Thank-you Cairn for sharing this. Very powerful, and describes my alcoholism to a tee, particularly.
"Ask half the common drunkards you know why it is that they fall so often a prey to temptation, and they will say that most of the time they cannot tell. It is a sort of vertigo with them. Their nervous centres have become a sluice-way pathologically unlocked by every passing conception of a bottle and a glass. They do not thirst for the beverage; the taste of it may even appear repugnant; and they perfectly foresee the morrow's remorse. But when they think of the liquor or see it, they find themselves preparing to drink, and do not stop themselves: and more than this they cannot say.
It used to baffle me that I just could not explain it; much less control it. And although I could come up with a rationale as to why - usually attributable to some outside force, circumstance or person - one day it just landed that this applied to so very many circumstances, that there really must instead be something about me, and my responses to the world and how I dealt with well, just being alive really! So many times, with a glass or can in my hand, thinking, I don't even want this. But nothing at the time at my disposal to do anything but drink
"Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get the rum;" "If a bottle of brandy stood at one hand and the pit of hell yawned at the other, and I were convinced that I should be pushed in as sure as I took one glass, I could not refrain:"
Loved this - no consequence, no barrier or challenge was too great. At any cost, I drank, and always with the delusion that, this time, it would be different. It never was.
What a miracle any one of us gets sober? Whatever way and however that happens, what a miracle.