, are reserved for other phenomena. Preoccupation is continually or continuously thinking about drinking or wanting to drink. It will not necessarily lead to a drink, unless accompanied by the mental obsession. If the person is sane, preoccupation will simply be a painful irritation, and can persist to some extent for years after a person joins AA and stops drinking. See the last page of Dr Bob's Nightmare for an example of this, or page 15 of the Big Book (Bill's Story).

To drink, the mental obsession would need to return, i.e. the thought that a drink is a good idea even though my experience tells me it isn't. To give in to the mental obsession is to rate short-term gain more highly than the long-term pain it will invariably cause.

However, that's not enough: I would need to be disconnected from God. The lower authority, my mind, would need to make a decision without the higher authority, God, stepping in. The higher authority operates at a spiritual level not an intellectual level. We recoil as if from a hot flame; we do not think it through. Revulsion or walking away from a drinking situation is the sign that this higher authority is in charge.

How do you tell whether you're disconnected from God?

You can come at this from two angles:

How is my thinking or behaviour disconnecting me from God?

Death threats

What symptoms to do I have of being disconnected from God?

Discussion of the bedevilments

So, to test how close you are to a drink:

1. What action do I take, or am tempted to take, that gives me short-term gain but long-term pain.

Sometimes it is asserted that the phrase we were powerless is written in the past tense, so it is no longer true. The reason the phrase is in the past tense is that the past tense is consistent with the verb in the main clause, namely admitted. 'We admit we are powerless' thus becomes 'We admitted we were powerless'. A statement in the past about a condition in the past cannot indicate whether that condition in the future will be persist or pass, however.

However, the question is relevant and interesting. To answer the question of whether we remain powerless, we have to understand what an admission of powerlessness means. If one examines closely the material on Step One in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it is clear that being powerless means (a) not being able to stay away from the first drink through common sense prevailing over irrational impulses and (b) not being able to stop at a few drinks when we start.

Are these true even after one has recovered? The second element is still true: the experience of people who recover from alcoholism but later drift and lapse is that recovering through the steps does not alter the body such that drinking does not induce an insatiable craving for more.

The first element is more complex. If we successfully stay away from alcohol for years, it seems, on the face of it, that we are no longer powerless: if we were, why are we sober? It is true that power has been acquired, but there are two features of that power that are of note. Firstly, the power does not consist in common sense prevailing over irrational impulses. Although on occasion this is the form it will appear to take, my experience at least is not that reason is prevailing but that spirit is prevailing, in the same way that when I stand back from the edge of a tall building it is instinct that governs me, not an analysis of mechanics and anatomy suggesting that if I fall my internal organs will sustain irreparable damage. It is not intellect that prevails but instinct. The same is true when I 'recoil from [a drink] as from a hot flame'. Secondly, the power given is contingent (on the maintenance of a spiritual way of life) and does not become inherent. I, myself, am powerless, but I am not only myself any more: I am part of a greater whole, and it is that assimilation that confers power.

So, are we still powerless, years later? More yes than no.

The AA literature talks about a fatal progression. The way this works is this: during a drinking history, there are periods when the individual can stop for a bit, or play around with stopping for a few months, with short periods of sobriety punctuated with days or weeks of drinking. Then, with no warning, one of these micro-relapses extends and takes the person into a relapse that lasts for a year or a relapse the person cannot come back from.

The reason why it's never safe to have one drink if you're an alcoholic is that there is a progression taking place, which has both linear and step elements. Gradually, the alcohol takes hold, but there are step-changes, too. It's like jumping up and down on a floor for months, then suddenly the floor gives way, and you find yourself on the next storey down. That next storey may be quite different than the storey above, and the loss of control may be categorically worse.

I experienced this: for years I could not drink or could drink only moderately when I was with my parents; when I hit 21, something snapped, and I could not stop myself from getting uproariously, stociously drunk even in front of them, although the consequences of this were so awful it was the last thing I wanted to do.

To sum up: when someone slips, they might come back tomorrow, or they might come back never, and you can never tell. It's no good saying that, if things really become intolerable, one will just stop again; Dr Jekyll thinks that, once he becomes Mr Hyde, his Dr Jekyll sense will bring him back, but by the time he becomes Mr Hyde, the Dr Jekyll sense is gone, and all he is left with is Mr Hyde, and Mr Hyde never wants to come back. Mr Hyde has the upper hand and doesn't give a damn.

The alarming footnote is that this applies also to immoral behaviour: a little bit of immoral behaviour perhaps seems harmless, but the truth is that it grows and grows, and the more it grows the less you feel like stopping, until it takes over altogether. Immoral behaviour (or rotten thinking) deadens the soul, thereby deadening the only part of you that could wake you up if things go too far. When the fire consumes the fire alarm and the fire extinguisher, there is no hope any longer.

This is why we ask repeatedly for God to remove all our character defects. We don't know which one will kill us if it is allowed to grow so far our soul is so deadened we drink.

• Fantasy
• Flirting or hunting for sex
• Use of dating/hook-up apps
• Masturbation
• Porn
• Fetishes
• Predatory or pressurising behaviour
• Sex with negative consequences
• Other: ___________

Opening paragraphs—the definition of alcoholism

The Man of Thirty

Jim’s Story—the ‘peculiar mental twist’

The Parallel-Thinker—’the curious mental phenomenon’

The Jaywalker

Fred’s Story—the ‘strange mental blank spot’

Wrap-up questions

• Fantasy
• Flirting or hunting for sex
• Use of dating/hook-up apps
• Masturbation
• Porn
• Fetishes
• Predatory or pressurising behaviour
• Sex with negative consequences
• Other: ___________

• Fantasy
• Flirting or hunting for sex
• Use of dating/hook-up apps
• Masturbation
• Porn
• Fetishes
• Predatory or pressurising behaviour
• Sex with negative consequences
• Other: ___________

Wrap-up questions

Step One states:

'We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.'

Sometimes people say, thanks to AA, they can now 'choose' not to drink.

A choice is a situation where one is presented with two or more options, and one must weigh up which to select.

Such options, however, must be reasonable, for the word 'choice' to be validly applied.

For instance, if you are weighing up whether to buy semi-skilled or skimmed milk at the supermarket, and you are largely content with both options, albeit preferring one over the other on this occasion, you can legitimately call this a choice.

If, however, you are asked to choose between confessing to a minor misdemeanour you did not commit and being shot, you technically have a choice, but pragmatically do you do not: the option you favour is actually a third one, namely not confessing and not being shot, but that option is not available to you. Any reasonable analysis of this situation would conclude you are being forced to confess. Your exercise of 'choice' is merely the recognition of a single viable (but unpalatable) option.

Another example: if one is given the 'choice' of reading a book or turning into a lobster, one must by necessity read the book, as turning into a lobster is not physically possible. Simply presenting multiple options and saying one has a choice does not mean one does. The options must be possible and reasonable for one to speak legitimately of choice.

If you are an untreated alcoholic, 'not drinking' or 'stopping at one' are, for you (unlike for normal people) like turning into a lobster: downright impossible. There is only one option (drink to excess), and thus there is no choice.

If you are sober, and your experience suggests that taking even one drink could trigger an unstoppable process that could lead to your death, having a single drink is not a genuine option, any more than hacking off your big toe with a butter knife or setting fire to your hair. The action could physically be taken and is thus more 'possible' than turning into a lobster, but it furthers no purpose, causes harm, and runs so counter to one's being that, pragmatically speaking, it is not in reality any more viable than turning into a lobster.

The transition is this: having one viable option, namely to drink, to having one viable option, namely to stay sober.

On those rare occasions when one has to 'think it through' or genuinely weigh up the pros and cons, and 'chooses' sobriety over drunkenness, the truth is this: you are partly insane, but fortunately more sane than insane, so the sane thought wins. This is not the exercise of choice; this is winning on a balance of probabilities.

I was in a meeting yesterday in which the chapter The Doctor's Opinion (from the book Alcoholics Anonymous) was being discussed. There was reference to the 'phenomenon of craving', namely the observation that alcoholics, once they have the first drink, have more and more, beyond the bounds of reason, and despite the consequences.

Now, it is extremely common for speakers (and writers) within AA to cite this example: whilst others stop after a glass or two, 'because they're beginning to feel it', 'feeling it' is precisely the point, which is why they continue.

There are several problems with this. Firstly, there are very few drinkers who do not drink in order to feel it. In fact, most moderate drinkers and certainly all heavy drinkers do, like us alcoholics, want an effect. To compare alcoholics with those who drink grudgingly, out of compliance with perceived obligation, habit, or social convention, teaches us nothing. They are effectively non-drinkers who happen to be drinking alcohol.

There is another problem with this, but I shall have to return to that once a fresh comparison is drawn.

The difference between the moderate drinker and the heavy drinker is not one of category but one of degree. Both enjoy the effect. The moderate drinker enjoys the effect to some extent, but his cut-off point is earlier during the progression into drunkenness. The heavy drinker enjoys the effect considerably more, and the cut-off point is later or may even coincide with oblivion or physical incapacity to continue.

A further point to observe with moderate and heavy drinkers is that the risk/benefit calculation is operative. Whilst outsiders or others they affect may disagree with their decisions, their drinking is kept within bounds they have set, in terms both of quantity and frequency, by a desire to avoid certain undesirable effects (hangovers, inability to get up for work, etc.) Moderate and heavy drinkers are thus both moderated drinkers. One might assert their drinking foolish, but they are subject to no internal tension, because they drink, as a rule, what they want to drink and when they want to drink it.

To explain this feature of alcoholism—the phenomenon of craving—by talking about how much we enjoy (aspects of) drinking teaches us nothing because in this regard we are not greatly dissimilar to moderate or heavy drinkers. The precise psychological effect of alcohol (and thus its idolisation whilst we are between drinking bouts) does differ and goes a long way to explain the return to harmful drinking after periods of abstinence. It does not adequately explain the dogged compulsion once we start. Heavy drinkers love the effect and thus drink. So do we.

The point of deviation in the comparison between (moderate and) heavy drinkers, on one hand, and alcoholics, on the other, is the fact we continue drinking even when we are not enjoying it.

I don't know about you, but once I'd had three-quarters of a bottle of gin, or two bottles of red wine, I was not 'appreciating' the effect of the next gin or the next glass of wine. It could have been water or Paraquat for all I knew. There was no marginal effect (or marginal utility as economists would call it). I did not enjoy it greatly (at least not like the first dozen or so drinks). To the extent I had been transported into a glittering and insulated world free of concern and liberated from time, another half-dozen drinks were going to achieve nothing. Sure, to remain there for another few hours, I might have to top up a little, to prevent slipping back into dreaded sobriety. But by no means did I need to continue drinking 'full steam ahead'.

Two analogies:

Imagine two people who sunbathe whilst on holiday. Both acquire a wonderful tan. But one stays far longer than necessary to acquire a tan and burns himself scarlet, on top of the tan. All he would need to do to keep the tan would be to top up under the sun for a few minutes here or there. The hours required to acquire the tan in the first place are not needed to remain tanned.

