Weaver

All I know is, it is the best choice I ever made.

EndGameNYC

So, is it a "strong desire," meaning "impulsive," or a "premeditated behavior?"

In either case, neither alcoholism nor drinking is a crime.

Gottalife

As an AA recovered alcoholic, choice really is irrelevant. I lost the power of choice in drink. Very simple. My pre-meditation in the in the light of the previous days horrors was often not to drink. My conscious mind made the decision not to drink that day.

Yet later, I would be on my fifth before remembering I was not going to drink that day. I had no effective defence against the first drink. I was In a state of psychosis, my conscious mind and actions were disconnected from reality. I was drinking when I had the most compelling reasons not to, and I had made a conscious choice not to drink that day.

When I came to AA, completely wrecked with alcoholism, it did not occur to me that I would have to stop drinking. I came because I thought there was some small hope of a better life. Lucky there is the long version of trad 3 which let's in all who are suffering from alcoholism.

So I started on the AA journey, not believing anything would work. One day my sponsor rang to tell me I had been sober three months. I was well into step 9 and trying to live by 10,11 , and, 12.

The booze problem had disappeared, almost as a by product of the steps. And the step 10 promises had come true.

I was never given the power of choice back. Instead I was "placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected".

I no longer need to even make a choice.

Verte

Good morning Tamerua!

How did I recognize the AV in my head?

Every rationalization for drinking I had in my mind and had used for some time became clear to me the longer I stayed logged into SR - and after having many frank conversations with myself, in my head. (I came to SR totally freaked out about the whole subject...I knew I had to stop drinking but had no idea how to stop drinking??? And I was freaking out).

So the decision to stop was made and now I'm doing the work and will continue to do so.

gardendiva

Are you asking about alcoholism or the act of drinking alcohol? The impulse to drink is part of the physiological disorder, the choice to put alcohol in your body is premeditated behavior.

Of course not. The analogy isn't perfect, but I stand by the sentiment. The idea that our strong desire to drink nullifies our ability to choose sobriety is false and impedes recovery. We can control how we respond to our impulses. Otherwise we're just monkeys with money and guns.

soberlicious

I couldn't agree more, especially with the part I bolded. Humans have wrestled with strong desire since the beginning of time. The idea that we simply cannot help ourselves in the face of any strong desire is a myth. A big, fat, dangerous lie.

soberlicious

Just read of Maya Angelou's death and was reminded of this thread...and making choices.

Here is a woman who, for all intents and purposes, should have given up on life. She was traumatized early in life. She could have drank herself to death. She could have gone on to harm others. She could have withdrawn into nothingness...

...but instead she made different choices.

She said: "I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."

Each of us can refuse to be reduced by addiction. Difficult? yes...but don't be fooled into thinking that "hard" and "impossible" are synonymous.

Boleo

When I left rehab after 5 months of forced abstinence;

I made a choice to not go back to rehab. Any rehab.
I made a choice to not go back to recovery meetings. Any recovery meeting.
I made a choice to not go back to church. Any church.
I made a choice to not go back to doctors. Any doctor.
I made a choice to not go back to self-help books. Any books.
I made a choice to drink myself to death. I made a decision to use 100% of my willpower to drink no matter what.

It was at that moment that I had a Spiritual Awakening that lifted the obsession to drink clean out of me, root and branch. Why? Because I had:

"ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."
(BB page 85)

RobbyRobot

I'm more thinking we can choose to own or disown our impulses (or desires) relative to our life experiences. Control is such a general term. There is a lot to be said for the already hard-wired instinctive responses we have as humans. On top of all that, we also have our own consciousness, and as well our subjective / objective perceptions of the world we live in -- and all this in a constant flux of change relative to each of us as individuals.

So, "we can control how we respond...." is more a wishful statement which itself betrays an additional level of desire for control, and not so much describes the resultant realities of just how elusive is such control of our chosen responses.

Personally, from my perspective anyways, there are plenty of humans running around trashing their lives, and the lives of others not much more intelligently than would do monkeys with guns and money. But that's me, lol.

