Middle of the road

'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 through 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.' (Page 25, Alcoholics Anonymous)

Temporarily, there is a middle-of-the-road solution: half-measures AA (doing some but not all of the programme, or dawdling with it). This is an unstable approach. It is like balancing on top of a fence. If one does not deliberately jump fully and wholeheartedly onto the 'spiritual help' side, one will invariably slip back onto the 'bitter end' side, and by the time one is slipping it may be too late to jump.