“… the things in ourselves which had been blocking us” (Page 64, Big Book)
“It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Page 41, Big Book)
How does a relapse happen?
Is it because, when I feel really bad, I remember that
drinking is nice, and then make a rational decision that drinking make sense as
a solution to the problem, because nice feelings are nicer than bad feelings,
and drinking produces nice feelings?
Well, not quite. Even if feeling bad were why I’m even
thinking of drinking in the first place, to ‘decide’ to drink is not rational,
because, for an alcoholic, the idea that drinking is a good idea, on balance,
is false. That’s the delusion. Because of the physical craving triggering vast,
unstoppable consumption and all of the attendant behaviours and consequences,
the first drink is never a good idea, however bad I feel. It’s just not worth
it.
It is possible that the desire to drink is arising in the
first place because of the bad feelings, though?
This argument falls down very quickly, however. If it were
the case that bad feelings trigger drinking, feeling bad above a certain
threshold would always give rise to drinking, feeling bad below that threshold would
be safe, and feeling good would constitute a defence. And precisely what would
the mechanics be? How long would one have to be upset at, say, level seven or
level nine before a drink were triggered?
Coming down from the theoretical to practical level, the
argument fares no better. Many people in recovery feel terrible and are never
tempted to drink. The thought simply does not arise. Many people who drink
again were not feeling bad at all, either on the day or in general (see Jim’s
story, Fred’s story, in the Big Book, “not a cloud on the horizon”). In fact, a
common experience is to go through a bad patch, and be tempted to drink once
the bad patch is over, when the person is now back to the good status quo ante.
To bring it even closer to home: before AA, I drank when I
felt bad but also when I felt good. If I drank in opposite conditions, one can
hardly hold that the drinking was caused by those conditions. Moreover, my
acquaintance was replete with people who were profoundly unhappy yet not alcoholic.
In the light of these considerations, it’s remarkable how
widespread this belief is, that feeling bad is a causal factor. The answer
might lie in the Big Book itself, which provides conflicting evidence, or at
least evidence open to conflicting interpretations. In The Doctor’s Opinion, we
have the famous (infamous) ‘restless, irritable, discontent’ line, which is
read as suggesting that, since relapse relieves these feelings, these feelings
cause relapse and must be avoided—one might as well say that plaster casts
cause broken legs or paracetamol causes headaches because these are the
treatments. The most likely reading, in my view, is that these feelings are the
feelings of someone resisting the mental obsession when it hits: they’re not the
reason for it arising in the first place. Then, they have their place: the
mental obsession generates these feelings to accelerate getting its own way. In
another passage, Bill says that self-pity and resentment almost drove him to
drink but twelfth-step work saved the day. Did they though? If they could have,
he would have had a different type of alcoholism than Jim, Fred, the man of
thirty, and the certain American businessman who drank again without being so
driven. Then there’s the boy whistling in the dark. The best explanation for
this sometime apparent correlation between feeling terrible and subsequently drinking
is that, rather than one causing the other, both have their origin in a common
source.
When I return to being in charge, in the place of God, that
very denial of God produces a sense of wrongness, followed by guilt (for the
denial of God), which produces fear (of retribution from God), which produces
resentment (to shift the guilt and object of retribution elsewhere). Moreover,
operating on self-power is always suboptimal to operating on God power, so I
will be producing worse results, and that’s going to produce bad feelings,
particularly as, when in self, I’m attached to externals and to results, with
my emotional condition pegged to them, as some currencies are pegged to the
dollar.
So, a relapse into self-will is broadly going to have two
effects: (a) feeling generally worse and (b) losing the grace of God, the
spiritual defence, which would otherwise block the spontaneously, arbitrarily
arising desire to drink from overpowering me. The desire to drink is simply an
impulse that, in a recovered alcoholic, will inevitably arise at some point or
another. It comes from a place deep within that is beyond thought and reason.
In its mechanism of persuasion, ‘reasons’ might be adduced, ‘purpose’ might be
cited, but these are the rationalisations that pull the wool over the eyes of
the alcoholic, the alibis and excuses that do not ring consistently true even
to the alcoholic. Such reasons and purposes, reported after the event, hold no
weight, being, as they are, alcoholism’s persiflage, Jim’s whiskey in his milk.
Solemn recollections of pre-relapse thinking show the insanity of relapse. They
are not the breadcrumb trail of causality.
The real reason for the relapse is the absence of mental defence in the moment that the mental obsession happens to strike, and that, in turn, is caused by the self-will that blocks us from God. That self-will is the source also of increased unhappiness.