A man of thirty

Though there is no way of proving it, we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking. But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time. We have heard of a few instances where people, who showed definite signs of alcoholism, were able to stop for a long period because of an overpowering desire to do so. Here is one. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.32

I was once a man of thirty. I can't conceive of any scenario that would have resulted in "an overpowering desire" to stop drinking. But for the sake of this discussion, let's assume there was. The story that follows is the "man of thirty." He is called "an exceptional man" because he was able to stay bone dry for twenty-five years. That's pretty exceptional.

Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has - that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.

I think the choice of the word "qualified" is curious. I know many normal drinkers, and as far as I know they never had to "qualify."  Notice the word is not "enabled" but "qualified." It's that same thinking we discussed earlier, that staying dry "entitles" us to something, and that something is usually a drink.

And so it was when the man of thirty became a retired man of fifty-five. "Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle." Where had they been all that time? Did he have them stored somewhere? I get the mental image of a very dusty old pair of slippers sitting next to a really well aged bottle of scotch. No, I don't think they were physically stored anywhere. They were stored in his mind, his alcoholic mind, which is a fitting place to store bottles (and maybe slippers).

He made it two months before he was hospitalized. He then tried to regain his abstinence and found he could not. Why? There were simply no more compelling reasons to abstain. His successful and happy business career had been achieved. The only overpowering desire he had left was to drink..

This story contains a powerful lesson which was the whole point of telling it. "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Or as my dear friend Lucy S. says (and I quote for the second time), "once you are a pickle you can never be a cucumber again."

Which again raises the tedious question, is alcoholism innate, or is it the result of heavy drinking, or some combination of each? The story seems to imply that the man of thirty sensed that there was something quite abnormal about his early drinking, much as I sensed it from the very beginning. And even after a long period of sobriety he lapsed immediately into alcoholic drinking. Immediately. So the implication is that even before the onset of heavy drinking we alcoholics already have an abnormal reaction to alcohol.

There is an experience from my life that tends to support this idea. E.M. Jellinek was  the originator of the term "disease concept of alcoholism." You may already have read how irritated I get when I hear people going on about "their disease," but the concept is an important one (notwithstanding it's misuse). At the time I went into treatment in 1981, it was widely used (not so much now). During my intake, I filled out a questionnaire in which I was to give the approximate date that I first noticed certain symptoms such as high tolerance, increased sensitivity, loss of memory, morning shakes, etc. They were presented randomly so I would not be influenced by their order. When I was finished they took out a version of the Jellinek chart then in use and wrote the dates of onset next to the symptoms. I tracked very close to the order on the chart. I came away from that experience with a very clear sense that I was a "proto-alcoholic" (my term) long before I started regular drinking.

Yet there are other people who will report just as sincerely that their drinking was quite normal most of their lives until they crossed an unseen line and plummeted off the cliff into alcoholic drinking.

I guess the answer to the question is "it's some combination of each, or one or the other." In other words, it doesn't answer the question, but it really doesn't matter. Alcoholics Anonymous works for people who are convinced that they have a permanent condition of mind and body that will never be "cured" in the conventional sense. Whether this is scientifically demonstrable matters not. If I had to postpone my recovery until  this debate became settled once and for all, I would have died quite some time ago. Maybe you would have too.

All of this is followed by a warning to "young people." And I would emphasize this to them: there are certain symptoms of alcoholism (such as initially high tolerance) that are present early on and are good predictors of later problems. So heed the story of the "man of thirty" and listen to our stories as well, especially the parts about our early drinking. If you are an alcoholic like me, we can save you ten or twenty years of misery. You can start wearing your slippers now.