Well I will give you an example of what it means. Lets say you go on a huge bender, you go for a week or a month or years or decades. Somehow get sober, whichever way it is it does not matter. So now lets say the person has had a few days off the sauce. He is sober, 100% sober. He is sitting in his living room, sober. He gets the recurring thought in his mind, hey maybe I can control it this time. Perhaps I can have fun this time, or I can drink normally, better yet I will have just 4 beers. Nothing bad will come of just taking a drink. Perhaps to relieve the stress. Whatever the lie is we tell ourselves to drink, we tell it to ourselves while we are 100% sober. However knowing what we know, from all the past expiriences of what happens when we took a drink, our brain fools ourselves, in that moment, to take a drink. That is the insanity of this disease. I know full well, I never have just 1,2,3 or 4 drinks. I know full well, I will probably black out, and most likely end up handcuffed, yet again.
I took the drink on a lie. The lie is, it will be different this time. And most times I took a drink on a lie while 100% sober. The relapse happens well before the 1st drink. And that is pure insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.