Do I have to apologize for jumping into this thread? I majored in Philosophy and had a year of Graduate Study in that subject. I started to drink in college and thought and thought about alcohol and while I thought about it I was drinking it off and on. I was never able to think my way to sobriety. The more I analyzed the more I drank. Oh the reasons I gave for this! I drank because.... because.... because and often counselors would imply "If we only discovered why you drink then you might be sober!" Good old Dr. Freud! A real money maker for those who sat behind the fellow on the couch, saying little and making notes on a scratch pad. Meanwhile my body was changing. Marvelous thing the body. When you soak it in alcohol it revs up all those uptake receptors, makes corresponding changes in the transmitters and soon it not only tolerates alcohol but feels quite uncomfortable without it.(cf. Liza Doolittle, "Gin was mother's milk to her!)" So with tolerance you no longer drink for a buzz (or you don't remember doing that). You drink to feel normal and finally you drink to avoid withdrawal. But you're still thinking, "Why do I drink?" Reminds me of Milton's great description of "A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog....where armies whole have sunk." Paradise Lost (what an appropriate title!).
Some folks in AA suggest that it's best to turn your brain off, just do what you're told. I never subscribed to that literally but I did see some sense in the suggestion that too much thinking can impair one's ability to get the show on the road. In some ways drinking is a little like politics (maybe that's why there's so much booze at "fund raisers"). It's like politics because sometimes things get worse and worse until the whole thing hits bottom and people start to say, like the old song, " We gotta get out of this place!" This year, will politics drive us all to drink? Hope not. "Whatchyaself!" as they say in the mobster movies.
W.