“Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” (Page 30, Big Book)
The obsession is thus an impulse that comes cloaked in a justification. I have never had to justify putting on a jumper when it is cold, going to church at Christmas, returning a greeting, sending someone a birthday card or thank-you letter, or buttering toast. What is good or neutral requires no justification. Only that which prima facie [on the face of it] is wrong, abnormal, or unexpected requires justification. One justifies an uncharitable act, a peculiar habit, or a response that seems at odds with the facts. One justifies theft on the grounds of hunger; one justifies an aversion to cinnamon on the grounds of an unhappy memory; one justifies taking the long way round on grounds of avoiding Audrey, who lives on the direct route.
During my drinking, I regularly justified my drinking to others, and constantly to myself. Since getting sober, I have regularly ‘explained’ my drinking, which is to say I justified it, with reference to cause, ground, reaction, or purpose. The mere fact of doing so, however, reveals the truth. Only what is wrong, abnormal, or unexpected requires justification. It only requires justification because it is prima facie unjustifiable. It only requires explanation because it is prima facie inexplicable. The fact I am justifying it tells the listener not to believe the justification. The fact I am explaining it tells the listener not to believe the explanation.
The truth is that there was no justification for my alcoholism—or any other addiction. And the explanations given were not real explanations.
The real cause of my alcoholism was this: I’m built in such a way that, once I’ve developed a ‘flavour’ for a substance or behaviour, I will be periodically impelled to return to it. Repeated bad experiences do not prevent the impulse from arising. The application of knowledge and reason do not block the impulse, which has carte blanche.
Thus the cause of my alcoholic drinking is ‘material’ (I’m built as an alcoholic, or, more specifically, I have alcoholic circuitry in my physical brain) and ‘formal’ (the essence of being an alcoholic is to produce the act of drinking). It has neither ‘efficient’ cause (an ‘efficient’ cause is the set of upstream circumstances that provide the grounds for a decision) nor ‘final’ cause (a ‘final’ cause is the purpose for which something is done). [Cf. Aristotle’s four-way analysis of causality.]
In other words, I drink because I am an alcoholic, and what alcoholics do is drink.
I do not drink in response to anything, on grounds of anything, in reaction to anything, or to attain any goal.
And it is the same with any other addiction, chemical or process.