“Going to the extreme” (Page 43, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
“I have a disease of more,” people sometimes say, equating their alcoholism with their tendency to want to do more of whatever they like. Yet it is entirely normal to do what yields benefits and to avoid what does not. Normal people do things they like and don’t do things they don’t like. This will sometimes be unboundaried and will run to extremes on occasions, and often that has no great downside. The system is resilient. But even when it does, in normal people, this downside often represents a calculated risk, e.g. a night out means you have a hangover, and a big cake means you have to have to eat salad the next day. Calculated risk-taking is part of normal decision-making. When this runs to extremes, it’s still essentially the distortion of an ordinary mechanism.
This is quite different from the physical craving triggered by an alcoholic consuming alcohol, which is not in accordance with one’s will and calculated risk-taking—it is an automated process that persists even when one does not like it at all. Equating a tendency to extremes with alcoholism, in particular the physical craving, entirely misses the point.
The classification of everything as being like alcoholism (or other deadly conditions like anorexia nervosa) not only trivialises the alcoholism and anorexia whilst overly dramatising the other problem (e.g. ‘sexual anorexics’ do not have to be hospitalised for acute, life-threatening celibacy) but also erroneously suggests powerlessness.
My alcoholism is indeed something akin to a medical condition. Absolutely nothing I could do about the mental obsession without God; absolutely nothing I can do about the physical craving, even with God, so the only solution is not to activate it.
The other unboundaried behaviour, the excesses, the indulgences are essentially about the childish unwillingness to manage my own conduct, to forego short-term gain for long-term gain, to sustain pain, suffering, effort, and uncertainty for a greater purpose, in essence the unwillingness to say ‘no’ to myself. That’s not a disease. It’s immaturity, and I needed not a treatment for a medical condition but simply to start to grow up. Sure, God and the Steps help, but I had to start acquiring the skill myself by making a decision and starting to change my behaviour.