Not-So-Merry-Go-Rounds, Labyrinths, and Chess with the Devil

“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.