Hi bostonluv,
It is this powerlessness that I am referring to:
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We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.
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I did this for 25 years. Right from the beginning, my drinking resulted in a huge amount of suffering for me and those around me. Very close calls where I could have been seriously hurt or even killed someone. Blacking out, out of control. It was always very obvious that I could not control my drinking. Very obvious to everyone but me.
You touch a hot stove only once and learn your lesson. It should not have taken me 25 years to finally see what I was doing – risking everything, hurting others, losing so much in a vain effort to prove that I could drink like others. 25 years! It's just insane!
One passage in the Big Book that illustrates the distinction between powerlessness before the first drink and uncontrollable craving after the first drink is:
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Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
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This passage describes my old life perfectly.
BB quotes from the 1st Edition of the BB.