Imagine a space rocket expending huge amounts of  energy to get into orbit. Once in orbit, a small amount of energy only is needed to remain in orbit. If the same amount of energy were expended again, the rocket would leave orbit and fling itself out into deepest space.

These are far more appropriate images for alcoholic drinking: the pleasure of drinking or the attractiveness of moderate drunkenness explain why we get as drunk as 'normal' heavy drinkers. They do not explain why we drink past the heavenly zone of relief and joy into realms of darkness, violence, hatred, and sick oblivion, not through occasional miscalculation (a good man's fault) but apparently deliberately (if one judges by the quantities drunk and the speed at which they are drunk).

One example, and I shall wrap up. I recall a Saturday evening in my drinking when I decided I wanted to watch a favourite Ibsen play on the television, featuring a favourite actress. Of course I would drink, and I aimed to drink steadily through the play, then let the hounds loose once it was done, in the ample portion of the evening that would then remain.

What happened was this; I drank myself into a near stupor in about 45 minutes, and went 'hunting', as it might be called, out and about, drinking and looking for heaven-knows-what. As I left the house to begin my joyless rampage, it was with incredibly heavy heart. I wanted to stay at home and drink quietly and reasonably slowly, enjoying what I had looked forward to all week. The drinking and the associated activities had nothing to do with enjoyment or effect; they were despite the lack of enjoyment; they were despite my own horror at the effect.

No, I was obeying an order from deep within me, one I could not countermand: continue drinking, rapidly, come what may. No risk/benefit calculation is operative, and it is this that separates us from moderate and heavy drinkers.

When I look honestly at my drinking, it was this order that was issued every time I drank, regardless of emotion, regardless of circumstance, and no exertion of the will could resist it.

The phenomenon of craving is just this: a blind obligation to continue drinking—fast and hard—triggered by the first drink.

Leave the 'pleasure' for another discussion: that of the 'great obsession of every abnormal drinker'. That is for another day.

My drinking had three phases. Fun; fun plus problems; problems. I did not stop until I was in the problems phase.

What can help is this:

The two features of alcoholism are these:

(1) when I start drinking, I cannot predict how much I will drink, what I will do whilst drink, and when (if ever) I will return to a sober life;

(2) bad experiences are insufficient alone to prevent me from taking the first drink.

These two make me an alcoholic; this insight plus the knowledge that alcoholism is fatal and progressive were sufficient to induce the 'wanting to stop' that had previously been absent; basically, knowing the truth took the last remnant of fun out of drinking.

I could no longer kid myself I was not dying.

One might gamble on being able to find a way to drink moderately or stay sober on the mere knowledge one should … the cost is the risk that this might seal one’s downfall, because the alcoholic process, once re-triggered, can be unstoppable (cf. pages 32–33).

One might gamble, instead, on AA, to stay sober … the cost is the time and effort expended in vain, since one would have stayed sober anyway.

Sometimes, there is so much material on Step One in the Big Book that you can't see the wood for the trees. It is also difficult to sum up Step One by posing negative questions, e.g. 'are you certain you can never drink safely again' or 'are you certain you could not stay sober without AA'.

It is more helpful to pose the questions positively.

E.g.

'Are you certain that you could drink moderately for the rest of your life?'

If you are not certain, you had better stay sober.

'Are you certain you can stay sober for the rest of your life without any help?'

If you are not certain, you had better seek help.

One cannot prove that one could not stay sober without AA; after all, there are cases of people who go to AA for a while and then do indeed stay sober in perpetuity.

The question is rather: are you confident enough in your ability to moderate or stop on your resources that you're willing to take the risk?

I am not.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous helps to distinguish. Around the bottom of page 20, top of page 21 is a section that distinguishes between the moderate drinker, the certain type of hard drinker, and the real alcoholic.

Do I try to control whether someone drinks or uses or how much they drink or use?
Do I have plans for those around me?
Do I take actions to try to realise those plans?
Does this work?
When people comply/do not comply, how does this affect them? Me? The relationship?
Do I inappropriately use explicit or implicit threats to get my own way?
Do I inappropriately use force to get my own way?
Do I inappropriately punish to get my own way?
Do I nag?
Do I engage in management, mothering, martyrdom, and manipulation?
Do I feel responsibility, guilt, shame, or embarrassment on behalf of other people?
Do I enter or remain in situations which are not in my best interests (materially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, sexually) because of fear or guilt?
Do I think about someone else's behaviour, thinking, and emotional life longer than necessary to plan my own actions?
Do I resent, criticise, shame, gossip about, or try to change people merely because they are different?
Do I opt for guilt and blame over the recognition that I am or others are powerless?
Do I try to eliminate or mask others' or my own problems with quick fixes?
Do my emotions depend on the words, actions, silence, or inaction of others?
Do I use others' words, actions, silence, or inaction as a measure of my worth?
Do I overcommit and underperform?
Do I overreact to minor setbacks?
Do I manufacture or exaggerate perceived threats or risks?
When someone asks for help, do I feel a mixture of excitement and dread?
Do I override instincts of self-preservation?


Wrap-up questions:


Do I recognise that I am powerless over whether someone drinks, how much they drink, and what they do, sober or drunk?
Do I recognise that, even when others are complying, I am still not in control, as I cannot control whether and when they comply?
Do I recognise that, when my actions, thoughts, and emotions depend on the actions, words, silence, and inaction of others, I am not managing my life; they are?
Is my life a mess, materially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, sexually?

Step One
What negative thinking and behaviour am I stuck in? (Powerlessness)
What are the negative consequences for me and others? (Unmanageability)

Step Two
Have I seen others restored to sanity in this area?
Have I been restored to sanity in other areas?
Is there any reason why the remaining Steps will not restore me to sanity in this area?

Step Three
What will happen if I do not turn my will and life over completely?
What might happen if I do?
Am I willing to question every belief and attitude that lie at the root of my defective thinking and behaviour?
Am I willing to take Steps Four through Twelve in this area?

Often an alcoholic will say, "I don't drink, because I know I am an alcoholic and the first drink does the damage."

This is what the Big Book has to say on the subject:

"Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time. More baffling still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall." (Page 26)

"He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were
easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!" (Page 36)

"But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly any exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience." (Page 39)

"He was positive that this humiliating experience, plus the knowledge he had acquired, would keep him sober the rest of his life. Self-knowledge would fix it. We heard no more of Fred for a while. One day we were told that he was back in the hospital. This time he was quite shaky. He soon indicated he was anxious to see us. The story he told is most instructive, for here was a chap absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking, who had no excuse for drinking, who exhibited splendid judgment and determination in all his other concerns, yet was flat on his back nevertheless." (Page 40)

"I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots." (Page 42)

Having favourable circumstances will not stop you from relapsing.
Having a commendable past will not stop you from relapsing.
Being good at what you do will not stop you from relapsing.
Being intelligent will not stop you from relapsing.
Knowing you're an alcoholic will not stop you from relapsing.
Knowing you're in serious trouble will not stop you from relapsing.
Knowing the solution will not stop you from relapsing.
Wanting a solution will not stop you from relapsing.
Not wanting to drink will not stop you from relapsing.
Starting the programme will not stop you from relapsing.
Everything going well will not stop you from relapsing.
Getting your life together will not stop you from relapsing.
Being in an established routine will not stop you from relapsing.
Being in circumstances in which you previously stayed sober will not stop you from relapsing.
Having valid grounds for being where you are, doing what you are doing will not stop you from relapsing.
Being in a normal emotional state will not stop you from relapsing.
Being perfectly sane right now will not stop you from relapsing.
Being perfectly sane for a period of weeks or months (or years) will not stop you from relapsing.

When you relapse, there will be no warning.
You will move from sanity to insanity without realising you are doing it.
By the time the insane thinking has started, it is too late, and nothing you or anyone else can do, say, or think can stop it.
You might relapse today. You might relapse in a few months' time. There is no knowing when.

The only thing Jim did wrong was not enlarge his spiritual life through self-sacrifice and work for others. That's the Twelfth Step.

If you do not want to relapse, you had better start working the Twelfth Step.

If you're not on the Twelfth Step, you had better get cracking on the first eleven, as that is the only way to get to the Twelfth Step.

One thing that slippers seem to have in common is that they want to drink. Perhaps only 1% of them wants to drink, but that 1% is there, nonetheless.

I slipped for a while in AA, then finally got sober, in 1993. Precisely what happened in my mind over that time and what has happened since, even though it happened in my mind, really is a matter of speculation, but I am fairly confident of the following.

At some point in mid 1993 I decided that I was not very good at dying. I had repeatedly tried and failed to die, even though I felt I wanted to. I gave up trying to die.

At some point in mid 1993 I decided that I was not very good at drinking. I had repeatedly tried and failed to drink, even though I felt I wanted to. I gave up trying to drink.

Drinking still seemed quite appealing, as did death. But at some deep level I gave up wishing I could make either work. I had proved sufficiently that I could not.

I was quite doubtful about whether I would ever be functional, let alone happy, but these matters, although important to me, were no longer factors in whether or not I would live and whether or not I would drink.

I relinquished the right to make any further decision regarding these two matters. In effect, I sentenced myself to life and sentenced myself to sobriety. And, believe you me, it was indeed a sentence. I would live and be sober, come what may, whether or not I functioned, whether or not I was happy.

An odd thing then happened. First of all, I stopped relapsing. Secondly, everything AA had to offer started to actually work to produce both functionality and happiness, albeit in tiny doses, to start with.

To work, commitment to life and sobriety has to be unconditional, i.e. without any reservation in the form of, 'it is worth staying sober as long as X happens and/or Y does not happen'.

I realised that there had been reservations before: I needed AA to work and make me functional and happy before I would decide once and for all to go with life and sobriety. That demand blocked AA and left the door open to drink.

I have had moments and, on occasion, periods lasting months or years since then when I was either functioning poorly or was unhappy. Some of this was just due to growing pains (as there was and is a lot of growing to do). Some of this was due to bad information and bad guidance. A lot of this was due to my own rejection of the solution that was on offer because I knew best.

But at no point did I assume the right to question whether or not I should live and whether or not I should stay sober.

It amazes me at how badly I have 'done' AA at times, often for long periods, and yet not drink. If there is one reason, it is this: with regard to life itself and alcohol, I surrendered if not to God at least to AA's advice to not have the first drink one day at a time.

It is not the will power not to have the first drink that has kept me sober, as I do not have that will power. It is the surrender to this process. Today I see God behind the process; at the start I could not. But God was there all along.

Sobriety starts with absolute surrender. Someone describes this as putting down your weapons and defences and awaiting instructions.

What is next?

If I drank to treat excesses of negative emotion:

(1) Why do only a small proportion of those thus afflicted suffer also from alcoholism?

(2) Why, when the drink did not work and made the emotion worse, did I carry on into outright drunkenness?

