“I personally know scores of cases who were of the type with whom other methods had failed completely.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)
“Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)
“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.
But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.” (Page 20 et seq., Big Book)
Alcoholics are people who persistently drink way too much. They fall into two broad categories, according to Dr Silkworth. The first category responds to ordinary interventions (at the medical, psychiatric, psychological, social, and practical levels). The second does not: these methods fail. The individual reverts to drinking.
Bill refers to the ‘real’ alcoholic, implying a different category, an alcoholic who is an alcohol of sorts, but lacks some required characteristic.
To square all of this, I think we can map Dr Silkworth’s helpable vs hopeless onto Bill’s certain-type-of-hard-drinker and real alcoholic. Thus, the certain-type-of-hard-drinker is an alcoholic of sorts (persistently drinks too much, harms themselves, and may even die early), just lacking the baffling fear of ‘real’ alcoholism, namely the individual’s inability, despite a full range of human interventions and their own maximal efforts, to stay permanently stopped. This stubborn resistance to recovery is the hallmark of Bill’s ‘real’ or ‘true’ alcoholic.
I was that type. I had all the ingredients: good interventions, full knowledge, and considerable effort on my part, but I seemed to lack the glue to hold myself together in sobriety. I repeatedly disintegrated and found myself drunk.
The glue, the integrating, centripetal force, the actuating power, the current in the circuit, the heat below the pot, the crystal seed in the saturated solution, the penny in the slot, the battery in the toy drummer, is God.
And God is activated by people.