Originally Posted by
thirtybubba 
What happens when drinking doesn't work for you... but sobriety doesn't make it better?
If drinking is my problem, then not drinking will solve my problem. But if my problem is alcoholism, then not drinking just makes me a pretty miserable alcoholic.
I was a pretty miserable alcoholic, drinking or not. And as long as I still had an alcoholic mind, eventually I looked to alcohol as my only solution, for many years even after it stopped working.
When Carl Jung is working with Rowland and telling him that alcoholics like that simply don't recover, with the exception of phenomena that
Originally Posted by AA BB, 1st Ed.
They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.
That describes the way by which hopeless alcoholics can recover. The Big Book just contains a set of instructions for producing that rearrangement.
The last time I drank, years ago, was in the form of a 6 month bender of drinking 24/7. It followed 7 or 8 months of not drinking, but not doing much else except going to meetings and hanging out with sober people. I remember beating my head off the wall shocked and demoralized that I had, once again, dug myself into a hole that I couldn't seem to get out of. A guy looked at me and asked me why I was surprised. He said something to the effect of, 'Well, duh, of course you're drinking. You haven't done anything to treat your alcoholism. You haven't had a spiritual awakening.'
And then he offered to show me how to have one.