[nandm]

Hope and powerlessness.......By the time I was in my last few years of drinking I was steadily losing faith and hope in both myself and the world that I would be able to live life without drinking. I had sworn off alcohol so many times, only to turn right around and find myself drinking again only the drinking was worse with each return to it. I tried the self-help books, the positive thinking tapes, religion, etc... only to find that although at times it would help to slow down my drinking for a bit I still found myself once again right back in the bottle. With each successive return to drinking my self esteem and depression fell lower and lower.

I finally came to the point of giving up hope that I could live life without alcohol but also knowing I could no longer go on living with my drinking. I did not want to die but did not want to go on living if drinking was a part of that life. I had finally given up on me and my power to stop this progression.

With that admission of defeat I was finally able to ask for help from a "God" I wasn't even sure existed. After following the path set before me in AA I have not had to drink since that day March 13, 2001. If you are sick of being sick and tired of drinking there is a way out. I was desperate enough to go to any lengths to stop the insanity in my head and my life from the disease of alcoholism. The following passage from the Big Book is one I found useful in early sobriety. It reminded me that I had utilized everything I knew, all the self-knowledge I had, and I still was powerless over this disease. I was only able to find hope again when I was willing to reach out to a power greater than myself, even though at the time I had no idea what that power was I just knew there had to be something. I hope you find something useful from this passages and thoughts on it that follow.

quoted from the chapter More About Alcoholism in the Big Book.

.....Fred's story speaks for itself. We hope it strikes home to thousands like him. He had felt only the first nip of the wringer. Most alcoholics have to be pretty badly mangled before they really commence to solve their problems.

Many doctors and psychiatrists agree with our conclusions. One of these men, staff member of a world renowned hospital, recently made this statemen to some of us: "What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic's plight is, in my opinion, correct. As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from Divine help. Had you offered yourselves as patients at this hospital, I would not have taken you, if I had been able to avoid it. People like you are too heartbreaking. Though not a religious person, I have profound respect for the spiritual approach in such cases as yours. For most cases, there is virtually no other solution.

Once more: the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense much come from a higher Power.

Historical note: Doctor Percy Polick a psychiatrist, a Bellevue Hospital in New York is the doctor refered to in this passage.

The hope of the authors is that we may see oursleves in Fred's story. If we are unable to stay away from alcohol when we sincerely want to, then we may be alcoholics of the hopeless variety. Have we tried will power and failed? Have we placed our faith in self knowledge only to fail again?

We hang on to our threadbare ideas until the holes in our logic become so large that our glaring failure can no longer be hidden. Thinking we have only our own resources to hold on to we still are reluctant to let go. Usually, we must be beaten over and over again before we concede defeat. It is just this concession of defeat that is needed for us to move toward recovery. Without this admission of powerlessness, we usually continue to try to recover under our own power. The admission of powerlessness is the bedrock upon which the foundation of complete willingness lays.

This book quotes the opinion of several medical professionals who plainly state that they consider alcoholics hopeless. More importantly, the authors recount their own experience with trying human measures to overcome their alcoholism. They repeatedly illustrate how willpower and self-knowledge are not capable of winning out over this powerful illness. Do our own drinking histories and attempts to control our drinking parallel theirs? Have we exhausted the resources available to us in our own characters, the help of friends and loved ones and the medical community? Where do we place our hope of finding the power to stop drinking and recover from alcoholism?

If drinking produces in us a craving beyond our ability to control and we are unable to refrain from drinking despite our knowledge of the adverse consequences and our most firm resolve not to, then apart from divine help, we are most certainly defenseless.

Our best thinking offers no insurance against relapse. Human power cannot overcome either the phenomenon of craving or alcoholic insanity. When we admit that we are powerless over alcohol, we have nowhere else to turn but to a Higher Power.