(3) Why, even though the consequences of drinking worsened the emotional predicament, did I keep going back?

(4) Why does everyone in AA who is full of negative emotion not drink then and there?

(5) Why do people slip when things are going well and there is no emotional predicament to solve?

The spiritual malady consists in disconnectedness. My ego will attempt to solve that by getting me to chase after the 'gifts' of the world. But that is a mere symptom which, in turn, will create emotional disturbance as I collide with myself and others.

The first drink treated that disconnectedness. In treating that disconnectedness, I was shuttled into a different world where the negative emotions du jour were, on a good day, suspended.

The good news, therefore, is that I'm not going to drink if I have a bad day or feel terrible.

The bad news, however, is that I will drink if I don't get connected some other way.

Sometimes people take a meeting hostage to share their negative emotion "so they don't drink", this being the justification for disregarding the primary purpose of meetings.

Fortunately, this is an illusion. What is needed is connection to God, which can be rapidly achieved through connection via others in the fellowship of the common problem AND common solution. That means we do not need to rely on the pressure-valve of exhibitionist sharing and can instead rely on the fullness of the three-side-of-the triangle solution in every part of our lives.

Connection is universally available to those who seek.

When considering the following questions, it may be well to consider this:

Opening paragraphs—the definition of alcoholism

The Man of Thirty

1. Have you ever successfully stopped drinking for a time and started again?
2. Was the physical craving still there?
3. If you slipped, do you believe you could come back to AA?

Jim's Story—the "peculiar mental twist"

1. Do you believe that, if you achieved all of the things that Jim had achieved, had all the qualities that Jim enjoyed, and had all of the knowledge that Jim had acquired, all of that would keep you sober?
2. Have you been relying on achievements, and qualities, and knowledge to keep you sober?
3. What is the one area in which Jim fell short?
4. How long did Jim fall short for?
5. If things are going well, does that mean you are going to stay sober?
6. Compare this to 14:6–15:0—what does "enlarging your spiritual life" mean?
7. Are you doing this?
8. If not, how long do you have before you drink?
9. Does Jim have resentment? Do you need to be free of resentment to stay sober? Does Bill, on page 15, have resentment? Does he stay sober? What is the difference between Bill and Jim?
10. Jim drinks after having a "sudden" insane thought. What is the insane thought (the "peculiar mental twist")?
11. Is he "sane" before the first insane thought? Is there any sign or warning that the first insane thought is on its way?
12. Did Jim think of the consequences?
13. If you are "sane" today, how do you know whether or not you will "suddenly" succumb to the "sudden" insane thought, like Jim?
14. Have you ever had an experience like Jim's?
15. What were the insane thoughts/the peculiar mental twists that persuaded you to drink?
16. Do you have, under all circumstances and at all times, a sufficient mental defence against such thoughts?

The Parallel-Thinker—"the curious mental phenomenon"

1. Have you ever had two sets of thoughts in your mind at once—a sane set and an insane set?
2. What is your experience of this?
3. What happens if the insane set out of thoughts wins, even for a moment?
4. Can you fight this, consistently, under all circumstances, at all times?

The Jaywalker

1. What is the "thrill"?
2. What are the consequences?
3. Should the "thrill" outweigh the consequences?
4. Does knowing that the consequences outweigh the thrill stop you?
5. Can you see the insanity of this?
6. Is this you?

Fred's Story—the "strange mental blank spot"

1. Fred has standing, money, property, a happy marriage, successful children, an attractive personality, and friends and is, on apparently stable and well-balanced. Yet he is an alcoholic and continually relapsing. Do you still believe your alcoholism can be blamed on your lack of standing, your lack of money, your financial insecurity, your broken relationships, your broken personality, your loneliness, or your emotional instability?
2. If Fred does not even have the problems you have and is still drinking, are you still under the delusion that, to stay sober, you only need to solve such problems or need to solve such problems at all?
3. Fred's "fault" is failure to admit he is an alcoholic and failure to accept a spiritual remedy for his problem. Do you still believe a non-spiritual remedy could work for you?
4. He has all of the knowledge about alcoholism of the people that wrote the Big Book. Yet he continues drinking. In the light of the fact that Fred has such knowledge and continues drinking, do you still believe that reading and understanding the Big Book will solve your problem?
5. He was positive that humiliating experience plus knowledge would keep him sober—do you still believe that, if you remember where you came from, if you remember what drink "did to you", if you remember your last drink/your last drunk, if you keep the memory evergreen, all of that, plus the knowledge of all of the people around you in AA, will keep you sober?
6. Fred believed that he could exercise his will power to keep himself sober. Do you still believe you have the power, at all times, "to get to bed tonight without a drink", "to not drink no matter what"? Do you believe you can, at all times, follow the instruction "don't take the first drink"?
7. Fred believed that he could stay sober by "keeping on guard". Do you still believe that this will work to keep you sober, at all times?
8. Fred has a period when he has no trouble refusing drinks. Yet he relapses. Do you believe that, because, for the time being, you have no trouble refusing drinks, this will automatically remain the case?
9. In the period immediately before Fred relapses (41:0), does he have anything to "drink on"? Do you still believe you "drink on" emotion or circumstance?
10. 41:1 "the thought came to mind": can you control what thoughts come into your head?
11. 41:1 "it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner": is this thought, in itself, true or false—sane or insane? How many cocktails does he actually have with dinner? Did he follow through with what he said he was going to do? Were these cocktails indeed "nice", as far as we can tell from the story? Again—is what his mind is telling him—in itself—true or false?
12. 41:1 "that was all. Nothing more". This is the strange mental blank spot—have you ever experienced the failure of any thought of consequences to show up on the tails of the drinking thought?
13. 41:2 "I had made no fight whatever against the first drink." Do you believe that fighting will be effective to prevent you from drinking?
14. 41:3 "This time I had not thought of the consequences". Do you believe that thinking of the consequences will be effective to prevent you from drinking?
15. 41:3 "they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come—I would drink again... what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank      spots." Do you have an alcoholic mind?
16. 42:0 "I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was a crushing blow." Are you defeated?

Wrap-up questions

A game of two halves?

At Step One meetings, a distinction is often made between 'the first half of Step One' and 'the second half of Step One'.

The 'Big Book' (Alcoholics Anonymous) does not distinguish between different 'halves' of Step One. The first reference to a 'first step' is on page 30:

"We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery." (30:2)

To take this idea further, we turn to page 44, paragraph 1:

"We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic."

The definition of alcoholism, therefore boils down to two elements: I have a mind that takes me back to drink and a body that compels me to continue drinking once I start.

Lack of choice—lack of control—lack of power. These are self-evidently synonymous.

Yet, when we arrive at the summary of the Steps on page 58, we are confronted, apparently with a further, new element to Step One.

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

Unmanageability is not mentioned in the Book before this point.

What must the writers have meant?

This leaves us with a question—what did the writers mean by 'unmanageable'. AA meetings and AA oral tradition abound with theories.

Examples we are given include the messy situations we get into drunk, the messy situations we get into sober, the obvious craziness of most newcomers, the 'bedevilments' on page 52, the 'boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits' on page 152, the alcoholic with the double life described on page 73. There is also the principle that there are elements of our lives we cannot control directly and consistently (e.g. other people's opinions of us, the fulfilment of ambitions, etc.), and from this is derived the assertion that the unmanageability meant in Step One is this innate unmanageability of external life by the individual. I have also heard the 'powerless over people, places, and things' idea cited with reference to Step One.

The trouble with all of these theories is that they provoke more questions than they answer, namely:

(1) If this unmanageability is so important, why is not mentioned specifically, defined, and discussed in the pages preceding its introduction on page 58? If 20+ pages are given over to the mental obsession, perhaps a line or so on unmanageability would not be too much to expect, surely?

(2) How can newcomer alcoholics with ostensibly very well-ordered lives and less obvious wreckage even than your average non-alcoholic take Step One? (I have sponsored people who created very little external chaos and had clockwork lives as problem drinkers—they never missed a day of work, their houses were perfectly clean, and they never caused trouble to others drunk because they always drank alone. Yet they had no choice over whether they drank or how much they drank and were dying.)

(3) Is it possible, with many years of sobriety, to take Step One with a well-ordered life and a degree of emotional and mental balance that would be the envy of many non-alcoholics?

(4) If unmanageability is the innate unmanageability of anyone's external life due the existence of factors beyond our control, does it make sense for part of Step One to be a proposition that any person on the planet could sign up to?

(5) If we are truly powerless over people, places, and things, how is it possible to harm or help another person?

. . . and there are many more questions like this.

Occam's razor and the principle of simplicity

This is where Occam's razor comes in. This principle essentially suggests that an answer that provokes more questions and requires more assumptions than are cleared away by the answer is probably wrong. In other words, the simpler the solution the better.

To take the first question above, namely the question of why there is no specific reference to unmanageability before it is presented as part of Step One:

Is it possible that, to the writers of the Big Book, the fact of unmanageability based on powerlessness was so self-evident it did not need to be explained?

What would unmanageability as a corollary of powerlessness then be?

Power is an internal attribute. If I have power, I can devise a plan for the day, and follow it through. If I have no power, whatever plan I devise, I cannot follow it through. Powerlessness over alcohol means that, even if I plan not to drink, I may drink, and that, even if I plan to have one or two, I will likely drink a whole lot more.

'To manage' means 'to be in charge of'. Being powerless over my decision to drink and then powerless over how much I drink means I am not in charge of my schedule for the day.

I have repeatedly had the experience of plan (a) (my plan for the day) being instantly swept aside and replaced with plan (b), a plan centred around getting and drinking alcohol. My other addictions have operated in precisely the same manner.

If my day can be hijacked at any time by an overwhelming compulsion to drink and an overwhelming compulsion to carry on (= powerlessness), I am not in charge of my day: my day, and therefore my life, is unmanageable.

The idea that unmanageability is a corollary of powerlessness rather than a separate disorderliness in one's circumstances or emotional turmoil appears to be supported by the examples of alcoholics given in the section of the Big Book devoted to Step One.

The 'certain American business man' (26–27) acquires 'such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable'; he is also a good church member. His 'physical and mental condition' were 'unusually good'. This man is not a mess. Yet he is an alcoholic and, at this point in the narrative, will drink again.

'Jim' (35–37) is not particular 'unmanageable' in the sense often described in meetings of having a messy life or emotional turmoil. He has a bit of a nervous disposition (but do not many people?) He has a little resentment (but does not everyone?) He is ostensibly a normal bloke. He is not suffering from any obvious, profound turmoil or abnormally difficult circumstances on the day he drinks again.

'Fred' (39–43) is an even more extreme example. He is successful, rich, happily married, stable, well balanced, and popular. He is in no way unmanageable in the sense often described in meetings. Yet he drinks again.

Unmanageability as a corollary of powerlessness

It appears that, to the writers of the Book, unmanageability denoted not external or even internal chaos or turmoil but the sheer fact that, if you cannot choose when and how much you drink, you are not in charge of your life.

It does not matter whether this happens every day or once a year—if my day (and therefore life) can be hijacked by a compulsion to drink at any time, any day of the year can be the day it happens, and on no day am I in charge. Every day is a lottery, whatever the odds.

It does not matter one jot how ordered or disordered my external and internal affairs are—either I am in charge of my actions or I am not, and, if I am not, those affairs—ordered or disordered, external or internal—are out of my hands.

It it mere coincidence, therefore, that most alcoholics are pretty screwed up?

What is the role, therefore, of the external and internal chaos that seems so universally discussed as being an intrinsic part of alcoholism?

If the first two elements of powerlessness are powerlessness over the first drink and then the amount I subsequently drink, there is a third, which is discussed in We Agnostics.

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed will power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly." (44:4)

For reasons that the Book admits are yet obscure (24:1), there is an intrinsic link between (a) the powerlessness over the first drink and (b) the ability to quit on a non-spiritual basis:

"Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not." (34:2)

Essentially, the psychic change necessary to plug the gap in the mind that allows the desire to drink to turn into a decision to drink despite the known consequences cannot be brought about by human power alone—mine or anyone else's.

The same corollary principle applies—if I have no power, myself, to bring about the psychic change required to recover, I am not in charge of whether or not I will drink, hence my life remains unmanageable.

"For most cases, there is virtually no other solution." (43:2)

The solution—to live life on a spiritual basis (44:2)—reliance on God and performing His work well (63:1)—requires contact with God (using the word as a cipher for whatever Higher Power you can conceive of). The untreated condition therefore entails disconnection from God—from the sunlight of the Spirit (66:1). This is the spiritual malady—not a sickness of spirit, but a sickness deriving from disconnection from the Spirit, and a resultant reliance on body, mind, and emotion as my guidance system. Deprived of reliance on God, I am self-reliant (68:1), and I start making decisions based on self ('I want . . . I want . . . I want . . .'), which later place me in a position to be hurt. I step on the toes of my fellows, they retaliate, I retaliate back, and soon I have open warfare (62:1). Cue bedevilments, cue the 'traditional' unmanageability described at meetings—'making heavy going of life', 'living [being] unsatisfactory', 'confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence' (50:3).

For me, therefore, the external and internal chaos that derives from self-reliance are merely symptoms of non-reliance on God, the same self-reliance/non-God-reliance that leaves the door to drinking open.

The comfort and the warning

The nature and scale of that external and internal chaos will vary considerably from person to person and over time.

There is both warning and comfort in this:

I can have external and internal chaos but be reliant on God and therefore totally safe from alcohol—the degree of chaos is merely a sign of the stage of development I am at.

I can have virtually no external or internal chaos but be self-reliant and therefore at risk of drinking—the lack of chaos, again, is merely a sign of the stage of development I am at—as we have a daily reprieve, the failure to seek God at an advanced stage of development is as fatal as such a failure when we are still in total chaos.

Summary

Powerlessness is a lack of power within me; unmanageability is the consequence in my life. There are no 'halves' of Step One—there is a single idea with two inextricably linked facets—I cannot grasp one without grasping the other—each implies the other.

A lack of petrol means the car ain't going anywhere. If the car ain't going anywhere, there's no petrol in the engine.

And this works at three levels—(1) physical (once I have had a drink), (2) mental (before I have a drink), and (3) spiritual (my inability through knowledge and will-power to bring about my own spiritual awakening to solve (2) and therefore avoid (1)).

To put it another way, Step One says this: I am royally screwed.

"We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this." (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 22:4)

The book Alcoholics Anonymous does not then instruct the reader not to take the first drink.

Instead, the next twenty-one pages or so are concerned with two facts:

"At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. . . We are without defence against the first drink." (24:0, 24:1)

"If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer." (44:1)

It is for these reasons I never suggest that anyone in AA 'not take the first drink'.

I, myself, have been ashamed of relapsing when I was new and seen countless people ashamed of relapsing, and have difficulty returning after a slip because of this shame, which derives from a failure to recognise powerlessness, from the belief that they have fallen short because they cannot follow the simple instruction, 'don't drink and go to meetings'.

To give someone an instruction they cannot follow, however much they want to and try to, is misleading and can set up a cycle of shame or guilt.

What I will say instead is this: I could not not take the first drink. I needed God, and I needed God quickly. I needed to ask God to come into my life and guide me, because where I would guide myself would, sooner or later, probably sooner, be straight to the off-licence or pub, regardless of the terror that gripped me when the compulsion arose.

I believe it is far more helpful to prophesy, as do Fred's sponsors on page 41, that your prospect will indeed drink again, at some unforeseeable time in the future, and then to place the Twelve-Step programme of recovery fully at his disposal, with no delay.

If alcoholics could consistently follow the instruction 'don't drink no matter what', the Big Book would stop at the top of page 23.

Going to meetings can certainly act as a channel for God's power in the short term, but, if the individual cannot not drink, actually getting to a meeting may become impossible, because, once the alcohol takes hold, the unmanageability (the inability to form and follow through sound intentions consistently) will mean that making the meeting ain't going to happen.

I believe it is much more useful to disturb alcoholics with the truth of their condition than to offer false hope by suggesting unfulfillable instructions. Yes, this has to be kept simple, but the simplicity is this:

"Buddy, if you're an alcoholic, you will drink again, unless you have a spiritual experience. If you want to have one, let me know, and I'll show you how."

The mental obsession. The physical craving that flows from the remotest entertainment of the mental obsession, which triggers its own chemical rush, an excited anticipation so thrilling that the lights of real life temporarily dim.

Here's a good prayer: ask God to show you the truth behind the mental obsession.

I get a vision of a whirlpool, a maelstrom sucking in everything in the known universe until there is nothing left except the breathless vortex. The delusion is that I can drift near enough to the whirlpool to feel the excitement of the tug at my ankles but that, this time, as every other time so far, I will summon the strength or be given the grace to swim away once the terror threatens to overwhelm me, once the current threatens to become too strong.

Another image: peering over the edge of the cliff at the prize somewhere below, not realising that I could lose my footing at any minute.

There is a point at which any addict will give up, and make the supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight (xxx:1, 'Alcoholics Anonymous'). Any relapse, any yielding could bring about that moment of surrender to the addiction and the willing sacrifice of everything worthwhile in life, and I will not even know I have surrendered to the path to oblivion till it is way too late. If I do not surrender totally and utterly to God, I will discover myself inadvertently surrendered to the addiction, and I will be baffled as I do not understand why, this time, I am unable to stop.

The moment, itself, may be innocuous. The relapse may, to one's relief, be 'mild'. But any relapse can dissolve the glue that holds my mind together, and the sometimes slow disintegration that will then ensue could be inexorable.

"This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected." (24:0)

"Then, gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not. Every means of solving his problem . . . was at his disposal. Every attempt failed." (32:2)

How could I know which relapse would be the one that places me beyond any aid?

I am absolutely sure of very little. But I am totally sure of this: the absolute, permanent availability of a God who actually cares, personally, about me.

"But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now!" (59:0)

"Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!" (181:7)

I have to choose God today, whilst I can, because I cannot be sure that I will have the hope or courage to do so tomorrow.

Before consideration, ask God to direct your thinking and divorce your thinking from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives (cf. 87:2) and to free your mind from old ideas (58:3) and lifelong conceptions (42:3).

Start with a blank mind and build up truth from scratch.

The basic method here is to use the Book up to 63 as a set of mirrors to reflect who you really are. We turn statements into questions and consider the questions.

Considerations

An illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness—involves those around us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents any one can increase the list. (18:1)

What worthwhile things did alcohol annihilate (= reduce to nothing)?

What calamities did it bring?

Does this annihilation/do these calamities constitute good reason/sufficiently strong reason for stopping or moderating?

Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone. (20:5)

Has your good reason (see answers to the above) enabled to give up liquor entirely?

If not, you are not a moderate drinker.

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention. (20:6)

Has your sufficiently strong reason enabled you to stop or moderate (= drink no more than 2–3 units a day on a consistent and permanent basis)?

If not, you are not a certain type of hard drinker.

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink. (21:1)

Have you begun to lose all control of your liquor consumption once you start to drink?

How many years ago was that?

This is how long you have been a real alcoholic.

Now, 21:2–22:0—the Twelve Features of the real alcoholic:

(1) Here is the fellow who has been puzzling you, especially in his lack of control.

Do you puzzle yourself in general?

Do you puzzle yourself especially in your lack of control over the first drink/over the subsequent drinks?

(2) He does absurd, incredible, tragic things while drinking.

Is this you?

(3) He is a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Is this you? Are you a different person drunk and sober? Have you started to find the 'Mr Hyde' character (the drunk character) bleeding into your sober character?

(4) He is seldom mildly intoxicated. He is always more or less insanely drunk.

Is this you? When you start drinking, do you shoot way past 'merry' into drunkenness even after just a drink or two? Can people tell you've been drinking because of a change in the way you look or sound, even after one drink?

(5) His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature but little. He may be one of the finest fellows in the world. Yet let him drink for a day, and he frequently becomes disgustingly, and even dangerously anti-social.

Is this you?

(6) He has a positive genius for getting tight at exactly the wrong moment, particularly when some important decision must be made or engagement kept.

Is this you?

(7) He is often perfectly sensible and well balanced concerning everything except liquor, but in that respect he is incredibly dishonest and selfish.

Is this you?

(8) He often possesses special abilities, skills, and aptitudes, and has a promising career ahead of him. He uses his gifts to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself, and then pulls the structure down on his head by a senseless series of sprees.

Is this you?

(9) He is the fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around. Yet early next morning he searches madly for the bottle he misplaced the night before.

Do you carry on even when your body is crying out for you to stop?

(10) If he can afford it, he may have liquor concealed all over his house to be certain no one gets his entire supply away from him to throw down the wastepipe.

What did you do to ensure your supply?

(11) As matters grow worse, he begins to use a combination of high powered sedative and liquor to quiet his nerves so he can go to work. Then comes the day when he simply cannot make it and gets drunk all over again.

What did you do to moderate or keep the consequences under control? Did every attempt ultimately fail?

(12) Perhaps he goes to a doctor who gives him morphine or some sedative with which to taper off. Then he begins to appear at hospitals and sanitariums.

Have you ever been detoxed? Have you ever been to hospital or a treatment centre because of your drinking?

NB if you identify with any of these twelve on any level, you are probably a real alcoholic. Non-alcoholics identify with none of these.

We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this. (22:4)

Does your experience abundantly confirm that, whenever you take any alcohol whatever into your system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for you to stop?

These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centres in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really make sense in light of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself with a hammer so that he can't feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk. (23:1)

Many alcoholics drink to relieve emotional pain. However, their drinking worsened the pain. The insane alcoholic perspective is this: the small and unreliable relief I need now is worth terrible consequences I will have to face tomorrow.

