Q:
So would you say we had the obsession to drink because we initially found a way to temporarily solve the spiritual malady (alcohol)?
A:
That's one way of looking at things.
I've met a lot of people in AA, however, who were pretty fine and pretty normal, started out as normal drinkers, and, by virtue of how much and how often they drank, at some point crossed a line.
There are people who love alcohol as much as alcoholics but who, when things get bad, just stop: they have a powerful desire to drink, but reason wins out.
The obsession is not merely the desire or impulse to drink but the insanity of believing one can moderate or skirt the consequences (neither of which is possible for alcoholics).
The obsession is the idea one can beat the game (see Chapter 3).
It's interesting that the man of 30 on page 32 to 33 has no manifest spiritual malady.
Nor does Rowland Hazard (page 26).
Nor does Jim (page 35; he's basically 'normal').
Nor does Fred (page 39).
And yet they drank again.
What Jim and Fred have in common is that they failed to enlarge their spiritual life. They were in charge of their own lives; they did not see themselves as servants of God.
Contrast this to Bill on page 15, who is bonkers, full of resentment and self-pity, but does not drink, because he is intent on serving God.
Who has more of a manifest spiritual malady, in terms of florid symptoms, Bill (page 15) or Fred (page 39)? Bill!
Understood in this way, the spiritual malady is not necessary a set of disordered emotions and general incompetence, disorganisation, and other disagreeable traits.
It's the status of someone who has set themselves in competition with their creator for their own authorship.
That's the sickness: the separation; the being 'one's own man'.
Now, that's usually accompanied by turgid or flighty emotions and a general inability to live well, but they're by no means the same thing.
This is why it doesn't matter how I'm feeling:
What matters is how I'm doing in terms of whether I am acting on my own account (= at risk of drinking) or acting on God's account (= safe and protected).