I use the program of AA for my recovery...So if that's not for you...You don't have to read this. They talk about having an entire psychic change...As you call it...Developing a new personality....Basically...Finding out what makes me tick?....What made me drink?...What made me....Me?....And then changing what needed to be changed. This is what the 12 steps gave me....I live by following a few simple rules....And I see now how people have 20...30...Even 50 years of continuous sobriety....I've never seen that anywhere else for alcoholics like the ones described in the Big Book....Alcoholics like myself. So to answer your question...It was impossible for me to work the steps of AA....Have an entire psychic change...And not grow up....Throw in having the obsession to drink lifted....And it's like this alcoholic ran across the best free deal in town.
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.
****On the other hand-and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand-once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.