Make a list of feelings you drank to escape (e.g. loneliness, depression, anxiety). Did drinking, over the course of your drinking career, overall, decrease or increase e.g. your loneliness, depression, anxiety?

Does drinking—in the light of this—really make sense?

Once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they often suspect they are down for the count. (23:2)

Take every excuse you have used for taking the first drink, e.g. loneliness, depression, or anxiety. Did you also take the first drink when you were not lonely, depressed, or anxious? Are these 'excuses' really satisfactory?

The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive. He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is absolutely of no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected. (23:4)

Do you realise that, if you are a real alcoholic, the fact that you have a powerful desire to stop drinking will not keep you sober? Does your experience reflect this?

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defence against the first drink. (24:1)

Do you realise that, if you are a real alcoholic, your will power will become practically (= almost/for practical purposes) nonexistent? Does your experience reflect this?

At certain times, we can think through the consequences, and this will keep us sober. Is this your experience?

At certain times, we cannot, and we drink. Is this your experience?

Can you tell when those certain times will be or what they will look like (good day, bad day, up, down, lonely, in company, successful, failing, loved, unloved)? Even if you think you can predict the circumstances in which you are defenceless against the first drink, can you guarantee those circumstances will never arise?

The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defence that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove. (24:2)

Think back to the moments, minutes, hours, or days before past relapses.

Have you experienced the peculiar mental twist that distorts reality and makes drinking seem safe?

Is this true for you: 'to drink is to die'? Have you experienced the failure of the defence—against the first drink—that pulls you back from stepping in front of oncoming traffic?

The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, "It won't burn me this time, so here's how!" Or perhaps he doesn't think at all. How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, "For God's sake, how did I ever get started again?" Only to have that thought supplanted by "Well, I'll stop with the sixth drink." Or "What's the use anyway?" (24:3)

Have you experienced the strange mental blank spot of nothing coming to mind to deter you—drinking without even a fight?

If the above applies to you, the following also applies to you:

When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he has probably placed himself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently insane. These stark and ugly facts have been confirmed by legions of alcoholics throughout history. But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot. (24:3)

If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return from human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort. (25:3)

Are you as seriously alcoholic as we were?

Has the middle-of-the-road solution in AA ("don't drink and go to meetings and take your time to work the Steps") failed for you?

Is life becoming impossible?

Have you passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid?

Do you really only have two alternatives: oblivion or spiritual help?

Do you believe you have other alternatives, e.g. sorting your external life out, getting a better job, sorting your relationships out, therapy, yoga, learning to love yourself, going to regular AA meetings, reading inspirational books?

Do you honestly want spiritual help?

Are you willing to make the effort?

Read Rowland Hazard's story on 26:1–28:1.

Psychotherapy plus religion failed for this alcoholic, in the opinion of Dr Carl Jung. Have either of these failed for you, separately or in combination?

What works is this, in the opinion of Dr Carl Jung:

Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me, these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. (27:4)

Can you bring this about in yourself?

Will mere attendance at AA meetings bring this about?

Are you powerless to bring about the psychic change necessary to recover from alcoholism?

Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, "Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing." (29:3)

Are you one of us?

Must you have this thing?

“Physical craving vs mental obsession: how do you tell them apart? Why does it matter?”


The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous provides a lot of material on Step One—Doctor's Opinion plus Bill's story and a couple of whole chapters on alcoholism. The dual nature—physical craving plus mental obsession—coupled with the spiritual malady, which, if left untreated, will leave the door open to the mental obsession, is not often instantly grasped. Certainly not by me.

From my experience:

If I have just had alcohol—or have had alcohol in the last 24–72 hours depending on how much I drank—there are likely metabolites of alcohol running round my body. I have been taught that how I process alcohol differs from how normal people process alcohol and my body will crave more. Figures.

By June 1991, I had had a horrible year of drinking, humiliation, failure, and desperation. I stopped drinking, as I had the previous summer after a similarly catastrophic year. But this year had been far worse. Progression! And I was still in my teens.

Stopping, itself, was no problem, then. However, in September 1991, I started again (I'll come back to that), and then drank daily and alcoholically until 2 January 1993. My intention on that day had been to have a few drinks that night, not get drunk, and certainly not get drunk every night—in other words, to enjoy my drinking like normal heavy-ish drinkers and to avoid the worst excesses in terms of consequence—penury, moral and sexual sloppiness, suicidal ideation, physical illness, destruction of my ability to operate.

But my intention for the coming year changed INSTANTLY when I put ANY alcohol whatsoever into my body. The circus was back in town and I knew I had sunk to the bottom of the ocean again. Instantly. I was back precisely where I had been three months earlier.

Alcohol changes my body, which changes my mind, because my mind is in my body. OK, someone had to point that out to me: I am so detached at times that my mind thinks it can dispense with my body altogether. Sister Bea would say that her head would kill her if it did not need her for transportation.

On any given day, I never started drinking until 6, 7, or 8 in the evening. But I was always less than 24 hours since the last drink.

The only difference between any given day in the summer of 1991 (when I was staying sober continuously) and the autumn, say, of 1991 (when I was getting drunk continually) was what I had done the ~previous~ day, i.e. drink. There was no thought preceding the drink at all: merely the zombie-like homing instinct towards the warm fuzzy glow of the first few drinks that would take the brittle edge off. I needed to get back to par, because I was still ill from the night before. During the day, it was like being stretched elastic, and I would let go in the evening, the elastic would snap back into shape, and I would be drunk, instantly, on the first drink, which would trigger a gazillion more.

That was then my experience until 24 July 1993 (my date of resurrection from alcoholic death). The first couple of days were tricky after a drink; I would feel a constant pull.

After a few days, if—through some miracle—I stayed sober, a different process would kick in.

All would go well for a while (cf. 35:2, 'Alcoholics Anonymous', 40:3). I would start to get myself together physically, mentally, emotionally, socially (not spiritually: I had no idea what that meant—I was stuck in the first three dimensions). I would very soon realise that drinking was a REALLY bad idea, and the truth of the consequences would start to hit home at a cellular level. Within a week or so, I was wondering what all the fuss was about and whether I had not been making too hard work of a simple matter (cf. 40:3). There was no physical pull at 6.00 p.m.; in fact, I found it difficult to understand why I had drunk the amount I had drunk every night for so long. It started to feel like it had been a different person who had been drinking.

Then the clouds would start to gather. The walls would start to close in. It was like someone had pulled the plug on the colour in my life, and it gradually drained out. The knot around my stomach tightened. People started seeming more hostile, and certainly more distant; I started suspecting every word, every gesture, every nuance. I was locked behind glass, tapping, and no one could hear me.

Spiritual malady.

"The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand." (151:2).

And that I've experienced both drunk and sober. Unhappy ex-drinkers will also understand.

I needed relief. And that is when I would start to play with the idea of drinking. Nonchalantly, idly, sometimes frantically, sometimes fearfully, but definitely in the labyrinth of mental calculus, or like the chess grandmaster who goes around the room simultaneously trying to defeat a hundred opponents.

Part of me would want to find my way out of the labyrinth, knowing that it would be more luck than judgement. Part of me wanted just to sit down and cry and relent to the alcohol, because journeying through the labyrinth of my arguments for drinking/not drinking was a seemingly endless, exhausting odyssey: best to give up, give in, sit down, and swig.

Double-minded—"But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning . . ." (37:2). Two tracks at once: sanity and insanity—and the insane track has to win only for a moment to win for eternity, because the physical craving may ~never~ let go.

Chess grandmaster: playing chess in my mind against the hundred opponents (the hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, (62:1)) is equally exhausting. Funny thing: even when I am winning every game, I am so tired, that I am willing to concede defeat, knock over the kings, just for the game to stop.

And all you can see from the outside is me sitting at the back of an AA meeting, my foot twitching and my eyes fixed on the floor.

Then, after a while, the 'click' happens. I suddenly know I am going to drink, and I may go through the motions of calling sponsors, reading some literature, blah blah blah, but it is all too late. That click is like the flicking of a switch which lets out a chemical surge. Everything is shut down except the thought of the drink. Single-minded, at last. The thought that crowds out all others. And it is exciting: the chemical surge is like a foretaste of what will come once I have actually started drinking.

That excitement, that anticipation, that relief that the arguments in my mind are finally over and I can rest in my new-found singleness of purpose, is, in my belief, chemical in nature. I have had the same rush when my mind 'decides' (without 'me' consciously deciding) that I am going to drink as I have experienced with other, behavioural addictions (i.e. those not involving self-administering some chemical). And, once that rush has surged through my body, I'm toast.

Why does the difference matter?

When I am in physical craving (0–72 hours after a drink), only grace or physical force could stop me from drinking.

When I am beyond the physical craving, psychological measures can then be of benefit (xxviii:0), and I need full and effective treatment of the spiritual malady, or the mental obsession will start to return. If that wins out and I drink, the physical craving kicks in, and I am off to the races.

"16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, 19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? 21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. 23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? 26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." (St. Matthew)

"We must realize that, if God withholds the waters of grace, no work is enough. We must consider ourselves as nothing, or less than nothing. In this way, great humility is gained, and then the flowers begin to grow again." (St Teresa of Àvila)

"This programme is not mechanical; you cannot just click the heels of your ruby slippers three times and hope to find yourself back in Kansas." (Bob B.)

Living inside all three sides of the triangle—recovery through the Twelve Steps, fellowship of the common peril and common solution, and service to God through work and self-sacrifice for others—is like the ingredients of a soup. Without heat—without power—all you have is cold, hard ingredients.

I've tried treating the programme as a set of mechanical actions and found myself despairing that I was not getting the results I wanted—power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction. This is the 'eternal life' described in verse 16. 'Eternity is now,' would say Sister Ignatia. But I remained trapped in the past and the future, in resentment, guilt & shame, and fear. And no one could understand it because I was 'doing everything right'.

I've tried treating the programme as a set of mechanical actions and found myself drunk. As I said to the police officer who arrested me on my last relapse in 1993, 'I did everything they told me in AA, and it doesn't work'.

It does not matter how much I work on the garden, without rain, nothing will grow, and I will end up with a desert.

Conversely, it does not matter how much rain there is, if there is no work, I will end up with a jungle.

Both work and grace are required.

St Teresa talks about the necessity of humility—putting God in the place of self as the centre and objective of our life, or of some department thereof, and recognising our status as creatures, dependent on God for our existence, and placed by him in a specific relationship to the rest of his creation.

"I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost." (13:1)

"Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works." (12x12, 77:0, UK hardback edition)

The nothingness is not the nothingness of low self-worth. It is the recognition, firstly, that the dance is nothing without the dancer, the wave is nothing without the ocean, the song is nothing without the singer. Me and God—not two, not one.

As important as this is the understanding that the gift of grace—the granted power to choose God over self—requires that my hands be empty. That the camel groaning with earthly treasures cannot enter the narrow gate into Jerusalem until its treasures are unloaded.

