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
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?
Has your good reason (see answers to the above) enabled to give up liquor entirely?
If not, you are not a moderate drinker.
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.
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:
Do you puzzle yourself in general?
Do you puzzle yourself especially in your lack of control over the first drink/over the subsequent drinks?
Is this you?
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?
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?
Is this you?
Is this you?
Is this you?
Is this you?
Do you carry on even when your body is crying out for you to stop?
What did you do to ensure your supply?
What did you do to moderate or keep the consequences under control? Did every attempt ultimately fail?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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:
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:
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?
Are you one of us?
Must you have this thing?
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?