Interesting thread. Deep.

I doubt there is a simplistic one size fits all resolution to this worthy discussion.

EndGameNYC

I've never endorsed "the idea that our strong desire to drink nullifies our ability to choose sobriety." I can't go an hour without making several choices to do any number of things, and it takes little effort to do so. I'll add to the discussion, or at least bring it to the foreground, that taking the necessary action to make my choices both real and meaningful is the harder part and the more daunting challenge.

Verte

EndGame - do you mean like actively choosing instead of passively? Like charting your own course instead of being moved by the current of the river? And then continuing to take a route of personal significance? Can you give an example when you have time?

My brain is moving so slowly this week it is painful.

This discussion in its entirety is great to read and think about while I'm slogging along. Thanks again posters.

gardendiva

Yeah, I was addressing Jessie65's comment. I never endorsed the idea that
"the affliction of alcoholism is a premeditated behavior." I was just using an analogy.

jdooner

Gardendiva and Endgame - I did comment on Jessie's response supporting the idea that in some cases (not the majority) that our brains can become so damaged that we lack the ability to consciously make a choice to use or drink. It is proven that the response time of certain cortices in our brain in an addict is actually slower than the impulse or dopamine release. This means that to certain addicts (I am generally including alcoholics too) they are powerless over the drink and unable to choose (consciously) to drink/use or not.

This is not conjecture or opinion but being proven with modern technology such as MRI, PET scans in the current studies of addicts and neurology.

For most of us I would agree that sobriety is a choice.

FT

Good thread.

I find it interesting when some people talk about "getting rid" of the addictive voice.

The addictive voice is nothing more than our basal drives "talking" to us -- our basic survival impulses and instincts fall into that category.

Hell, I don't have an AV so much as a whole CHORUS. Survival is not possible without our basal drives, which is why we have to live with the AV and not try to destroy it.

ANY thought that leads to drinking or using IS the AV.

To me, sobriety is a choice to self-identify as a non-alcohol/substance-user. I am a non-drinker. Period. Once truly so self-identified, all other "choices" become simple, but not necessarily easy.

I don't drink stuff with alcohol in it because I am a non-drinker. So far in my old age (62) and a non drinker for over 20 years, I have encountered few to no situations in which I am the only one who does not drink. It took about 3 years of sobriety for me personally to get to the place where I no longer had to think about it on a minute to minute basis, or even a day to day basis.

Aellyce

"I doubt there is a simplistic one size fits all resolution to this worthy discussion."
From RobbyRobot.

This is how I also view the "AV", which was the original topic of this discussion. I guess similar to how we identify and than can work with a HP in a 12-step program.

Or just life in general

EndGameNYC

Hi JD.

I don't dispute the findings of brain scans. I'm well versed in the neuropsychology and the genetics of alcoholism. About ten years ago I was the Site Coordinator and Director of Clinical Assessment for COGA -- The Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcholism -- an ongoing, multi-site study that involved university hospitals across the US. (I've also coordinated other large-scale studies on addictions.) The current findings and conclusions are, in very short form, that people who develop alcoholism have genetic profiles that are similar to other people who develop the affliction, and different genetic profiles compared to those who don't. It's believed that a genetic predisposition to alcoholism accounts for approximately 50% to the development of alcoholism. (I'm using simplicity in the service of brevity, here and elsewhere.)

But genetics alone is not enough. Many people with alcoholism do not have parents or siblings with the affliction so, to the extent that they're interested at all, they reject a genetic link. But genetics is not a strictly linear process. Many other biological, emotional, familial, social and other "events" need to occur for the development of genetic traits, or for the relevant behaviors to manifest.

The problem I have with the brain-scan argument is that it's reducing choice to biology which, in turn, implies that choice or decision-making occurs on a cellular level. To paraphrase Freud, the argument states that "biology is destiny." This is biological reductionism. The ~100 billion neurons in the human brain are, at any given moment, making billions of "decisions" on a cellular level, but none of this mitigates free will or the power to choose one thing or another. Most of us can describe and explain free will in very matter-of-fact ways.