And these earthly treasures are not physical but metaphysical—ideas, emotions, attitudes, conceptions, and motives (27:4). Unless I am divested of these, I will never get into Jerusalem, I will never have eternal life, I will never stay sober, I will never be relieved of the pain of resentment, guilty & shame, and fear. Unless I am able to receive grace, the garden will never grow, because it will lack the necessary water, whatever work I do.

"Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." (58:3)

"But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic. It meant I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out the window." (42:2)

What is the cargo on the camel's back? What ideas, emotions, attitudes, conceptions, and motives am I holding onto?

Some recent ideas I have had to discard—or be willing to discard—because my score cards were reading zero (12x12, 29:2, UK hardback edition):

That I have the right to judge or measure anyone or anything including myself.

That I can control the course of my own Twelfth-Step work—and be effective—through intelligence, experience, and ability alone.

That I can afford resentment about my perception of AA.

That drinking again is not the path that some alcoholics needs to follow to reach surrender.

That action without faith is enough.

That faith without action is enough.

I cannot discard these ideas as an act of the will; with God, however, all things are possible.

What lifelong conception are you going to throw out of the window today?

[Quotations from 'Alcoholics Anonymous']

"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." (58:1)

"We find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you." (96:1)

"Some men cannot or will not get over alcoholism." (114:2)

When I came to AA, I was in bad shape. Bleeding and on fire, as it were. People rushed round, staunched the bleeding, and used the fire extinguisher on me. The relief was wonderful. AA seemed terribly easy. You feel bad, you go to a meeting, and you get relief. I soon found that relief could be found by expressing at meetings what was going on for me. Other people propped me up, reassured me, and told me everything would be fine. It worked, it really did!

". . . hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did—then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen—Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair." (151:2)

[OK, the passage is about 'sordid places' and drinking, but it is amazing how well the passages in the Big Book about alcoholic drinking equally well describe alcoholic thinking.]

Anyway, keyword: momentarily. Sometimes on the way home from the meeting, sometimes the next day, I would be in as bad a state, about precisely the same problem from which I had sought and gained relief, and off I would trot to my meeting, carrying my fear, my low self-worth, whatever my ten-ton anchor du jour was, hoping to leave it there, not realising it was tied to my ankle.

"This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery." (xxix:0)

[Ha! Another passage about drinking that seems neatly to describe a mode of sobriety.]

Relief and recovery are not the same. Relief is a temporary lift. Recovery involves a permanent change (27:4—"Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.")

[Usual disclaimer at this point about the need for constant maintenance and growth: we are not cured, cf. 85:1.]

I have long spent periods since I came to AA seeking relief but not recovery, and I am frankly lucky not to have slipped from God's grace and drunk, because so many friends who have fallen into the same trap are now, themselves, drunk or dead. And today, sadly, I see a lot of other people who "cannot or will not recover", who cannot or will not take the actions set out in the Book, suggested (i.e. offered freely with no coercion) as a programme of recovery (59:2). By contrast, as stated on page 58, "rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." (In my case, 'never', but the 'rarely' vs 'never' discussion will have to wait for another day.)

The Book is hesitant to determine definitively why not everyone succeeds in AA. This class of punter—"cannot or will not"—is alluded to on three occasions that I can find (see above). The question of whether, individually, they are unable or unwilling is not answered fully on any of these three occasions. The nearest we get is this: "usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves," (58:1) which seems to suggest the former.

Sadly, the phenomenon is common. Even some of the people that wrote the Book died drunk, having later eschewed the disciplines they earlier espoused, thereby proving the principle they had propounded so vehemently: "For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that." (14:6)

Having spent so much time NOT recovering whilst attending AA meetings with great regularity, I can share with you what my 'blocks' were to "going to it" (cf. 75:2)—to getting on with the programme, fearlessly, thoroughly, and "now" (59:1)—rather than 'getting round to it' in my own sweet time (aka 'never').

(1) Not believing that drinking again is particular dangerous, so "what's the rush?!" (Problem: not understanding the physical craving, cf. 32:2—"gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not . . . he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years.")

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(2) Believing that, because today 'I do not want to drink and remember where I came from', I am necessarily immune from the first drink. (Problem: not understanding the mental obsession, cf. 24:2—"We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defence against the first drink.")

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(3) Not believing that I need to maintain and grow a spiritual experience (the 'hope' of the alcoholic, cf. 66:1) in order to avoid falling between commas ("at certain times"—the mental obsession) and drinking again.

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(4) Believing that I can rely on warning signs to prompt me to vigorous action should the mental obsession loom—not believing that it arrives suddenly (cf. Jim's story, 36:2) and that, once it has arrived, I am on the other side of the looking-glass and it is already too late.

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(5) Believing that the codes of morals and better philosophy of life (cf. 44:4) fostered in AA meetings are sufficient without vigorous action to strip away that which separates me from God.

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(6) Believing that, whilst God, sought and found through the Twelve Steps, will keep others' egos at bay and therefore keep them sober, He is not powerful enough to keep me sober: 'God is more powerful than everyone else's egos, but my ego is more powerful than God'.

Delusions of grandeur.

(7) Believing that God must be sought through the Twelve Steps to ensure sobriety but not, when push comes to shove, believing in their sufficiency to solve what strike me as gargantuan and super-complex problems in my life. I will thus wait until they are solved or at least on their way to being solved before embarking on your paltry little Steps—I then avoid seeking that which can solve my problem (cf. 45:2 and 62:1—"Selfishness—self-centeredness") until the problem in all its manifestations is solved.

This is a particularly pernicious trap. To quote Charles H. Spurgeon, "If thou has made some difficulties for thyself, if thou art such a fool as to be tying knots and wanting to get them untied before thou wilt believe in [God], then I have nothing to say to thee, except it were, beware lest thou dost tie a knot that shall destroy thy soul."

Ignorance and self-delusion.

(8) Believing that God must be sought through the Twelve Steps to ensure sobriety but being scared that the Steps will involve so much pain I will be blown apart.

Plain, ol' fear.

The first seven of these problems may be amenable to logical discussion. The eighth is tricky. And it is the eighth that requires genuine faith, faith, for these purposes, being defined as 'the courage to take the action to give me the experience to take me from the belief (in my mind) that God exists to the knowledge (in my heart) that God is all-powerful and -loving'.

The Steps, it is true, are a consuming fire that burns away everything that is not the true self; with the illusions, delusions, and obsessions that are stripped away, many 'externals' (people, places, and things to which you are apparently glued in your heart and mind) are also swept away like matchstick pagodas in a monsoon. However, to quote Luke 21:18 "But there shall not an hair of your head perish."

The faith required, the sleight of hand, is this: no matter what difficulties are presented, no matter what emotions spring to the surface as a result of the Steps, YOU will not be harmed, even if your external life is subject to alarming seismic movements.

Which brings me to the relationship between my Step Twelve and the Steps One and Two of someone I am working with. The prospect will only have the faith and courage to take Step Three (and follow through with the other nine Steps) if the ignorance, self-delusion, delusions of grandeur, and plain ol' fear blocking the first two Steps are relieved, dismantled, or at least temporarily set aside.

Thus, cf. 55:4: "We can only clear the ground a bit. If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then, if you wish, you can join us on the Broad Highway. With this attitude you cannot fail. The consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you."

My Step Twelve, in this case, is to testify (cf. above—"testimony") the experience of what I was like, what happened, and what I am like now. Note I am the passive recipient of grace which enables me to take the actions necessary to maintain my connection with God. All that is really required is enough willingness to ask persistently with faith that it shall be given.

"Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)

Ultimately, "when many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness of the Presence of God is today the most important fact of their lives, they present a powerful reason why one should have faith." (51:0)

Thus, a lot of testimony may be necessary before prospect comes to believe (a) "in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it" (25:1) and (b) "that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" (59:4).

HOWEVER: I, as a member of AA, am responsible merely for testifying. I am not responsible for the results. I am not responsible for whether a particular prospects 'gets it', makes a decision, and gets on with the Steps. The most trouble I get into is when I try and force this and, rather than letting God demonstrate, through me, what He can do (68:3), develop Little Plans and Designs (63:1) for someone else's recovery.

Stop it! Stop it! (As I was recently told.)

"And go, get you to the captives, to the children of your people, and speak to them and tell them, Thus says the Lord God, whether they will hear or refuse to hear." (Ezekiel 4:11)

Testify—whether they will hear or refuse to hear—, make sure the door is always open, and leave the prospect to walk through it—or not.

Ultimately, another alcoholic's ability or willingness—or lack thereof—is not for me to fathom.

Step One

Does my experience abundantly confirm that, whenever I take any alcohol whatever into my system, something happens both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for me to stop? (22:4)

Do I have any lurking notion that someday I will be immune to alcohol? (33:1)

Do I believe I am unable, at certain times, to bring into my consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago, let alone the suffering and humiliation of whenever my last drink was? Do I believe I am without defence against the first drink? (24:2)

Do I believe such a defence must come from a Higher Power? (43:3)

Identification of current problems

Is living unsatisfactory? (51:0) → 'Lack'

Am I making heavy going of life? (51:0) → 'Limitation'

Am I baffled by the seeming futility of existence? (51:0) → 'Emptiness'

Have I almost always been in collision with something or somebody? (60:8) → 'Strife'

Am I having trouble with personal relationships? Is my emotional nature controlling me? Am I a prey to misery and depression? Am I having troubling making a living? Am I existing rather than living? Do I have a feeling of uselessness? Am I full of fear? Am I unhappy? Do I seem unable to be of real help to other people? (52:2)

This represents current unmanageability.

Step Two

Can a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life solve these problems? When I wish to be moral or philosophically comforted, and will these things will all my might, do I find that the needed power is not there? Are my human resources, as marshalled by the will, insufficient—have they failed utterly? (44:4)

This represents current powerlessness.

Do I believe that lack of power is my dilemma—that I need to find a power by which I could live? Is it obvious that this Power must be greater than me? (45:1)

Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself, who can lead me beyond where I am now to a resolution of these problems? (47:2)

Have I been keeping God out of the above areas of current unmanageability and powerlessness due to lack of faith?

This represents current agnosticism.

Either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What is our choice? (53:2)

Step Three

Am I convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success? (60:8)

Taking the areas of current powerlessness, unmanageability, and agnosticism:

Am I trying to fulfil any role other than actor/child, with God as the Director/Father? (62:3)

Am I playing the director—in charge of the overall plan?

Am I playing the producer—in charge of the detail?

Am I playing the playwright—in charge of everyone's scripts, including my own?

Am I playing the choreographer—in charge of everyone's moves, including my own?

Am I playing the prompt—in charge of reminding other people of their lines?

Am I playing the critic—in charge of judging and rating?

Am I playing the audience—standing back and shirking my assigned role?

These are areas of current self-will run riot.

