BackToSquareOne

I've often felt that the concept of being powerless over alcohol was a copout, an excuse of sorts for an aberrant behavior. Do we say that the overweight person is powerless over food, the criminal powerless over their crime of choice, the smoker powerless over nicotene etc. etc.

In my drinking days I always found it very hard to stop once I started but it was still my bad choice to start. In retrospect I still have a hard time understanding why I made the same mistake (drinking) over and over again when I knew what the end result would be.

We can get addicted to a lot of things but does it follow that we are powerless over them? Can we surrender to an addiction without claiming to be powerless over whatever the addiction happens to be? Any thoughts?

FrothyJay

How bout turning it around and considering if you've ever demonstrated power over alcohol. I'm not talking about one instance, or one day, but in the match between you and alcohol, who's winning?

When I considered it that way, I realized I was getting my ass kicked with regularity.

You seem to be conceding the physical part (once I start, I don't stop) but have reservations about the mental obsession (even when I swear it off, I eventually go back to it).

So think about those instances where, when you were sober, you drank again. What sort of rationalizations were involved? Did it feel like a bit of a blank spot, as if you suddenly couldn't stop yourself anymore? But then, once you started drinking, did you have a moment where you said, "Holy Crap, what am I doing?"

This is the insanity of alcoholism. And a huge part of it is the inability to see it for what it is. The reluctance to realize how powerless we are.

SSIL75

I think so. I am an alcoholic, no doubt. I have a totally dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. One makes me want 8. A hangover makes me want more alcohol. My favorite thing to do used to be drinking all day. If I was going away for a weekend I would literally have trouble sleeping the week before with the anticipation of all day drinking.

I LOVED to drink. Even when I was in really dark periods of drinking a lot (eye openers, etc) I STILL really loved the feeling of being drunk. Even when I knew it was causing me to neglect my children and endangering my marriage. I still could not imagine life without alcohol. What would I have to look forward to? Surely there HAD to be a way to just cut down so that I could still keep what I loved (alcohol) and what I should love more (my family).

There wasn't. That 'relationship' was rotten to the core and either there was always something in my brain or I developed something in my brain that makes it impossible for me to have one or two and comfortably stop.

I do not believe I am powerless over alcohol until I take that first drink. the first drink is a choice. A bad choice. A dysfunctional choice. A 300lb person eating a big mac choice. But a choice nonetheless. After that all bets are off.

Boleo

I to fought the idea that I was "powerless". It goes against my logic, reason and better judgement. It took me a long time to recognize that everything that has helped me in recovery goes against my logic, reason and better judgement.

Looking at back at my progress, I now see that everything that has helped me in recovery was either baffling, paradoxical or disturbing the first time I heard it. On the other hand, everything that made sense to me turned out to be an adjunct issue to recovery.

least

I am powerless over alcohol if I put it in my body.

FrothyJay

Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinions and experiences.

What AA believes is powerlessness, though, is clear: it's complete powerlessness, including before you put alcohol in your body. Until, that is, you've discovered a power that relieves that problem.

It's why people relapse.

Crow3000

Just out of curiosity Frothy, where is this made clear?

My own take on this is the allergy comparison. If you are allergic to peanuts and you ingest peanut directly or indirectly, no matter how hard you fight, no matter how hard you try there will always be a chemical reaction you cannot control. Even though I do not really think alcoholism is exactly an allergic reaction, I believe that in the case of "powerlessness" the comparison works well.

Boleo

Quoting from the BB of AA does not go over to well here. Perhaps you should post this in the 12 Step forum?

In response to your general question, I tried "not drinking" one-day-at-a-time and found myself relapsing for no apparent reason. I never choose to relapse nor was it a matter of not wanting sobriety enough.

It was not until I experienced a spiritual awakening that I discovered that "not drinking" had nothing to do with why I am sober today.

totfit

I am powerless over the effect of alcohol in my system once it is ingested. I may have a mental obsession otherwise. When I embraced powerlessness early on when trying to quit years ago, it almost killed me. Like I said the powerlessness I have is that I can't change the effect of alcohol, but can change putting it in my system.

CarolD

When I kept drinking....despite the fact it was making me
metally unstable.....I consider I was powerless.
I was an active alcoholic at that point.

It's not an intellectual debate for me...it was sane or insane.
AA's Step 2 solved that madness for me...

FrothyJay

Sure, the comparison works well with one caveat: you don't crave peanuts obsessively when you know they create a bad reaction in you. You don't angst over them, wondering if maybe the next time you won't have the allergic reaction, and then eat them hoping that it will be different. That would be considered insane.

