1947
The mystery of slips is not so deep as it may appear. While it does seem odd that an alcoholic, who has restored himself to a dignified place among his fellowmen and continued dry for years, should suddenly throw all his happiness overboard and find himself again in mortal peril of drowning in liquor, often the reason is simple.
People are inclined to say, “There is something peculiar about alcoholics. They seem to be well, yet at any moment they may turn back to their old ways. You can never be sure.”
This is largely twaddle. The alcoholic is a sick person. Under the techniques of Alcoholics Anonymous, he gets well—that is to say, his disease is arrested. There is nothing unpredictable about him any more than there is anything weird about a person who has arrested diabetes.
Let’s get it clear, once and for all, that alcoholics are human beings. Then we can safeguard ourselves intelligently against most slips.
In both professional and lay circles, there is a tendency to label everything that an alcoholic may do as “alcoholic behavior.” The truth is, it is simply human nature.
It is very wrong to consider many of the personality traits observed in liquor addicts as peculiar to the alcoholic. Emotional and mental quirks are classified as symptoms of alcoholism merely because alcoholics have them, yet those same quirks can be found among nonalcoholics, too. Actually, they are symptoms of mankind!
Of course, the alcoholic himself tends to think of himself as different, somebody special, with unique tendencies and reactions. Many psychiatrists, doctors, and therapists carry the same idea to extremes in their analyses and treatment of alcoholics. Sometimes, they make a complicated mystery of a condition which is found in all human beings, whether they drink whiskey or buttermilk.
To be sure, alcoholism, like every other disease, does manifest itself in some unique ways. It does have a number of baffling peculiarities which differ from those of all other diseases.
At the same time, many of the symptoms and much of the behavior of alcoholism are closely paralleled and even duplicated in other diseases.
The slip is a relapse! It is a relapse that occurs after the alcoholic has stopped drinking and started on the AA program of recovery. Slips usually occur in the early stages of the alcoholic’s AA indoctrination, before he has had time to learn enough of the AA technique and AA philosophy to give him a solid footing. But slips may also occur after an alcoholic has been a member of AA for many months or even several years, and it is in this kind, above all, that one finds a marked similarity between the alcoholic’s behavior and that of “normal” victims of other diseases.
It happens this way: When a tubercular patient recovers sufficiently to be released from the sanitarium, the doctor gives him careful instructions for the way he is to live when he gets home. He must drink plenty of milk. He must refrain from smoking. He must obey other stringent rules.
For the first several months, perhaps for several years, the patient follows directions. But as his strength increases and he feels fully recovered, he becomes slack. There may come the night when he decides he can stay up until ten o’clock. When he does this, nothing untoward happens. Soon, he is disregarding the directions given him when he left the sanitarium. Eventually, he has a relapse!
The same tragedy can be found in cardiac cases. After the heart attack, the patient is put on a strict rest schedule. Frightened, he naturally follows directions obediently for a long time. He, too, goes to bed early, avoids exercise such as walking upstairs, quits smoking, and leads a Spartan life. Eventually, though, there comes a day, after he has been feeling good for months or several years, when he feels he has regained his strength, and has also recovered from his fright. If the elevator is out of repair one day, he walks up the three flights of stairs. Or he decides to go to a party—or do just a little smoking—or take a cocktail or two. If no serious aftereffects follow the first departure from the rigorous schedule prescribed, he may try it again, until he suffers a relapse.
In both cardiac and tubercular cases, the acts which led to the relapses were preceded by wrong thinking. The patient in each case rationalized himself out of a sense of his own perilous reality. He deliberately turned away from his knowledge of the fact that he had been the victim of a serious disease. He grew overconfident. He decided he didn’t have to follow directions.
Now that is precisely what happens with the alcoholic—the arrested alcoholic, or the alcoholic in AA who has a slip. Obviously, he decides to take a drink again some time before he actually takes it. He starts thinking wrong before he actually embarks on the course that leads to a slip.
There is no reason to charge the slip to alcoholic behavior or a second heart attack to cardiac behavior. The alcoholic slip is not a symptom of a psychotic condition. There’s nothing screwy about it at all. The patient simply didn’t follow directions.
For the alcoholic, AA offers the directions. A vital factor, or ingredient of the preventive, especially for the alcoholic, is sustained emotion. The alcoholic who learns some of the techniques or the mechanics of AA but misses the philosophy or the spirit may get tired of following directions–not because he is alcoholic, but because he is human. Rules and regulations irk almost anyone, because they are restraining, prohibitive, negative. The philosophy of AA, however, is positive and provides ample sustained emotion—a sustained desire to follow directions voluntarily.
In any event, the psychology of the alcoholic is not as different as some people try to make it. The disease has certain physical differences, yes, and the alcoholic has problems peculiar to him, perhaps, in that he has been put on the defensive and consequently has developed frustrations. But in many instances, there is no more reason to be talking about “the alcoholic mind” than there is to try to describe something called “the cardiac mind” or “the TB mind.”
I think we’ll help the alcoholic more if we can first recognize that he is primarily a human being—afflicted with human nature.
Anybody Seen My Dragon?
February 1967
You’re still drinking, friend? Then you’re just the man I want to see. Want to ask you a question. Over here, where we won’t be disturbed.
Question’s this: Wonder if you’ve seen my dragon? Name of Beastly. Nice little guy. For a dragon. Green, with pink spots. Believe me, you couldn’t miss ole Beastly!
I was sobbing my eyes out one night because the park bench I was on was going through red lights and I was scared stiff. Suddenly this dragon whammed into the bench and stopped it cold. If I’d thought I was scared before, Friend, now I was petrified. A dragon! Imagine!
“What’th the matter with you, Mithter?” he asked, and that started me laughing like a school kid. Somehow you can’t be really scared of a dragon that lisps.
“Thtop laughing!” he fumed, and believe me, Friend, I thtopped. I mean stopped. On second thought, you can be scared of a lisping dragon, especially when he closes the damper and flames shoot out of his mouth.
“Thanks for stopping the bench,’’ I said.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.’’ At least he was modest.
Turned out the li’l fella didn’t have a name, so I called him Beastly, which described him pretty well. Besides, he liked the name. Beastly also liked the smell of sherry. He always came around when I drank it, and sometimes stayed for days after.
Usually,
