jimhere

Well, you may be a real alcoholic. For the non-alcoholic, drinking is the problem. Stop drinking, problem solved. For the alcoholic, stopping drinking is when the problem begins, because drinking isn't the problem. Sobriety is the problem and when it works, booze is the answer. Now if the alcoholic could only "choose" to stop drinking when the booze quits working, that wouldn't be so bad. But the deal is if you are a real alcoholic, you don't have that choice. Left in the condition that you are in right now, at some point you will have to drink again, or worse. Because sobrietyall by itself is the most intolerable condition of all for alcoholics. The whole reason I drank is because I couldn't stand being sober.

You are experiencing what some of us call the second half of Step One and finding out that having an unmanageable life has nothing to do with drinking unless you are still drinking. You see I used to think that the dash in the First Step meant "fill in the blank." I am powerless over alcohol and that is why my life is unmanageable." But at six months away from my last drink, I found myself frustrated, miserable,restless, irritable, and discontent. Farther away from my last drink than I'd been in seventeen years, I was in worse shape mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I was when I got sober. Everyday was a struggle. My f'ing head wouldn't shut up, it just went. It constantly played the "Drink Don't Drink" game. I was ready to blow my head off just to get it to shut up. And all that most people could give me were cliches. If one more person would've have said "This too shall pass," I was gonna grab them by the throat, because it wasn't passing. Not long after that is when I met a man in Alcoholics Anonymous that had a real answer.

This man showed me something. He had me turn to page 52 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Take a look at the second full paragraph, the one that starts with "We had to ask ourselves..." Look over that list of human problems and ask yourself if alcohol used to kind of make those things better. And now ask yourself is just not drinking makes those problems better, or do they seem to intensify?

These human problems are the problems that need to be addressed. And strangely enough, there is a spiritual answer for human problems.

If an alcoholic can't get to a place of being able to live in the human condition and be reasonably comfortable, he will probably always have to drink. Or worse.
Jim

Big Book references from Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition