“We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.” (Foreword to the First Edition, Big Book)
What is the hopeless state of mind and body?
Imagine a central heating system, which switches itself on when the temperature drops to a certain level. Imagine it has a thermostat that detects the temperature, and, when the temperature rises to a certain level, it sends a signal to the heating element to turn itself off. Now imagine that the thermostat is broken, so, although it detects that the target temperature has been reached, it does not send the signal to the heating element, which keeps on heating. There is no way of manually switching the system off. The property gets hotter and hotter: the occupant is at risk of dying of heat stroke.
Fortunately, the system gets so overheated that it short-circuits before the occupant dies. You call an engineer. The engineer says two things that are alarming. He says that the system cannot be repaired, so that, if the temperature ever drops to a certain level, the system will be reactivated, and the same process outlined above will repeat. The occupant will simply have to hope that the system short-circuits and that this will happen before he dies of heat stroke. The second alarming thing is that the system cannot be uninstalled.
Is there a solution?
Yes. There’s an old-fashioned fireplace in the flat. Some brickwork obscuring it must be removed and the chimney, cleaned, but then a fire can be lit, and, provided that the fire is tended well, the temperature will never drop to such a level that the heating system is reactivated. This requires fairly constant work and attention.