“It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)
“Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)
The Big Book makes a distinction between hard drinkers, for whom self-knowledge is sufficient to achieve sobriety, and real alcoholics, who will return to drinking through the ‘peculiar mental twist’ / ‘strange mental blank spot’ unless they have the protection of God through being in the 24-hour-a-day service of God.
Which one am I? This is not a no-brainer question for a person to ask themselves, because one cannot tell simply by examining the drinking: the certain type of hard drinker, as described above, will look like an alcoholic, in terms of both alcohol consumption and impact, and their drinking might also seem insane.
This is also a major question, because how I live my life, based on self or based on God, is really the primary structural question, which must be resolved before anything else is decided upon.
In principle, the certain type of hard drinker might continue to go to AA (after the initial stages where AA was necessary to get the person back on track), simply because it conveys some good common sense, a pleasant network, and a little insurance against silliness about drinking. But is a vital experience necessary to remain sober? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve had many friends and acquaintances over the years who do a slim form of AA, stay sober, and are happy, successful, and stable. God might even be in the picture, somewhere, but they’re good to go, they really are, and my hat is off to them! I have even been sponsored by such people, and they couldn’t help me, because I couldn’t understand how they were OK, and they couldn’t understand why I was not. They were using the tools of the programme to live their lives. I tried the same, and I felt awful.
I’m definitely the real alcoholic. Unless I’m firmly nested in God, I skunk [cause external mayhem] and turtle [retreat neurotically into self], engage in addictive behaviours, and then drink. I’m on a short leash, but, more importantly, when I get ideas above my station, when I forget God, when I re-enthrone self (my perceptions, my understanding, my this, my that, my life), I start to feel very bad, very quickly. Arguably, this is something of an early warning system for drinking. The feelings don’t cause the drinking: they are merely the signs that I’ve strayed outside my Divine Defence System.
I don’t think everyone has this early warning system, though. I’ve known many people over the years in AA who have drunk out of the blue. No warning signs. Things going OK or things going well. Admittedly, they had usually left AA or put AA on the back burner, still ticking away, but AA was not central. Some were even properly embedded in AA, at least in the fellowship part. But they really were doing well in life, often better than the people working very hard at the programme (people like me, who are evidently starting from a much lower base).
The real alcoholic might arguably fall into two categories. There is the real alcoholic who, without a solid programme based soundly on God, will drive themselves nuts very quickly. They might fool themselves, like the boy whistling in the dark ...
“‘I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.’ As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)
... but the profound problems are not far from the surface.
And then there is the real alcoholic who, although needing a solid programme based soundly on God to ensure sobriety, in terms of everything else, is basically ‘good to go’. No particular neurosis. No maladjustment. Fine. Fred (pages 39 to 43) seems to be this sort of character. There’s no very obvious indication that he’s going to drink again, and, out of a clear blue sky, no cloud on the horizon, he drinks.
I recently spoke to someone and I asked whether he thought that, over the preceding months, he had been at risk of drinking. He replied, ‘I haven’t thought of a drink.’ The boy whistling in the dark might have thought of a drink. The person who is already gripped by the mental obsession, is fighting it, and is therefore restless, irritable, and discontented might have thought of a drink. The unhappy neurotic (me) who is off their programme might have thought of a drink or started to feel the call of the gay chatter of active addiction:
“Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)
... but there’s the Fred type (and also Jim), for whom there was no thought of a drink before the overwhelming impulse arose.
I’m definitely the real alcoholic, and I appear to have an early warning system, but I cannot rely on it absolutely: I need to work the programme as though I need the defence against the first drink, today.