“In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” (Page 44, Big Book)
Sometimes people try to separate the ‘ism’ out of ‘alcoholism’ and find some element that has got nothing to do with alcohol, or, without using the morpheme ‘ism’, they throw everything under the heading of alcoholism, as though it’s an ever-expanding Santa’s sack or Mary Poppins’ bag that can accommodate really anything under the sun.
Well, according to the Big Book, alcoholism is about alcohol: being unable to stay away from it and then being unable to put it down.
There is no ‘ism’ of alcohol, separable from the alcohol. Tuberculosis sufferers do not suffer from an ‘osis’ separate from the tubercles of the disease.
The theory that there is an ‘ism’ left over once one has dried out is helpful in recalling that when, one has stopped drinking, there is still something wrong, but that thing wrong is the spiritual malady or the array of human problems besetting any individual, which are usually amplified due to years of alcoholic drinking.
If the human malady is the setting up of oneself in competition to God, then everyone has the human malady.
All human beings have ordinary human problems. Alcoholics, being human, thus have ordinary human problems.
Only alcoholics have the amplified human problems stemming from years of alcoholic drinking, but these are not inherent to the condition; rather, they’re a secondary consequence, in that someone with rheumatism who has to take a lot of time off work might be poorer as a result, but poverty is not a component of rheumatism.
The malady and the ordinary human problems are not components of alcoholism, thus not the ‘ism’.
The amplified human problems stemming from years of alcoholic drinking are also not components of alcoholism but secondary artefacts of alcoholism. Far from being the intrinsic core suggested by the ‘ism’ concept, they are a couple of stages removed from the core of the mental obsession plus the physical craving.
Whilst the ‘ism’ concept is useful in drawing the individual’s attention to the fact that cessation of drinking is not even half the battle, there are two drawbacks.
The first is the suggestion that, since one is always going to be alcoholic, one is going to be suffering in perpetuity on an emotional, psychological, and practical level. I have been to a number of extra meetings recently, at the time of writing, and what is striking is how most shares focus on the continued presence of overwhelming problems, largely emotional and psychological, in response to everyday events. Classifying such problems as a component of alcoholism—from which we have a daily reprieve—can give the false impression that one is condemned, essentially, to being unhappy and incompetent forever, with just enough grace from God not to drink or jump off a bridge. This is not the case. These things really can be solved durably.
The second drawback is the suggestion that such problems fall within the scope of powerlessness. I’ve certainly blamed the ‘ism’ for emotional immaturity, reactiveness, self-indulgence, incompetence, negligence, and other ills that, with diligent work and God’s help, can indeed be resolved quite satisfactorily. One hears this in the excuse that one was late or did not show up at all because one is still ‘unmanageable’. Being perpetually recovering, on this philosophy, one needn’t hurry to lose the unmanageability, but simply accept this as part of the curse of alcoholism.
Rather, the programme encourages me to take responsibility, and, if I do something wrong, I did it wrong. There is no wag without the dog’s tail.