“The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.” (Page 30, Big Book)
“There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game.” (Page 23, Big Book)
“Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it.” (Page 151, Big Book)
“It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove it from us.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
“Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
The mental obsession has the following components:
- It is an idea: that we can enjoy and control our drinking
- This idea then converts into action: having a drink
- This action is insane, because of the physical craving
thus triggered
“We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences. But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out.” (Page 37, Big Book)
In the language generally, ‘obsession’ usually means
preoccupation, either as a deliberate, singular focus on a subject, an
activity, or an outcome or a constant involuntary rumination or brooding on
some disagreeable matter.
Note that the mental obsession of the Big Book does not
match this: it is the idea that leads one to the first drink, but one need not
be preoccupied at length with it before it does so. The Big Book is littered
with examples of people who—acting on the obsession (the thought of controlling
and enjoying drinking)—have the first drink, without the idea fully occupying
their mind or doing anything more than flitting lightly through the mind.
Why call it an obsession, then, if it does not involve
preoccupation?
Firstly, if resisted, it usually will start to preoccupy the
mind.
Preoccupation is the price of resistance.
Secondly, it is obsessive in the sense of occupying a
powerful role in the mind’s hierarchy, and being exceedingly difficult to dislodge.
When going head-to-head with other notions, values,
principles, or plans, it wins.
When challenged, it clings implacably.