[nandm]

I love this passage as it describes perfectly the end of my drinking career. Here are some thoughts on the passage. I have also included the second paragraph, which I find truly brings the first one into perspective.

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship, and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom, and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends, and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearnining to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt---one more failure.

The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did---then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen---Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand!

We are not anti-alcohol, anti-drinking, or anti-anything. People who are able to control their drinking have no need to abstain. We do not concern ourselves whatsoever with anyone else's decision to drink or not.

One old timer said that "Once we are pickled, we can never be cucumbers again." The truth of this statement has been borne out in the vast expxerience of A.A. members. Once we lose our ability to control out drinking, it is gone forever.

We experience Terror that we are out of control, Bewilderment that despite our firm resolve we have gotten drunk again, Frustration that our willpower can not bring about the life that we desire, and Despair that we will ever rise out of the mire into which we are sinking.