Am I willing to quit playing God because it does not work? (62:3)

Proceed from 62:3 ("Next, we decided ...") to 103:3 ("... We have to!"), following the clear-cut directions (29:1).

"The outer world, far from being the prison of circumstances that it is commonly supposed to be, has actually no character whatsoever of its own, either good or bad. It has only the character that we give to it by our own thinking. It is naturally plastic to our thought, and this is so, whether we know it or not, and whether we wish it or not." (Emmet Fox, 'Sermon on the Mount', p. 13)

I've spent a lot of my life living, metaphorically, inside a cardboard box, painting the inside with pictures of what I think the outside world looks like, and then cowering or spitting at it.

If my external world evinces stagnation, that is merely a reflection of stagnation in my inner world of thought.

How do I know my inner world of thought is stagnant? Stuck needles.

How is thought changed?

First of all, I have to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as I had been living it (p. 25, Alcoholics Anonymous). Life, not in any absolute sense, but as I had been living it.

(I have a habit, by the way, of blaming, for my predicament, 'life', whose true nature I'm blinded to, trapped as I am inside my own thoughts, images, ideas, attitudes, and judgements—the painted interior of the cardboard box. What would a passer-by say about that blame, hearing the despair, the shouting and cursing at the painted ghouls from inside the box?

I am so proud of my work—the Sistine Chapel of my mind—that the very suggestion I may be mistaken is highly offensive. What will happen to all that hard work? If I was wrong all along, what does that say about how much time and energy I have wasted? Is lifelong self-delusion really possible? What an appalling prospect!)

People say they're scared of change.

I am not. Not really. What is hopelessness but a fear that nothing will ever change? What is futility but a sense that nothing you do will ever cause change? What is hell but ever decreasing circles, ever-concentrating yet unchanging pain?

No, unless I can experience the hopelessness and futility of my situation, unless the walls close in, I am going to continue the recreational activity of the re-creation of my own thoughts, images, ideas, attitudes, and judgements, and from that will flow the perpetuation of the life I have created around me.

If I can see that stagnation is the problem and my thinking (thoughts, images, ideas, attitudes, and judgements) is the cause, there is a chance that I will start to find my thinking sufficiently "objectionable" (p. 76, Step Six) to abandon myself (p. 164, p. 59), the 'self', here, being the thought-world driven by the ego.

Fear of change? Really? When my radio is kaput and I get the chance to go and buy a brand-spanking new one, I am secretly thrilled, once I get over the anger at the shoddy manufacturing.

"Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does?" (p. 52)

I am not scared of change. My ego is afraid of its own death.

Step Seven involves humility—being poor in spirit, which, according to Emmet Fox, means "to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will, and, what is just as important, to have renounced all preconceived opinions ... It means to be willing to set aside your present habits of thought, your present views and prejudices, your present way of life if necessary; to jettison, in fact, anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding God."

Surprisingly, this is not actually difficult terribly difficult, given the right awareness.

"This sort of thinking [obstinacy, sensitiveness, unreasoning prejudice, etc.] had to be abandoned. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness." (p. 48)

I pray, therefore, for a "great persuader" to make itself felt: alcoholic destruction or some other hell of stasis, stagnation, or inexorable deterioration. If I can see with clarity the inevitability of my annihilation—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially—brought about by a mind "fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas" (p. 51), I can, at last, be restored to sanity, I will, at last, recoil from my own mind "as from a hot flame" (p. 84).

Get out of the cardboard box!

"As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them. He will presently try the old game again, for he isn't happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end," (pp. 151–152, 'Alcoholics Anonymous').

Over to Tom Waits for the worked example:

"Well, Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead.
He sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down-payment
on a little two-bedroom place.
His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash,
made good bloody Marys,
kept her mouth shut most of the time,
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen—
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit).
Frank drove a little sedan—
they were so happy.

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths—
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station; he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimeney red. Then
Frank put on a top-forty station,
got on the Hollywood Freeway,
headed north.

Never could stand that dog." ('Frank's Wild Years')

"We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defence against the first drink," (24:1).

"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach," (36:2).

[Suddenly, but inevitably.]

"In some circumstances, we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened," (37:3)

"Or perhaps he doesn't think at all," (24:3).

"...when he has before him a way to stop his drinking and abuse if he really wants to pay the price," (108:3).

"Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all" (14:1).

(1) When I drink, I can't stop. Powerless. Ain't managing my life.

(2) Left to my own devices, I drink even when I don't want to. Powerless. Ain't managing my life.

(3) Alcohol gave me a sham knock-off of God's grace. Unless I connect with God, I'll drink, because the Promised Land will always call to me in the desert.

(4) Separated from God, I start trying to rearrange the world around me to suit me. Cue collision. Cue failure. Cue resentment. Cue fear. Cue bedevilments. Help!

(5) Enter alcohol, stage left. BOOM.

Cheap grace, or real grace. Your choice.

The manifestation in my consciousness of the spiritual malady that underlies alcoholism is, for me, best described by the phrase 'restless, irritable, discontented' (p. xxviii of the book 'Alcoholics Anonymous'). Restless: I want to be anywhere but right here, right now. Irritable: nothing seems right, even when it is right. Discontented: nothing seems enough, even when it is enough. This is less a set of emotions and more a state of being stemming from a perception: that, even when all is well, everything is wrong.

When alcohol worked, this was reversed: right here, right now was where I wanted to be. Even when everything was wrong, it was right. Whatever I had—as long as I had drink—was enough.

I did not drink solely to change how I felt or to escape the consciousness of my circumstances, although these were pleasant—and somewhat hit-and-miss—by-products of the effect of alcohol on my brain.

I drank to change the way I saw the world. One drink and the invisible goblins would set to work restoring the world around me to its rightful state, making innumerable tiny adjustments, until, after the third or fourth drink, I could rest. This is the effect on me produced by alcohol (p. xxviii). This sensation was indeed elusive: sometimes I caught it, sometimes I didn't; it was elusive also in that I muddled the superficial emotional shifts with this underlying change in perception: I thought that I drank just because of anxiety and depression, but, in truth, I drank—and drank to alcoholic excess—even when there was no anxiety or depression to treat.

But there was always the distortion of perception: and this is what alcohol really addressed.

***

For the longest time, I tried using the AA programme like a set of ordinary psychological devices to help me manage my life more effectively. And, externally, it did just that. But there was still a sense of wrongness: like watching a 3D film without the 3D glasses. At times, everything was perfect externally, but something was wrong deep inside, at a level beyond emotion and circumstance. When my emotions were out of kilter or my circumstances needed correcting, the noise of my thinking and the seismic tremors of how I felt were so distracting that I could not see the underlying uneasiness with the world, as though the whole planet were turning on a tilted axis. Ironically, I spotted it only when everything else was aligned, when my mind and emotions were quiet.

(This, incidentally, may be why, although we have stories in the basic text part of the Big Book ('Alcoholics Anonymous') like the crazy man who hits himself on the head with the hammer so he doesn't feel the ache (p. 23) and the thrill-seeking jaywalker (p. 37), our four main characters who display the anatomy of alcoholism without the emotional flesh—the certain American business man (p. 26), the man of thirty (p. 32), Jim (p. 35), and Fred (p. 39)—cannot blame their first or subsequent drinks on unusually warped emotion or circumstance. Respectively, we have a man whose physical and mental condition are unusually good, a man who has had a successful and happy business career, a man having a perfectly normal day, and a man without a cloud on the horizon. Strip away emotion and circumstance, and real alcoholics try the desperate attempt of the first drink (p. 35) despite the suffering and humiliation (p. 24) of whenever—last week or twenty-five years ago. No excuse. There must be something else going on.)

This is one of the baffling features of alcoholism as we know it—the utter inability to be at ease in the world, no matter how great the necessity or wish (cf. p. 34). I knew I ought to be at ease, that I ought to be satisfied, that the world ought to be enough. And, being a 'good boy' in AA (with my regular meetings, my sponsorship—in both directions, my periodic Step Four reviews of the tired old defects, my chatting through my problems with AA friends), I could not understand why I was consistently alienated from the world around me and drawn back to an AA that, cognitively, I no longer believed could alleviate this underlying uneasiness. After all, if it was going to, it would have kicked in by now, surely? Fifteen years is a long time to wait.

But something (or Someone) told me that the answer did indeed lie somewhere in AA, even though I felt, erroneously as it turned out, that I had exhausted its possibilities. The best description of this endless searching is this:

"You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life—that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there ... like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?" (The Matrix)

I had always known I was an exile from the kingdom (sorry, Camus). The kingdom had consistently eluded me ("the sensation is so elusive ..." p. xxviii). Alcohol (and a couple of other neat substances and behaviours) temporarily gave me a sham sensation that I was home. AA gave me a pink cloud (aka God's infinite grace) for a while, which, years later, I would nostalgically yearn for, while dismissing that yearning as unrealistic.

But I have now found the kingdom, and, though everything is the same, nothing is the same.

The splinter in my mind is gone.

I've been shown a path through the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the programme set out in such masterly detail (p. xxvii) in its pages that has released me from the Matrix. It has not taught how to manage my life, or the world, more effectively: it has released me from it. I still move within it, obviously; my feet are on the ground, because that is where my work is (cf. p. 130), but I am no longer of it.

"Do not try and bend the spoon ... that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
What truth?
There is no spoon.
There is no spoon?
Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."

What I tried to do for fifteen years in AA was to satisfy the spiritual yearning with the material, the mental, and the emotional. It did not work. I was always left wanting.

What I have been shown is the attachment—at cellular level—to the world around me, my utter dependence for any shred of happiness or satisfaction on the kaleidoscopically shifting fragments of approval, respect, appreciation, belonging, validation. My attachment to things, to achievement, to fixes, to thrills, to sensations, to people, to patterns, to routine, to identities I had invented merely so I would have something to identify with.

"The Matrix is everywhere. It's all around us, even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you pay your taxes. The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth. What truth? That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is—you have to see it for yourself."

Steps One to Nine unhooked me, cell, by cell, by cell. And I could not be told: I had to see it for myself: my automated reactions, the endless banks of buttons inside me just waiting to be pressed, and how I would dance like a puppet for my masters: alcohol, approval, respect, appreciation, belonging, validation.

In 'The Matrix', the separation from the system is sudden. In AA, it is slower, and the process appears never to be complete. But it is just as inexorable.

"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependant on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Only when the system became unbearable was I willing to face the choice: one was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of my intolerable situation as best I could (drunk, or sober); the other, to accept spiritual help (p. 25).

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back ... You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up and believe ... whatever you want to believe."

I do not know how many chances we are really given: drunk, or sober. I've learned to take the opportunity now, because I never know if I will be passing this way again.

"You take the red pill ... you stay in Wonderland ... and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember ... all I'm offering you is the truth: nothing more."

Strip away illusion, and you are left with truth. Like the sun hidden in a cardboard box.

