“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.” (page 23, Big Book)
“I wasn’t worried about what it was going to do to me. I just needed it to do something to me. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.” (recording of an AA speaker)
The second quotation is a statement I recently heard on an
AA tape, which is typical of descriptions of alcoholism by alcoholics in AA.
However, the logic revealed is this:
- I saw a benefit in drinking
- I needed that benefit
- I did not care about any negative results
- I therefore decided to drink.
This is not a description of someone acting under
compulsion, someone who has lost control, someone who is drinking against their
will. The second quotation above contains a very clear statement that this was
indeed in accordance with their will. Their will was misguided, perhaps, but
their will it was. One cannot be drinking in accordance with one’s will and
against it at the same time. If that is what one wanted, that was in accordance
with one’s will.
That is not alcoholism.
To act in accordance with one’s own will is to determine an
objective, determine a course of action designed to bring about that objective,
then to take that action.
Anyone drinking because they liked the effect, they needed
it, they were medicating their feelings, they enjoyed it, or because of any
process of reasoning is by definition not alcoholic. Their drinking is in
accordance with their will.
Alcoholics are people who will drink even though they do not
like it, they do not need it (and, moreover, they need not to do it), they
recognise that the drinking is damaging their emotions, and they do not enjoy
it; they are drinking despite their reasoning, not in accordance with it.
How can we possibly explain the fact that most drinking
narratives in AA set out the ‘reasons’ for drinking and motivations?
Well, someone drinking under the compulsion of alcoholism
(mental obsession plus physical craving) is necessarily yielding to the
uncontrollable, non-rational impulse to drink. That impulse is not irrational:
it is not in the bounds of reason at all. A burp or a hiccough is not
irrational. It is non-rational.
But to get me to drink, the alcoholism (if I may personify
it) had to construct a lie: that I wanted to, that I needed to, that I liked
it, that it helped, that it wasn’t too bad, that the consequences were
bearable. Believing the lie, I drank.
How do we know it is a lie? I never woke pleased with how
much I had drunk the night before. This splitting of the mind happened daily.
Alcoholism mesmerised me into believing its lies, I drank, I drank too much, I
woke up realising I had been wrong.
What is active alcoholism?
Either active drinking.
Or the obsession is still active, weaving ‘justifications’,
‘motivations’, ‘reasoning’ for the first drink.
One reason that the presentation of such justifications,
motivations, and reasoning for the unjustifiable and unarguably destructive is
so common in AA might be that the carriers of such justifications, motivations,
and reasoning are in fact still suffering from active alcoholism. They’re just
not drinking today. But the mental obsession is still alive, weaving away its
narratives, so effectively the individual believes them.
A few weeks before I arrived in AA, I was still prone to
such justifications, motivations, and reasoning. Then the scales fell from my
eyes, and I realised all of the tales I was telling myself about why I was
drinking were untrue: I no longer enjoyed my drinking; what I needed was not to
drink; and yet drinking I was. It was then that I realised I was drinking under
compulsion not in accordance with my will.
The reason why a madman performs a particular mad act are
found in the fact of his madness, not the ‘reasoning’ the madman gives. The
reasoning, by virtue of his madness, is, itself, mad. Such reasoning explains
nothing. It is the madness, with its impulses, that is the cause; the reason
the madman gives himself for the impulse is neither here nor there.
A few weeks of watching my own madness, powerless to stop
it, and, bang, there I was in AA.
Once I identified with this line: “in their hearts they really do not know why they do it”, I stopped presenting justifications, motivations, and reasoning. Why did I drink? Because I was alcoholic. My childhood, emotions, reasoning, and surrounding life experiences then dropped out of the narrative about my alcoholism, leaving me with the horror of having the first and subsequent drinks against my will and interests, under the compulsion of a cold, unthinking, non-rational, non-reasoning, monstrous, bestial, fully automated, unstoppable, parasitic addiction.
What’s your experience?