"Robert McGregor" <robert_mcgregor@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:bt7h1t$45ais$1@ID-49289.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Reprinted in "Best Of The Grapevine."
>
>
> Slips and Human Nature
>
> by William Duncan Silkworth, MD
>
> January 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
> non-alcoholic, 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
> after-effects 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 human being -- afflicted with human nature.
>
>
>

Damn... to find out I was just "human." Another sad fact - or so I thought
at the time. Today - A joyous fact - I only have to be human.



Bobby L