Perhaps a little more should be said about the obsessional character of alcoholism. When our fellowship was about three years old some of us called on Dr. Lawrence Kolb, then Assistant Surgeon General of the United States. He said that our report of progress had given him his first hope for alcoholics in general. Not long before, the U.S. Public Health Department had thought of trying to do something about the alcoholic situation. After a careful survey of the obsessional character of our malady, this had been given up. Indeed, Dr. Koib felt that dope addicts had a far better chance. Accordingly, the government had built a hospital for their treatment at Lexington, Kentucky. But for alcoholics - well, there simply wasn't any use at all, so he thought.
Nevertheless, many people still go on insisting that the alcoholic is not a sick man - that he is simply weak or willful, and sinful. Even today we often hear the remark "That drunk could get well if he wanted to."
There is no doubt, too, that the deeply obsessional character of the alcoholic's drinking is obscured by the fact that drinking is a socially acceptable custom. By contrast, stealing, or let us say shop-lifting, is not. Practically everybody has heard of that form of lunacy known as kleptomania. Oftentimes kleptomaniacs are splendid people in all other respects. Yet they are under an absolute compulsion to steal - just for the kick. A kleptomaniac enters a store and pockets a piece of merchandise. He is arrested and lands in the police station. The judge gives him a jail term. He is stigmatized and humiliated. Just like the alcoholic, he swears that never, never will he do this again.
On his release from the jail, he wanders down the street past a department store. Unaccountably he is drawn inside. He sees, for example, a red tin fire truck, a child's toy. He instantly forgets all about his misery in the jail. He begins to rationalize. He says, "Well, this little fire engine is of no real value. The store won't miss it." So he pockets the toy, the store detective collars him, he is right back in the clink. Everybody recognizes this type of stealing as sheer lunacy.
Now, let's compare this behavior with that of an alcoholic. He, too, has landed in jail. He has already lost family and friends. He suffers heavy stigma and guilt. He has been physically tortured by his hangover. Like the kleptomaniac he swears that he will never get into this fix again. Perhaps he actually knows that he is an alcoholic. He may understand just what that means and may be fully aware of what the fearful risk of that first drink is.
Upon his release from jail, the alcoholic behaves just like the kleptomaniac. He passes a bar and at the first temptation may say, "No, I must not go inside there; liquor is not for me." But when he arrives at the next drinking place, he is gripped by a rationalization. Perhaps he says, "Well, one beer won't hurt me. After all, beer isn't liquor." Completely unmindful of his recent miseries, he steps inside. He takes that fatal first drink. The following day, the police have him again. His fellow citizens continue to say that he is weak or willful. Actually he is just as crazy as the kleptomaniac ever was. At this stage, his free will in regard to alcoholism has evaporated. He cannot very well be held accountable for his behavior. (The N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book', Vol. 12, 1960)
FATHER W.: Bill, could you explain what you mean by "mental obsession?" What is this?
Bill W.: Well, as I understand it, we are all born with a freedom of choice. The degree of this varies from person to person, and from area to area in our lives. In the case of neurotic people, our instincts take on certain patterns and directions, sometimes so compulsive they cannot be broken by any
ordinary effort of the will.
The alcoholics compulsion to drink is like that. As a smoker, for example, I have a deeply ingrained habit -- Im almost an addict. But I do not think this habit is an actual obsession. Doubtless it could be broken by an act of my own will. If badly enough hurt, I could in all probability give up tobacco. Should smoking repeatedly land me in Bellevue Hospital, I doubt if I would make the trip many times before quitting.
But with my alcoholism well that was something else again. No amount of desire to stop, no amount of punishment, could enable me to quit. What was once a habit of drinking became an obsession of drinking -- a genuine lunacy.
Father w: What about slips in general? You must have witnessed a lot of them.
Bill W. : The subject of slips is a very large one. It takes on a lot of territory. Slips can often be charged to rebellion and some of us surely are more rebellious than others. Slips can be charged to carelessness, to complacency. Many of us fail to ride out such periods sober.
Slips are due to the illusion that one can be cured of alcoholism. Things go fine for two or three years then the member is seen no more. He gets busy putting two cars in the garage and again returns to keeping up with the Jones's. That almost surely spells trouble.
Some of us suffer extreme guilt because of vices or practices that we can't or wont let go of. Too much guilt, too little exertion, too little prayer -- well, this combination certainly adds up to slips.
Then some of us are far more alcohol-damaged than others. Still others encounter a series of calamities and cannot seem to find the spiritual resources with which to meet them, or else in frustration they simply won't try as hard as they can.
There are those who are physically ill. Others are subject to more or less continuous exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. These conditions often play a part in slips. Sometimes they seem utterly controlling.
Then there is the sort of acute physical tension which greatly aggravates our emotional reactions. There seems little doubt that the glandular system in many alcoholics is much out of whack, that this condition is responsible for a high degree of physical tension. This tension and its emotional consequences finally become so terrific that some of us are literally driven back into alcohol, or worse still, into sleeping pill addiction.
Therefore we sometimes slip because there is a limit to their endurance. While sleeping pills are an addictive menace, a relief we cannot use at all, it may be that the actual physical causes of these tensions will one day be located. If this happens, it may be that these defects can be medically corrected without resort to addictive materials. Let us prayerfully hope so.
This condition of physical tensions explains the behavior of many people who try ever so hard to get the AA program, the ones who mystify us because they cannot make the grade. They may well be the subject of unbearable emotional pain. Of course this does not absolve them from all responsibility. It was their former behavior that doubtless deranged them physically as well as emotionally.
But as I have said, this matter of slips is a very big subject. We can know ourselves only a little, and other people not much at all. Therefore these observations of mine are largely speculations, speculations in which I trust there is at least a degree of truth.
-- Edited by Afella on Monday 13th of February 2017 10:10:26 PM
"Sober 1 month yes this is the longest in a while I've quit before but when I quit I remember why I drink. And it is raising its ugly head."
It's not about to let you ignore it. What you can do is fill the urge to drink with something you love to do or something you really want to do. That will quiet IT. An analogy I have of getting through the first handful of months of sobriety is - it's like trying to swim through a rough surf to get out to calmer sea. You need to have a strategy. If you don't have one, create or borrow one.
