Everyone's got an opinion

I started to write a commentary on The Doctor's Opinion and soon discovered that I am lousy at writing commentary. It was easy for me risk being a little pedantic as I sat in a room with lots of friends because I could always tell when I was over the line. The yawning was usually a good tip-off, as was the rolling of the eyes.

But trying to write this without the benefit of direct feedback turns out to be a bigger challenge than I expected. I was constantly re-reading what I had written and was trying to put myself in your (y'all's) heads. The same words that looked inspired on the one hand would seem glaringly pompous at the same time. I gave up.

So instead of trying to re-create something that was at the time spontaneous, I'll just try to write something spontaneously.  Keep it simple.

Dr. Silkworth wrote a paragraph that has held great meaning for me.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. 

           - Alcoholics Anonymous, page xxviii

I drank because I liked the effect "produced" by alcohol. That word is important because it says a great deal about how I approached that elusive thing called happiness. I was in no sense interested in an effect that was "achieved" through effort on my part. I just wanted to switch on the feeling whenever I wanted it, which was all the time. Before I took my first drink I didn't know you could do that. So I commenced to become a daily drinker because I could not for the life of me think of a situation where I did not want the switch on.

And so, for me, my alcoholic life seemed to be the only normal one. I knew I had a right to be happy, and alcohol "made" me happy. It pissed me off to be denied that opportunity: restless, irritable and discontented. And even when my drinking progressed to the point where I wanted to be happy without alcohol, I could not get past the fact that other people could drink and get away with it. And in that condition, which Joe and Charlie call "the hot stove" condition (if you sit on a hot stove long enough eventually you will do something), I inevitably succumbed and the same hideous cycle would begin again.

(By the way, the Joe and Charlie studies are freely available on line. I would recommend them to anyone who wants to read the black lines in he Big Book. They have no opinion on the things people read between the lines. I have attended several of their sessions and consider them my mentors.)

But, in spite of this gloomy diagnosis, he does introduce a glimmer of hope: "an entire psychic change." Right. No big deal. A complete displacement of one's beliefs and personality. How this occurred in Bill's case, and how I think it happened in mine, will be the subject of my next posting.