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Living Sober
Page 8 (continued)
4 Remembering that alcoholism is an incurable, progressive, fatal disease (continued)
As some of us put it, we can no more make that change than a pickle can change itself back into a cucumber. No medication or psychological treatment any of us ever had “cured” our alcoholism.
Further, having seen thousands and thousands of alcoholics who did not stop drinking, we are strongly persuaded that alcoholism is a fatal disease. Not only have we seen many alcoholics drink themselves to death—dying during the “withdrawal” symptoms of delirium tremens (D.T.’s) or convulsions, or dying of cirrhosis of the liver directly related to drinking—we also know that many deaths not officially attributed to alcoholism are in reality caused by it. Often, when an automobile accident, drowning, suicide, homicide, heart attack, fire, pneumonia, or stroke is listed as the immediate cause of death, it was heavy alcoholic drinking that led to the fatal condition or event.
Certainly, most of us in A.A. felt safely far away from such a fate when we were drinking. And probably the majority of us never came near the horrible last stages of chronic alcoholism.
But we saw that we could, if we just kept on drinking. If you get on a bus bound for a town a thousand miles away, that’s where you’ll wind up, unless you get off and move in another direction.