The world has become Wonderland to me. A world where the sky above Bethnal Green is filled with diamonds and clouds of butterflies fly out of people's mouths.

As a friend of mine replied with a grin when asked how he was, "Fourth Dimension, innit?

The story—as it appears on the surface
In February 1993, I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to many meetings. I immediately started sharing (well, speaking, at least). I was given phone numbers, which I used in moments of crisis. I went for coffee for people after meetings. I was shown how to draw up a 'gratitude list', i.e. a list of things I should—or ought to—be grateful for. I bought a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I was told to read it. I started, but I did not really see the point, so I skipped to the stories at the back, looking for tales about young people (I was 21). I was told that, if I went to meetings, I would be alright. I then moved to Russia.

"Do not make any big decisions in your first year," they say. The decision had already been made, however, to move to Russia. It was part of my studies, and I had to go if I wanted to complete my course. No big deal, however: there were, then, AA meetings in St Petersburg, the city I was assigned to. And meetings keep you sober, do they not?

Within two weeks, during which I had no programme other than trying to find meetings, which proved difficult as the details in the International Directory of AA were all out of date, I drank.

There was no fight: I suddenly realised I was going to drink, and I did not understand why, because I wanted to be and stay sober, I knew I was an alcoholic and could not carry on the way I was, but I had no choice in the matter. Going to the shop to buy the bottle of Hungarian brandy (that was what caught my eye) was like being marched at gunpoint. Once back in my room with the bottle, I resisted for up to an hour, me in one corner of the room, the bottle in the other. I was amused by the drama. I thought through the consequences carefully—and drank the contents of the bottle. As soon as I had the first gulp, I regretted it. But I drank the rest anyway. After all, it was good brandy, and, as I knew I should not be drinking it, I would probably have to throw it away if I did not drink it, which would be a shame, would it not?

I then managed to find the AA meetings in St Petersburg, through a long train of phone calls (which, itself, was not easy, as phone calls had to be booked at an office in the tower block I lived in; I had no phone at home. The phone calls were also in front of an impatient queue of people waiting to make calls themselves. So much for anonymity!)

And I discovered something very odd. Whereas meetings alone had been temporarily sufficient to keep me sober in the UK, they were no longer 'working' in Russia. I understood the language perfectly—that was not the problem. There were some strong people, and there was definitely talk of recovery and the programme. There were mostly Russians, but there were also some Finns, Swedes, Americans, and Australians, and I heard good things. In fact, I heard all of the same things I had heard in the UK. But every few days I would drink, sometimes on leaving a meeting.

Where am I going with this?
This is a race!
Against what?

These are the words of Harry M. Tiebout, M. D., a psychiatrist writing in the 1950s who advised many of the early members on the psychiatric aspects of alcoholism, from 'The Ego Factors in Surrender in Alcoholism'.
http://www.thejaywalker.com/pages/tiebout/egofactors.html

The connection between Ego and his own conduct had become explicit, as well as the relationship between not being stopped and Ego. He saw clearly that when he took that drink, he was the boss once more. Any previous reduction of Ego had been only temporary.

In treatment, the problem is to make that reduction permanent. Therapy is centered on the ways and means, first, of bringing the Ego to earth, and second, keeping it there. The discussion of this methodology would be out of place here, but it is relevant to emphasize one point, namely the astonishing capacity of the Ego to pass out of the picture and then re-enter it, blithe and intact. A patient's dream neatly depicted this quality. This patient dreamt that he was on the twelfth floor balcony of a New York hotel. He threw a rubber ball to the pavement below and saw it rebound to the level of the balcony. Much to his amazement, the ball again dropped and again rebounded to the same height. This continued for an indefinite period and, as he was watching, a clock in a neighboring church spire struck nine. Like the cat with nine lives, the Ego has a marvelous capacity to scramble back to safety—a little ruffled, perhaps, but soon operating with all its former aplomb, convinced once more that now it, the Ego, can master all events and push on ahead.
The real story
In January 1993, my ego was temporarily destroyed. I had realised that it was alcoholism that had killed my brother and that I was going the same way. I tried to stop drinking and, to my horror, could not manage more than a few days. Despite everything I knew, despite my fear of the consequences of continued drinking, despite the fact it was no longer fun, despite the fact that I showed extraordinary willpower in other areas of my life, I continually tried "the desperate experiment of the first drink" (p. 35 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous). Each time, the phenomenon of craving developed, and I passed through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful the next morning, with a firm resolution not to drink. This was repeated over and over (p. xxix).

By the beginning of February, I was done. I could not go on a day longer, and the thought occurred to me to phone AA. I had been surrendered. For a while, everything was splendid. The world finally made sense, I knew my place in it, and I saw that all I had to do was get on with what was in front of me, and everything would be alright.

Almost immediately, my ego started growing back: I started hatching plans. For my studies. For relationships. For how I was going to recreate my life. I started feeling extremely uncomfortable: restless (I did not want to be right here, right now; I wanted to be somewhere else, sometime else—where and when, I did not know); irritable (nothing was the way it should be, even when it was the way I wanted it); discontented (nothing was enough to satisfy me). The world would not play ball, but I was going to damn well make it. And I met roadblocks and brick walls wherever I looked.

Within eight weeks, I was completely frantic, and the thought occurred to me that alcohol would take the pressure off. I remembered how alcohol had once relieved my restlessness, irritability, and discontentment. How, when alcohol worked, right here, right now was where I wanted to be, everything was in its place in the universe, and I was satisfied: I just wanted that moment to last forever.

And the insanity of alcohol returned: there was a peculiar mental twist (p. 33) which convinced me that drinking for one night to take the edge off would be better for me than to struggle on, that, once I had blown away the cobwebs, I could approach my life once more with new resolve. There was a strange mental blank spot (p. 42), which should have been filled with the sure knowledge that drinking alcohol would only increase my obsession and hasten my perdition—but was not. There was a vague sense that I was not being any too smart (p. 36), but that was initially all. Then, the decision to drink was somehow made (as though a verdict were being issued by a unanimous jury and I were in the dock), and I realised with horror that it was too late. I started struggling and fighting against it, but I was already in the grip of something far more powerful than me. It was clear that the fight was merely for form's sake, that there was no chance that I would win out in single-handed combat.

And I drank.

The race is to establish a relationship with a power greater than ourselves rapidly enough to keep the ego in check
What does the book Alcoholics Anonymous say?
"We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men," (p. 28)
"With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start," (p. 58)
"Without help, it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now!" (p. 59)
"Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning," (p. 63)
"When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time," (p. 75)
"Now we need more action, without which we find that 'Faith without works is dead.' Let's look at Steps Eight and Nine," (p. 76)
"Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities." (p. 85)
These are the words of men and women who realised the terrible urgency of taking vigorous action in the tiny window of opportunity afforded by a temporary and involuntary reduction of the ego (commonly known as 'surrender').

When my ego is sufficiently reduced, God's grace steps in to fill the gap, and I am sustained in sobriety.

In that window, God's power—if I choose to access it—enables me to take steps to enable Him to shatter further my ego: the confession of the exact nature of my wrongs, the approaching of those I have harmed with a desire to make good, the turning of myself outwards to my fellows to be of service in the world.

And then, and only then, does the "flimsy reed" sustaining me show itself to be the "loving and powerful hand of God" (p. 28). Only then is permanent recovery possible.

Does this mean that the first Step Four inventory is going to be a profoundly insightful catalogue of the quirks of my psyche? Absolutely not: over the last 17 years I have discovered more and more with every inventory, and my first Step Four inventory appears, from where I now stand, to have been pretty damn shallow. But it was enough to give my ego a sharp and well-targeted kick in the teeth and spur me on to seek a relationship with God as the only power that could keep me from consequences of living a life based on self. If I had waited until I could perform Jungian psychoanalysis on myself, I would be dead, because I could not stand the strain and I would have drunk. God or no God.

Does this mean that, when we make our first set of Step Nine amends, all of our relationships are going to be healed and cured for all time? Absolutely not: the actual straightening out of the past takes plenty of time ("Yes, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead," p. 83). But if I had waited, I would be dead, because I could not stand the strain and I would have drunk. God or no God.

The scary part: by the time you realise you are in trouble, it is too damn late. The ego covers its tracks, and there is often no warning whatsoever.

I cannot count the number of people I have seen drink and disappear since I came to AA.

Yet, I have never seen anyone make daily progress in the three legacies of recovery (the Twelve Steps that summarise the programme of recovery set out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous up to page 164), unity (the Twelve Traditions—the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous), and service (the Twelve Concepts—service within and outside AA) and drink.

"If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution."
There is a race, and it is against the ego. How fast is yours growing back? How long have you got?

Are you harbouring resentments? (p. 66)
Is your conduct harming others? (p. 70)
Are you keeping certain facts about your life to yourself? (p. 72)
Are you afraid of facing your creditors? (p. 78)
Are you doing your utmost to straighten out the past? (p. 77)

Look at these pages for the consequences of not acting.

And act.

Act NOW!

New Year's Day is supposed to be the beginning of a cycle. Perhaps recalling some original beginning which we lap once a year, like the starting line on an athletics track. Or the start of a path up a mountain.

My New Year's Day is 24 July, recalling 24 July 1993, which was when I was last separated from alcohol. I was done: I had just been released from a police cell in which I had been locked up for being drunk and disorderly; alcohol no longer conjured for me the dream that I was adorable, invincible, and bullet-proof, it merely deepened the terror and bewilderment; I was unable to live life sober, and terrified of dying drunk.

That was the beginning of the cycle, of the lapping round the track, of the path up the mountain.

But it is the last of these three images that best reflects recovery.

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are presented in vertical form on the page or scroll; they're 'worked' in a sequence; we think of time as linear.

This is a mistake.

I sat in a cheap cafe yesterday evening with someone who has four days of sobriety. We talked about the spiritual disconnection of the unrecovered alcoholic, the inability to feel one's own humanity, the barriers erected between oneself and everyone around, the loneliness and unattainability of the alcoholic in the cage of his or her own ego. And about how alcohol once treated that.

Every time I do the work, which is to take someone else through the considerations and actions set out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous up to page 164, to enable him or her to make conscious contact with the power that is already keeping him or her sober, I am placed back at Step One.

What looks back at me across the table is my own powerlessness over alcohol, and the dark, cold, dank space at the base of the mountain that I myself came from. And the hope, which is the last, cool light left flickering.

Every time I return to the dark side of the mountain on my path to the summit, every time I find myself back at Step One, I am further up the mountain.

My experience of spiritual growth is that it takes the form of a spiral, continually revisiting the same places but from a higher point each time. The landscape below is just as familiar, the dark side of the mountain is just as cold, but progress has been and is being made, and the knowledge of what lies on the other side and above now sustains me, whereas, in the beginning, all I knew was the darkness.

Today, of all days, I should be dead, drunk, mad, or medicated. That, after all, is where real alcoholics end up, sooner or later.

But I'm not.

And I get to start another year.