Have you ever wondered why it is that you cannot stop drinking? If you are like me you probably came up with some theories of you own. I thought my main problem was lack of will power. Actually I had plenty of will power, for most of my drinking career I held down a full-time job despite feeling ill most days - this took incredible will power.
I also thought that I was weak, stupid or bad, depending on my mood. When I came to AA I was told that I suffered from an illness. At first I didn't buy this, I thought these people were just trying to justify their drinking. Then I was introduced to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous where I discovered A Doctor's Opinion of alcoholism.
The Doctor's opinion is that we have a physical allergy to alcohol:
"We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve."
The definition for the word "allergy" is, "Excess sensitiveness to certain substances which are harmless to most persons."
Alcohol is a poison. The normal reaction to alcohol is to have one or two drinks and not go any further. But, our reaction is very different. We have one or two drinks just to get started. Once an alcoholic starts drinking, because of the unique way it's processed in our body, we set off a craving for more alcohol. This is an allergy or abnormal reaction to alcohol because about nine out of ten people don't get that once they start drinking. So an alcoholic cannot always predict how much they are going to drink, and a non-alcoholic can always predict how much they are going to drink.
When the Doctor's Opinion was written in the 1930's it was just an opinion. Medical science has progressed since then and has confirmed this opinion as fact.
(The physiological explanation brought here is not part of the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" or the AA program)
It has been discovered that the metabolism of an alcoholic differs from that of a normal person. Ethanol alcohol is broken down in the body by the following process:
ETHANOL
enzymes convert the ethanol into
ACETALDEHYDE
enzymes convert acetaldehyde into
DIACETIC ACID
enzymes convert diacetic acid into
AN ACETATE
more enzymes convert the acetate into
WATER & CARBON DIOXIDE & SUGAR
The water is expelled from the body through the urinary tract, the carbon
dioxide through the respiratory system and the sugar is burned up through
physical exercise (or turned into fat).
If a person is not an alcoholic, they can normally successfully drink approximately one ounce of alcohol per hour without getting drunk. Not so with the alcoholic. The chemical decomposition of the ethanol through the alcoholic’s body follows the same process until it reaches the acetate compound and then the liver and pancreas fail to produce sufficient enzymes to complete the decomposition process. The acetate produces the craving that deprives the alcoholic of the ability to control the amount they drink. The craving exceeds the alcoholic’s will power to stop once they have commenced to drink.
Furthermore this is a progressive illness. The craving for alcohol will be greater after the 10th drink than it was with the first. As our drinking progresses, the alcohol attacks the liver and pancreas which produce the enzymes which break down the alcohol. Hence even more acetates stay in our bodies and the craving increases.
If you are an alcoholic who still harbours the idea that your drinking will get better forget it, you have a progressive illness.
If we just suffered from a physical allergy then all you would have to do would be to read this article and a light bulb would come on in your brain and you'd never drink again. With most allergies this is probably the case. I'm sure if I discovered that I was allergic to nuts and that eating them would kill me I'd stop eating them.
With alcohol it's not so simple because as well as having a physical allergy to alcohol we have a mental obsession which tells us to pick up the first drink. Therefore our main problem centre's in our mind.
In our mind alcohol is not our problem it's the solution to our problems. At some stage in our lives alcohol made it easier to cope with life. Our mind stores up this information and when we come across a situation that we can't handle it tells us that having a drink will solve the problem, even though hundred's or thousands of previous experiences should tell us the opposite. When we talk about insanity in Alcoholics Anonymous this is what we mean.
The Doctor's Opinion puts it this way:
"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks - drinks which they see others taking with impunity (which means freedom from problems). After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery."