Somehow, someday

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.30

We speak of the hopelessness of the alcoholic, but that word implies that there was something originally hope for. We find it here in this paragraph. Most of us remember the golden moment, that magical first rush of alcohol to our brains. Yet for all the drinking I did, I never again experienced that same first rush. So I settled into a period of happy and successful drinking, never allowing control to interfere with enjoyment. I could get away with it because at that point I could drink as much as I wanted without any dire consequences.

Then, as it says elsewhere, "gradually things got worse." Gradually, I needed to control my intake, but that began to interfere with the enjoyment. So I started to look forward to occasions when I could drink without interference. I encouraged my wife to visit her family in Michigan without me so I could party on. I would go away by myself for weekends, visiting places she wasn't interested in seeing. But most of my sightseeing was done in my motel room, drunk in front of the TV. (I did drive through some lovely scenery getting there, though.) Eventually I began to tell everyone to leave me alone, and one by one they did.

I refused to admit that my reaction to alcohol was changing, that I was becoming less and less like normal drinkers, bodily and mentally. I began to cling to the hope that "some new miracle of control" would return me to those happier times when I could control and enjoy it. This is the obsession of every alcoholic. I could enjoy it if I didn't have to control it, but I couldn't have it both ways. It became my obsession. My fondest hope was becoming more and elusive until I was left with nothing but hopelessness.

The book calls this a "delusion" of astonishing persistence. Here's a dictionary definition of delusion:

An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

Can anyone relate to that? Delusions are by their very nature persistent. But the alcoholic delusion is so immune to reason that any outside observer would be astonished. It is a delusion characterized by countless vain attempts to do the impossible.

The last sentence is a telling one. I have a mental image of the alcoholic running into a burning building to retrieve something that is no longer there.We pursued it to the gates of insanity and death, and the closer we got to Hell, the harder we ran.