“... if you feel like a drink, play the tape forward, remember your last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc. ...”
That’s a common piece of advice, and it’s commonly reported that someone felt like a drink, took these actions, and was ‘saved’. I’ve certainly had the experience where the sequence of events was:
(a) Felt like a drink
(b) Took the right action
(c) The feeling disappeared.
Just because (c) follows (b) and (b) follows (a) does not mean that (a) causes (b) and (b) causes (c).
If, when the thought of a drink occurred, all I had to do was X, Y, or Z, I would not need AA or the programme. This approach is based on the assumption that the thought of a drink is a simple obstacle, the remedy to be deployed is greater than the obstacle, and I am greater than both: I stand above the two, noticing the obstacle, reaching for the remedy, applying the remedy, and Voilà!, problem solved. Have an itch? Apply this cream. Raining? Put up an umbrella. Train cancelled? Get a bus. Feel like a drink? Go to a meeting.
The truth is radically different. The point of the impulse to have the first drink is firstly that it is typically accompanied by an insanity that presents the drink as perfectly rational, reasonable, and sane, and secondly that it is overwhelming. In a state of insanity, I lack the sanity required to observe I am in danger, sift my mind for possible remedies, and commit to such a remedy. Even when I would commit to such a remedy, the impulse would overwhelm me, and I either would find myself unable to deploy the remedy, or I would deploy it and it would work only temporarily, or I would deploy it and it would work not at all: I succumbed and had a drink.
I’ve had many more experiences of knowing I shouldn’t have a drink (or do P, Q, or R), knowing the consequences, knowing it’s nuts, knowing the remedies, but lacking the will or ability to do something about it.
The AA toolkit for what to do when the impulse, the insanity, the mental obsession strikes is of no more use than the ordinary toolkit of common sense that I would try and deploy before I got to AA. Bringing God into it is of no more use than bringing common sense into it: being a good church member did not help Rowland Hazard (the certain American businessman), and being a good Oxford Group member did not help Dr Bob until he completed his amends.
What I need is a defence system that is larger than me and larger than the impulse, the insanity, the obsession. It has to be all-encompassing. The solution is not something ‘the great self’ picks up to deploy but something in which ‘the small self’ lives, safe and sound.
So what is happening when, on the impulse to drink arising, I play the tape forward, remember my last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc.?
I am not doing those things: God is activating those pathways for me. They are indeed the path out of the cul-de-sac, but they’re given to me: they’re the lifebelt thrown to me from the shore. I do not activate them as an act of the will: the right thought occurs to me (I do not go and fetch it); the ability to follow through on the right thought, i.e. the right action, is the path along which I find myself compelled to walk, drawn and empowered by God.
I’m not doing this. God is.
However, I do have a responsibility, to work to establish the conditions in which I am placed within God’s bailiwick of safety and security.
The remedy does, therefore, ultimately reside with me, but not in the moment: in the whole way I live my life.