Hi Leggs,

The Big Book talks about alibis, excuses insane behavoir,  but does not go into a lot of detail about specific triggers.

Point is, an alcoholic left untreated, is going to find a reason to drink,  it's what we do.  Obviously we try not to purposly put ourselves in harms way or situations where our spriritual condition would be affected.

We learn there is no justified reason to drink,  things and situations will occur that we can't change,  we can only change our reactions to them.  We can't change the world.  If we where not the problem then there could be no solution so the change must occur in us.

The Big Book and AA deals mainly with providing a solution leading to a psycic change via the 12 steps and fellowship of AA.  Once we have this change, the problem no longer exsists for us provided we maintain our spritual condition.

The below paragraphs for the book relate to your question I think.

Hope this can help.


 PG 22 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.

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.

PG 21 Why does he behave like this? If hundreds of experiences have shown him that one drink means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it he takes that one drink? Why can't he stay on the water wagon? What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?

Perhaps there never will be a full answer to these questions. Opinions vary considerably as to why the alcoholic reacts differently from normal people. We are not sure why, once a certain point is reached, little can be done for him. We cannot answer the riddle.

How many of us played the game of 'what would make me drink?' For me it used to be invasion of my country by a foreign power - but that happens year round, they're called tourists.
So the ONLY trigger I have is me - reaching out past the phone, past the book, past my fellows, past my God and exercising my free will to take the first drink. after that all bets are off.
There are many things that have led me to think that a drink, just 2 fingers of whisky, (and the ensuing drunk) would fix this. my God intervenes and gives me just enough time to see the lie, to do the next right thing (see above, phone, book fellows, God) and not reach for the drink but reach for another sip of recovery, another pinch of support, another dose of truth.

Some of these things have been anger, hurt, tiredness, hunger, lonliness, elation, lust, loss, anxiety, worry, uncertainty, mardiness, desire to lash out (I'll show YOU!) or even just being in the wrong place for the wrong reason with the wrong people.

Now look at that lot again. Half of it is in my head (Emotions) Half of it is physical. I correct the emotional stuff with 12 steps. I correct the physical stuff with 2 feet.

But I still need that nano second of sanity provided by God Know's Who, to determine whether it's 12 steps, 2 feet or 2 fingers that are needed. So far so good. 2 fingers haven't won (apart from sometimes needing to go to the short form of the serenity prayer, first employed by the british archers at Agincort, who used a digital representation of F***it - holding their index and middle finger of right hand aloft and extended vertically - the French said they would cut off the first two fingers of all the archers after they beat us brits, to prevent our archers from ever loosing an arrow again. they lost. Hence the time honoured tradition of the 2 finger salute - which literally means 'I've still got my fingers' by implication - beat ya! Mind you, the mounted knights of the day were mortified at the brutality of our archers, who, after loosing a hail of arrows, were then turned loose by the King to butcher and loot the wounded enemy - our archers were commoners, the equivalent of football hooligans in fact and were all mercenaries - the knights thought this was not chivalrous and not the way to wage war - warfare changed forever that day, no more would knight face knight.)

wow, I enjoyed that bit of trivia.