When I was drinking, I was compelled to have the first drink then compelled to continue. This is alcoholism.
Compulsion is the reason why it is happening, and it precludes all other reasons.
I was compelled to drink and sometimes enjoyed drinking. But the compulsion is the explanation; the enjoyment was an accompanying phenomenon. This is proved by the fact that when I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it (and I was right, I didn’t), I still found myself compelled. Once compulsion is operative, I have no agency, and ‘reasons’ come in only to justify how agency is exercised. No agency—no reasons.
Now, the reasons I ‘gave myself’ (at the time and afterwards) were not the cause of the drinking but the cover story. Alcoholism, once the host has realised he is acting under compulsion, has its days numbered. Eventually the host rebels against the compulsion. To stop the host rebelling against the compulsion, the host must be fed ‘reasons’ to convince him that he is acting with agency and with good reasons for his actions.
The reasons I gave myself were quite wrong, in fact, so wrong as to be insane: it would be insane to drink to treat depression when drinking is making depression worse. The same insanity is operative in relation to a dozen other excuses.
It is wrong to say, though, that the insanity was driving the drink.
This would presume
(1) I had agency.
(2) I acted based on the principles of reason
(3) But my reason was not operating correctly.
If this were the case though, Step One would have to read, ‘We admitted we were grossly mistaken …’
But it doesn’t: it refers to powerlessness.
Might the powerlessness theory be quite wrong?
Might the problem be not compulsion but recurring temporary insanity?
The reason I think this is not the case is my experience that the compulsion to drink was as strong and effective when I recognised I had no good reason, that it would not help, that it would get me into trouble, that it would make me miserable, that there was no good justification at all as when I felt myself justified.
In such cases, I was quite sane in my thinking, but nonetheless drank. The action was insane, but the mind was sane.
This is why powerlessness is a more compelling explanation. It gets in all of the facts. It explains why it is possible to drink knowing full well the consequences, not wanting to drink, and knowing there is no justification: it explains drinking in a condition of sanity as well as insanity.
When the drinking co-occurs with the insanity (e.g. when I believed that it was a good idea or at least a neutral one), then the insanity is still not the cause of the drinking; it is merely an accompanying phenomenon.