The thing of it is, there is no single theory of alcoholism that provides either a comprehensive or satisfying explanation. Many theories come into play, including classical conditioning, psychoanalytic psychology, human development, familial and social influences, human physiology, brain structures/brain changes and, yes, biology. During adolescence, for example, people who experience pleasure the first time or first few times that they drink are at a higher risk to develop alcoholism than their counterparts who don't get much of a thrill from it. On the surface, this is simple classical conditioning: If I want to feel good, I drink. If I want to feel better, I drink more. But why is it that some people experience pleasure while others either don't experience pleasure or, instead, feel worse -- headaches, dizziness, feeling tired, and the like? Why, for some people does the anticipated or real pleasure so far outweigh the negative consequences that they continue to drink in the face of failing health, ruined relationships, chronic unemployment, homelessness, and psychological and emotional degradation?

If I'm predisposed to alcoholism -- whether genetically, neurologically, psychologically, emotionally or otherwise -- then I'm at the mercy of experiencing strong cravings for alcohol as soon as I take the first drink. This is explained in the AA Big Book and in studies that implicate acetone, an alcohol by-product, as responsible for triggering cravings. Acetone stays in our systems longer than alcohol which only partly explains why we continue to experience cravings between drinking sessions and when we put down the drink. And why we again experience cravings, almost immediately, when we pick up a drink after years of abstinence. But though the choice to continue drinking -- despite the negative consequences -- may be the result of cravings, impaired judgment, emotional impairment or brain changes, this is not the same as not being able to stop or not choosing to stop.

Though I continued to drink for three years following my relapse, and then losing everything in the process, I could have at any moment decided that I was going to stop. But the decision alone, as I know you know, isn't enough. The solution to stopping is doing whatever it takes to stop, something that so many who find themselves repeatedly relapsing either fail to recognize or dismiss as extreme, and something -- by my choice -- I was unwilling to do.

My choice to stop drinking after taking the first drink is dramatically impaired, to the point that I simply do not want to stop, no matter the consequences. But to continue drinking despite all of the serious problems that come with it is, in my opinion, much more of a choice. A flawed choice, yes, but the instigator is a real part of my self, not a conspiracy hatched in my central nervous system.

freshstart57

I agree with your facts, but I don't completely accept your conclusions. A neocortex response time longer than dopamine release time doesn't reduce us to beings incapable of choice. I think you are describing something called a limbic or amygdala hijack, a real phenomenon that many of us have experienced which we describe like 'I don't know how it happened, I just drank it'. We can learn to interrupt this through a conscious awareness, mindfulness in other words. The effectiveness of this is also proven in current studies.

Mountainmanbob

the title of your thread -- brought me to the thread
my Sponsor does not like the sobriety is a choice teaching
but
always teaches that sobriety is a decision that needs to be made
I see that you have that covered
nice

MM

jdooner

Endgame and Freshstart - I agree with both of your responses and appreciate you both taking the time for thoughtful responses. My point in putting my response out there was to show that in extreme cases there is a biological function that can actually impair the ability of choice. Does this reduce choice altogether, I would tend to think not. However, for an active user of substance, depending upon if they remain active 24/7 they may loose their choice and freewill because they are being controlled by the drug, which is impairing the neurological responses.

I found it interesting that in both alcoholics and cocaine (including crack) addicts the dopamine response system is significantly impaired resulting is less pleasure center making it more difficult for a long term addict to give up the drink or drug because normal sober life feels boring. This creates a very difficult environment for someone to choose to want a sober life over an active life and one of the reasons I personally believe relapse is so prevalent in alcoholics and addicts.

Endgame, I agree with you completely regarding genetic and environmental impact of addiction. I believe the Twin Study, which so many use to support genetic impact is actually flawed. It would seem that environmental impact is gaining much more acceptance among professionals.

cardoon

Yes, a choice. One of the hardest fought, most deliberate choices I've made. Feels like a pretty good choice too.