trying to solve the problem with the problem

"If hundreds of experiences have shown him that one drink means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it he takes that one drink?" -- "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) Chapter 2 'There Is A Solution,' pg. 22.

We get beaten, robbed, shamed.
We lose relationships, property, jobs and sanity.
Time after time we start drinking "just to have fun" and disaster occurs.
Yet no matter what happens -- or how often it happens -- we can't see, or we deny, the relationship between our drinking and the state of our lives.  We still believe drinking is okay, or even that we deserve it.  We act like we're from Alcoholadonia, and as citizens of that great nation it is our God Given Right to get hammered.  Defiant and entitled, despite all the hell, we still "choose" to pick up that first drink.

"We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop." -- Big Book, Chapter 2, pgs. 22 - 23

Right.  Once we take that first drink we're like a car with two pedals:

An accelerator and an accelerator.

"These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion.  Therefor, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body." -- Big Book, Chapter 2, pg. 23

So the heart of the problem is far less what happens after we start drinking, but rather that we keep deciding to have that first drink.

We have a "curious mental blank spot."  We can't -- or won't -- remember what happens when we start drinking.  Which means the problem is in our thinking -- the problem is in our mind.

Thus, if you're trying to figure out on your own how not to drink, or if you have admitted to yourself you have a problem but want to deal with it "in your own way..."

Then you are trying to solve the problem with the problem.

I'm no expert, but that just doesn't look like a good plan to me.

Comments

[Dave]

It took a while for me to realize the truth of what you say. But once I did, life became much much different.

[Steve E]

AMEN! (I've been using that word a lot more than just on Sundays!)