Thursday, August 03, 2006
A.A.: More About Alcoholism: The First Drink
"... obviously this is the crux of the problem."
"... the desperate experiment of the first drink."
Alcoholics Anonymous
More About Alcoholism
Page 35
One drink is too many, but twenty is not enough.
To expand upon this Big Book quote, I offer an excerpt from other AA literature, Living Sober.
"Many of us, when we first began to drink, never wanted or took more than one or two drinks. But as time went on, we increased the number. Then, in later years, we found ourselves drinking more and more, some of us getting and staying very drunk. Maybe our condition didn't always show in our speech or our gait, but by this time we were never actually sober.
If that bothered us too much, we would cut down, or try to limit ourselves to one or two, or switch from hard liquor to beer or wine. At least, we tried to limit the amount, so we would not get too disastrously tight. Or we tried to hide how much we drank.
But all these measures got more and more difficult. Occasionally, we even went on the wagon, and did not drink at all for a while.
Eventually, we would go back to drinking -- just one drink. And since that apparently did no serious damage, we felt it was safe to have another. Maybe that was all we took on that occasion, and it was a great relief to find we could take just one or two, then stop. Some of us did that many times.
But the experience proved to be a snare. It persuaded us that we could drink safely. And then there would come the occasion (some special celebration, a personal loss, or no particular event at all) when two or three made us feel fine, so we thought one or two more could not hurt. And with absolutely no intention of doing so, we found ourselves again drinking too much. We were right back where we had been -- overdrinking without really wanting to.
Such repeated experiences have forced us to this logically inescapable conclusion: If we do not take the first drink, we never get drunk. Therefore, instead of planning never to get drunk, or trying to limit the number of drinks or the amount of alcohol, we have learned to concentrate on avoiding only one drink; the first one."
Living Sober
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Pages 4-5
Get the latest edition of:
Alcoholics Anonymous
AA Services
aa addiction alcoholism recovery sponsornet substance abuse
"... the desperate experiment of the first drink."
Alcoholics Anonymous
More About Alcoholism
Page 35
One drink is too many, but twenty is not enough.
To expand upon this Big Book quote, I offer an excerpt from other AA literature, Living Sober.
"Many of us, when we first began to drink, never wanted or took more than one or two drinks. But as time went on, we increased the number. Then, in later years, we found ourselves drinking more and more, some of us getting and staying very drunk. Maybe our condition didn't always show in our speech or our gait, but by this time we were never actually sober.
If that bothered us too much, we would cut down, or try to limit ourselves to one or two, or switch from hard liquor to beer or wine. At least, we tried to limit the amount, so we would not get too disastrously tight. Or we tried to hide how much we drank.
But all these measures got more and more difficult. Occasionally, we even went on the wagon, and did not drink at all for a while.
Eventually, we would go back to drinking -- just one drink. And since that apparently did no serious damage, we felt it was safe to have another. Maybe that was all we took on that occasion, and it was a great relief to find we could take just one or two, then stop. Some of us did that many times.
But the experience proved to be a snare. It persuaded us that we could drink safely. And then there would come the occasion (some special celebration, a personal loss, or no particular event at all) when two or three made us feel fine, so we thought one or two more could not hurt. And with absolutely no intention of doing so, we found ourselves again drinking too much. We were right back where we had been -- overdrinking without really wanting to.
Such repeated experiences have forced us to this logically inescapable conclusion: If we do not take the first drink, we never get drunk. Therefore, instead of planning never to get drunk, or trying to limit the number of drinks or the amount of alcohol, we have learned to concentrate on avoiding only one drink; the first one."
Living Sober
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Pages 4-5
Get the latest edition of:
Alcoholics Anonymous
AA Services
aa addiction alcoholism recovery sponsornet substance abuse
# posted by Bill B. @ 4:04 PM 
