When people share their stories at AA meetings, they often talk at length about how bad it was to drink. They describe all of the horrible pain that they went through, and all of the heartbreak and suffering that alcohol caused them and their families. They all agree that drinking made them feel just awful, sick to death. And all of the stories in the Big Book follow exactly the same format. What they all carefully avoid ever talking about is how much fun it was to get drunk, and all of the pleasure alcohol gave them.

Let's face it: drinking alcohol gave us alcoholics pleasure, a lot of pleasure. So much pleasure that we worked extremely hard at getting and drinking more alcohol. We pursued alcohol with a fanatical single-minded determination. There was nothing weak about our will power when it came to getting more alcohol. We persevered in our quest for the joy of alcohol in spite of all of the hardships and obstacles thrown in our paths, and in spite of great costs to us in terms of our jobs, our marriages, our health, and sometimes even our lives. And we usually succeeded in our quest for more alcohol. And we weren't drinking all of that alcohol because we wanted to feel bad.

The AA members like to claim that they drank because they have a disease, and the disease forced them to drink, often against their wishes. They would have quit long ago, they say, but the damn disease just kept reaching for another drink. That gets them off the hook, and they don't have to accept responsibility for anything. In the Big Book, a woman finds the standard AA party line about alcoholism to be a "revelation":

"I wasn't mad or vicious -- I was a sick person. I was suffering from an actual disease that had a name and symptoms like diabetes or cancer or TB -- and a disease was respectable, not a moral stigma!"
(Page 227, 3rd edition.)

While the AA members are doing their fearless moral inventories, and finding all of their defects of character, and wallowing in guilt about lots of other stuff, the one thing they don't want to list, the one thing they won't look at, is memories of gladly, happily, gleefully getting and drinking alcohol, and enjoying it. If they looked too closely at that, they would have to see that neither a disease nor the Devil made them drink. They would see that they drank because they wanted to drink, because they really loved the way it made them feel. They would see that it was always their choice.

There is an implicit social contract at AA meetings, to not talk about the fun, the joy, and the pleasure, of drinking. They say it will cause "ecstatic recall", and tempt people to relapse. It might. It might also make some people extremely uncomfortable to have to confront the real reasons why they drank so much. It might blow away the disease myth, and leave people feeling responsible for their actions. So what? Isn't a meeting supposed to be a real good place to handle such feelings? Can you think of any better place to bring up and deal with such feelings?

I can't help but wonder whether being in denial about the joy of drinking creates the standard AA behavior pattern of repeated relapses. The AA member is forced into the strange, unnatural position of having to deny all of the fun he ever had drinking, and just mope around and complain about how bad it was. He is forced to suppress all of the feelings that go along with the joy of drinking: He denies that it was fun. He denies that he misses it. He denies that he is grieving for a lost friend, and lost good times. He "stuffs" his feelings. Then, when enough pressure has built up inside him, he explodes into uncontrolled binge drinking. Finally, sick and ashamed, he crawls back to AA to repeat the cycle.

Does it really help alcoholics to hide the real reasons for drinking? Does being in denial about the joys of alcohol make alcoholics any safer from relapse? Or does such denial leave alcoholics defenseless, sitting ducks, when cravings and ecstatic recall come along, and they suddenly remember that alcohol was a whole lot of fun and really felt great?

It seems to me that really deciding to quit drinking involves recognizing that one is balancing long-term benefits against short-term benefits, and deciding which one wants more. I can get great short-term benefits from a fun drunken binge. It really might be a lot of fun to get high again, to get righteously ripped, to buzz my brains out. But the long-term effects of drinking (for me) are all horribly negative: readdiction, blown liver, blown brain, sickness, probable death. Not fun, not in the long run. The only long-term benefits available come from not drinking. So... we put drinking on one side of the scale, and abstinence on the other side, and weigh one against the other, and see where it balances out... And I ask myself, what do I really want?

The Big Book, in the chapter "To Wives", (page 120, 3rd edition) says:

We never, never try to arrange a man's life so as to shield him from temptation. ... If he gets drunk, don't blame yourself. God has either removed your husband's liquor problem or He has not. If not, it had better be found out right away.

Okay, that is as clear as it can be. So why all of this pussy-footing around, and trying to avoid even mentioning the joy of alcohol?

Get over it, come off it, get real.

Just as a side note, the AA refusal to speak about, or really look at, the pleasure of drinking alcohol reminds me of the Jewish religion's Jahweh, He Whose Name we must not speak out loud, or a Polynesian god, whom you must not look at, else you will be killed for your effrontery. Is AA elevating alcohol to the status of a god? In a way it does: First, when you are young, and things are going good, alcohol is the Magical Spirit who takes you to Heaven. Then things go bad, and alcohol takes you to Hell. Then, after you do enough time in Hell, alcohol takes you to another Heaven: the world of AA, where you will find salvation and a permanent abode in the home of another deity. Where would you end up if it weren't for wonderful alcohol? You would be just another poor stupid slob who didn't benefit from the Twelve Steps. Why, the ordinary, normal people out there can only wish they were alcoholics or drug addicts, so that they could get as close to God as we alkies and dopers do.

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