Sometimes people in AA define unmanageability as being unhappy, disorganised, or incompetent and suggest that, to take Step One, we have to admit we are these three things (or at least one of them). We have to admit that we can't turn up, that we are neurotic, that we cannot hold down relationships or jobs, and other disagreeable facts. However, Step One is about alcoholism.
According to page 30 and page 59:
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step One is therefore about the characteristics of alcoholism and what makes us different from non-alcoholics.
To admit we are alcoholics is therefore to admit we have the characteristics of alcoholics. These are twofold:
If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.
To put simply: I keep starting, and when I start, I carry on.
How does this relate to unmanageability? The basic text does not explicitly shed light on this, but Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions does:
Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression. ... After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced.
Unmanageability is simply the consequence of powerlessness. It is not a separate characteristic. If I have no power to stay away from the first drink, I am not in control of the course of my life: my life is unmanageable. If I have no power to lift the shopping, I cannot manage it. If I have no power to turn the steering wheel, I cannot control the course of the car. If I have no power over my employees, I cannot control what they do. If I have no power in my kitchen, I cannot cook my dinner. A entails B. B is the consequence of A. Powerlessness entails unmanageability. Unmanageability is the consequence of powerlessness.
According to Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.
Alcoholism is therefore twofold. Not threefold. No hidden clause about being neurotic or unreliable.
Now, most alcoholics when they get to AA are unhappy, disorganised, and incompetent, but these are not features of alcoholism. They're features of most humans. And they're not even necessarily features of all newly sober alcoholics in AA. I've met plenty of AAs who, even when they are new, are reasonably cheerful, well organised, and even highly effective in their lives. The AA literature supports this (read Fred's story on page 39 of the Big Book onwards). Unhappiness, disorganisation, and incompetence are features of most humans (read the newspaper from page 1 onwards).
Of course, people can construe the Steps however they like, but it is important to realise that the construal of the two parts of Step One as entirely unrelated notions (which can be traced back to a number of 'schools' of AA from the 1990s and before, whose ideas were propagated through popular tapes) was not what was intended by the authors of the Big Book.
To say that the unmanageability of alcoholism is definable solely with reference to circumstances or emotions is as nonsensical as saying that a cat is an animal with fur. Sure, most cats have fur, but some breeds of cat have no fur, and many non-cats have fur. The observation that cats have fur is a trivial one and does not help anyone who is not aware of what a cat is to define one. Similarly, to say that alcoholics are people with out-of-control emotions and whacky circumstances firstly leaves out of the definition many people who are genuinely alcoholic and brings into the definition many people who are not. It teaches us nothing about alcoholism, and admitting one is unhappy, disorganised, and incompetent no more reveals one to be an alcoholic than Fido or Spot admitting he has fur reveals him to be a cat.
The reason this is not a trivial or academic point is this: many people in AA do not realise that, without a spiritual awakening achieved through utter surrender and the brisk and then continued performance of a number of actions, they will drink again. It is believed by many that the Steps are there to help them become more effective at living, namely happier, more organised, and more competent. Now, the Steps will achieve that, but that is not their chief purpose: that's a felicitous by-product. Not realising that the Steps, practised promptly, rigorously, and in perpetuity, are vital for guaranteeing sobriety itself I believe is the chief reason why people do not take them. I only took them when I started to realise my life depended on them, regardless of the fact I was actually started to sort out my life externally pretty well, a few alcoholic slips notwithstanding.
Let's get back to the nuts and bolts of alcoholism: the fatal consequence of relying on one's own mind to direct the course of one's life, and the unavoidability of alcoholic self-destruction without reliance, instead, on a Higher Power.