Sometimes people say that alcohol did something different for them than it does for other people.
I don’t know whether that’s true for someone else, because I’ve only ever been me. I am pretty sure, however, that alcohol did for me what it does for other people. I’ll come back to why, presently.
A related idea is that, if alcohol doesn’t do something special for you, it won’t do anything bad to you. The idea seems to be: alcohol did something so amazing that the benefits actually did outweigh all of the terrible costs. This suggests I drank rationally and logically, assessing the pros and cons, determining that the pros outweighed the cons, and deciding to drink.
This is not the case, though. Alcohol very obviously did way more to me than it did for me. My life was palpably worse by the end, by several orders of magnitude, and, even at the beginning, I recognised significant problems. When the cons outweigh the pros, and I’m drinking anyway, the pros are not the reason I am drinking; I am drinking because my whole decision-making system is out of whack. In other words, I’m compelled to drink. And, in someone who is compelled, motivation has no explanatory value; they are drinking because they are compelled, and that is the end of it.
What did drink do for me? Well, the Book describes it pretty well:
“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. … sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks” (The Doctor’s Opinion)
and
“For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.” (Page 151, Big Book)
In other words, alcohol did for me what it does for others, the same as cake does for me what it does for others, nicotine does for me what it does for others, little white powders do for me what they do for others.
Nowhere in the Book does it suggest that alcohol does something special for alcoholics that it does not do for other people.
Many people in AA report that they started out as normal drinkers and gradually developed alcoholism, whereas others report that they hit the ground running. I was in the latter category.
In my early days of drinking, drinking was, on occasion, magical, or, at least, ‘a few drinks’ were magical, but these few drinks inevitably turned into ‘many drinks’ and the effect of ‘many drinks’ was absolutely awful. I certainly did have the sense of emotional or psychological dependence on alcohol right from the beginning; alcohol seemed a necessity, and the main or only bright light in my life. Is this because alcohol did something for me that it did not do for other people? I don’t think so. I think the ease and comfort was the same ease and comfort that others felt. The difference was that it was pretty much the only thing that provided ease and comfort in my life, whereas, for others, alcohol was merely one of many things. I was so self-centred, self-conscious, and self-contained that nothing pierced the little prison cell I lived in, and alcohol bust a window through into the prison cell. The sunlight was the same as other people’s sunlight, but, when you’re living in a prison cell, it acquires an extra significance.
To add to this, as I became addicted, the addiction tortured me when I wasn’t drinking, so that a drink not only gave me the ordinary ease and comfort but also relieved the torture of abstinence. Not wearing shoes is not particularly enjoyable unless you’ve been wearing tight shoes. When you take off the tight shoes, there is splendid release, not because not wearing shoes is particularly great, but because a very particular pain is being relieved.
To sum up: a few drinks gave me the same ease and comfort as it gives ordinary drinkers, but, as it was the only thing that gave me ease and comfort, it acquired a singular importance. As I became addicted, it also provided relief from the torture of withdrawal and abstinence.