The alcoholic, according to the AA Big Book, has no defense against the first drink. Here are just a few quotes that address this:

"Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense." p. 43 BB

“The fact is that most alcoholics ... have lost the power of choice in drink...the almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us... There is a complete failure of the kind of [common-sense] defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.” p. 24 BB

This is why AA is a spiritual program of recovery, not simply a "stay away from the first drink" program. Simply staying away from the first drink, according to AA, won't work.

Reset

Not trying to start a debate or anything but the concept of powerlessness doesn't work for me.

So far anyway, I've had enough power to make the decision to quit. If I denied myself that power I would be drinking.

Maybe down the road, years later, with relapses under my belt, that perspective could change. But right now I'm putting faith in my own strength and free will.

FrothyJay

Perfectly valid viewpoint. I only know the answer for me, and was lucky enough to discover that it is exactly the same as AA's.

Humbled77

"I am powerless over alcohol" seems like a hopeless way to go about things to me. I am an alcoholic. Coming on a multi-month binge of 15-20 drinks a day. If I am helpless then there is no way I am going to stay sober, because I have money, a truck, free time, and a liquor store just down the road. But I am sober, how is that? Saturday at lunch, I passed on a beer that was bought for me and placed in front of me, Sunday I passed on after fishing beers at the truck, Wedsnesday night I ate pizza with friends as they each had a beer, and yesterday I passed on celebration beers after a big day of climbing. A beer would have been nice, but I just didn't think it was a good idea.

I look at it as when I drink it has a detrimental effect on the rest of my life, an effect that outweighs any benefits, so I have decided not to drink. Not an easy things to do all the time, so I need help from support sources, but if I resign all control over alcohol then I might as well grab my keys and wallet. I will concede that I have "less" control over alcohol than non-alcoholics.

bmwcycle

I think that it really doesn't matter if you are powerless or not, the common point in everyones post is that drinking is not good. We have all reached a point where drinking was taking away much more of our lives than it was giving back. That is became no fun, and out of control and stopping is the only reasonable solution. That it what is important to remember..

susanlauren

There are many alcoholics who can stop drinking (i.e., "quit") for varying periods of time through willpower alone. I certainly could do this. The problem was that I couldn't stay stopped. Sooner or later, despite my best intentions, despite a sincere desire to not drink, despite a knowledge of the bad things that happen to me when I drink, despite my admission that I am an alcoholic ... I would drink again. I can't drink (because I lose control of my alcohol intake/how much I drink) and I can't stop drinking (because the mental obsession eventually leads me back to drinking). That's powerlessness.
Susan

oak

I don't think I am powerless either. I think I am ambivalent- part of me wants to drink and part of me does not.

I see drinking as a choice, even though alcohol 'calls' to me and I can obsess about it. But I think I choose how to respond. How I live my life factors into the choices I make about alcohol and how much I have cravings/urges.

I am probably powerless over having a physical predisposition to alcohol addiction and past trauma. (But even then, what I do matters.)

Supercrew

It is sort of a weird contradiction that in order for you to get power through a spiritual awakening you must first admit you are powerless. It obviously works for many people, but I tend to think we all always have the power, some of us just need an alternative avenue to find it within us.

If you feel that it is a higher power that delivers it to you, well then more power to you. I tend to think that we alcoholics who have very strong mental obsessions with alcohol need first extended time without drinking, then some sort of realization either through individual maturation and self introspection for some, or spiritual enlightenment for others, and then there has to be regular maintenence and upkeep to keep us vigilant.

Either way to be successsful power in yourself or power through your HP is the main component. So I can see how someone who gets told they are powerless yet never feels they found the awakening could think/drink themselves further into the abyss.

Ranger

Let's try that last sentence again...

JohnBarleycorn

I deride those who would first try to convince desperate people that they are powerless over alcohol, and subsequently that they have a disease that compels them to drink, without offering them a VIABLE SOLUTION.

In other words, I deride those who disregard those "on either end of the bell," as you put it, dismissing their predictable downfall as evidence that "some are sicker than others."

When trouble returns for those unfortunate "chronic relapsers," as is often the case with problem drinkers who continue drinking, and they come back, time after time, ever increasingly vulnerable to the persistent message of powerlessness, surrender of critical judgment and control, and above all, mistrust of their own thought processes, the are then told "See? you are powerless, we told you," again without being offered a viable solution, except perhaps being told to work the steps yet again, harder this time, with more rigorous honesty.

I deride those who disregard and dismiss these unfortunates as "constitutionally incapable" of being honest, thereby further increasing their chances of guilt, shame, self loathing, and ultimate demise.