number of negative events, mix in normal amounts of twentieth-century stress, give this dose to a fatigued alcoholic and you have a nice dry drunk in the making. Of course we can help it along by skipping lunch, rushing at a double-time pace all day long, and engaging in the doubtful luxury of such emotions as anger and worry.
I learned that, in my own case, I was more likely to become irritable and confused toward the end of the work week, when accumulated tensions and lack of rest were at their worst. Things looked darker on Friday than they did on Monday morning. In time, I was able to realize that the things which seemed so important on Friday were really minor, and that such an outlook was due mostly to my failings and not to circumstances.
We all realize that there are ways of modifying or preventing dry drunks. A dry drunk is basically an illustration that we have much progress to make in our application of the AA program.
The antidote is contained in the Twelve Steps. We should seek ways to help other members—even a simple telephone call to inquire about a fellow member can shake us loose from our exaggerated self-concern. No one can express love and self-pity at the same moment; showing concern for others helps us to see how foolish we have been, how we have literally trapped ourselves in the familar mental “squirrel cage.”
When nothing else avails, we can say, “Today I am sick.’’ Of course, this does not mean physically sick, but refers more to a spiritual disorder—a separateness from God as we understand him. During an emotional bender, the admission that we are powerless over our own rampant thoughts, and that our lives are even more unmanageable than usual, is an act which equates with Step One.
I believe a dry drunk is a period of temporary insanity for the sober alcoholic. Step Two says: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’’ A dry drunk is a self-imposed separation from others and from God. We try to run on our own current, like a battery without a generator, which soon runs down and becomes quite dead.
Step Ten—the Step of continuing personal inventory—should certainly be emphasized following a dry drunk. We should attempt, in a spirit of humility and deep reflection, to see clearly where we were wrong. It helps to discuss these failures with other members, in order to crystalize our mistakes and prevent their recurrence. A series of unexpected conditions may have helped to bring about our emotional upheaval; this does not justify it, but only indicates that we are in definite need of further spiritual development.
Perhaps, in the last analysis, a dry drunk is mostly a childish tantrum, an interval of immaturity, a regression to those frantic drinking days of self-will run riot. Nevertheless, it can still be a perilous period for the alcoholic struggling for recovery. I know that there have been dark days when a will infinitely greater than my own has been responsible for my sobriety.
M.E., Dayton, Ohio
Those Depressions–Make Them Work for Good!
August 1948
Most of us have them, I guess—those depressions that attack us without warning and apparently without adequate cause. I am sure they are not limited to alcoholics; but for us, they are dangerous, much more dangerous than they are to the average nonalcoholic, for they induce a craving, not necessarily for liquor, but for the effect of liquor.
I remember reading an article some time ago about mood cycles. I think it said that the mood swing for an average normal person took place in a matter of fourteen to eighteen days, as a rule. It advised us to keep track of our feelings—that is, if we wake up feeling unaccountably happy and go through the day in that frame of mind, mark it down on our calendar, and see how long it is until we have another such day. Do the same with the sad days.
This might be an interesting experiment and prove helpful enough if it were not for the fact that our mood swings are wider than those of the average person. Our sad times are sadder; our happy periods, perhaps because we have gotten used to doing without them, cause an elation that is unrealistic and almost as dangerous to us as the depressions. We make plans that are out of all proportion to our abilities, at least without years of sustained effort.
We are not too long on sustained effort, and when a few stabs in the direction of our goal, whatever it may be, don’t produce immediate results, we are prone to give the whole thing up.
To make these violent changes in mood safe for ourselves, I think we will have to do something about them, turn them to account in some way. I wouldn’t know what to do about the elations except to pull ourselves down out of the clouds by main force and go out and do something active instead of daydreaming—do something that is within the realm of possibility and keep on doing it until we have accomplished something concrete. At such times, our self-confidence is high, and we are likely to do a good job.
Our depressions vary in length and intensity—at least, mine do. Sometimes, they are deep indeed and last as long as a month. Sometimes, they are less severe, and I get over them in a few days. Dark or light, they are distressing, unproductive times, when life seems like a very dull business. Even AA loses its reality. I go to meetings and come away bored and dissatisfied. If it is a discussion meeting and I contribute any optimistic thought, I listen to myself cynically and think, ‘Why don’t we stop kidding ourselves? We’ll never really amount to anything. We missed our chance long ago. We are way behind in the race.’
These, to my mind, are the times to go to work, fight it out with yourself, answer yourself back. Say to yourself: “All right. Perhaps I never will do anything spectacular. Maybe I’m not any ball of fire, never was, never will be. Suppose I have to plod along in the middle of the road just like the vast majority of human beings—scoring a small success here, a small setback there, never getting very far ahead, trying not to get too far behind.’’
If we face these thoughts honestly and without shame, we have done something. We have turned our depression into an adjustment that is a necessary one for most of us. It is quite probable that our lives will be spectacular only in that they are so much better than they were during our drinking years. We will be important only to ourselves and the few who are close to us. If we stay sober, and we know that we must, we can say these things to ourselves and go on from there.
To us as active alcoholics, the word “mediocrity” meant all the dull, boring aspects of life that we were trying to escape. If we couldn’t be tops, we didn’t want to play at all. Well, most of us—not all of us by any means,but most of us—are pretty run-of-the-mill individuals. We can do a job as well as the next fellow, but perhaps not any better. We can make as much money if we work as hard as he does, and if we can stop this frantic drive to prove that we are remarkable people, it is quite likely that we will settle down and really enjoy whatever life has to offer us. And it offers a great deal now that we are sober and can appreciate it.
There is one job that we can do superlatively well, and there isn’t anything that can keep us from doing it if we are serious in wanting to. That is the job we do on ourselves, inside ourselves. It means clearing out a whole mess of false values, unrealistic ambitions, and worn-out resentments, and putting in their place the qualities we want to have—kindness, tolerance, friendliness, for instance. We can begin to see what the real values of life are, and they are very different from the hazy, distorted dreams we had of becoming famous overnight.
If we can really talk to ourselves in this manner during our depression, we have made use of it. Instead of letting it submerge us and perhaps drive us into a slip, we have used it as a stepping-stone toward a better understanding of what our sober lives can hold for us.
In our happier moods, we will still daydream, and I wouldn’t want to stop. But they will be constructive dreams, rather than mere flights of fancy, and if we
