Hey, what happened to my legs?

We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet. - Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 30-31

As my friend Lucy S. has observed, "Once you become a pickle, you can never be a cucumber again." There's an implication in the first sentence of this paragraph that alcoholism is, in some sense, a condition acquired by drinking. It refers to men "who have lost" their legs, not men who never had them in the first place. In my own experience, there was a line I crossed unnoticed where drinking stopped being something I could choose to do or not (although I rarely chose "not"), and became instead something that possessed me, body and mind. I had "lost" something.

The word "treatment" opens up another area of contention. Nowadays the word "treatment" is essentially shorthand for in-patient rehab. But when Bill wrote this, there was still the notion that alcoholics could be cured in order to return to temperate drinking.  If I were offered such a "cure," I would only be interested in it if it allowed me to control and enjoy my drinking, and we're back to square one.

 (A brief digression. Why is it that so many other alcoholism and addiction treatments often go to great pains to disparage AA? Since we have no opinion on outside issues, if in fact such things work for some people, then "our hats are off" to them. We readily admit to having no monopoly. So why are we such a threat?)

As to whether or not "science" has found a treatment to make me like other men, I refer you to the Princeton study documented here. It includes details of the Rand study as well as the Schick-Shadel aversion therapy. (Or as I prefer to call it, "A Clockwork Orange." Just kidding. Or am I?) As I was reading this, I felt a certain sadness. Here are the cold, hard facts of science objectively reviewing "every imaginable remedy," entirely divorced from the love and warmth of AA. Maybe there is a "cure." If so, I really don't care.