At an ETA meeting recently the topic was, "What makes a person an alcoholic?" Naturally I wanted to say that a person needed to be charming, witty, fun, bright, intelligent, friendly, etc., but I did not. (I like to tell normies and al-anons that they, too, could be an alcoholic but they lack commitment. I didn't say that either.) The responsibility statement says something about the hand of ETA being there for anyone who reaches out. This precludes joking about alcoholism and/or drug addiction when somebody asks for help. (A vision of having one of those buzzer things in your palm comes to mind. This is probably also frowned upon.)
Resolutely pushing these entertaining (for me) thoughts aside, I started thinking about the question. There are only 2 places in the big book, "Alcoholics Anonymous", where the definition of alcoholic is found: "The Doctor's Opinion" and the first paragraphs in the chapter "We Agnostics". (If there is any other place, I'm sure I'll hear about it and will let you know.) This information was contributed to the discussion along with the personal thoughts of other attendees. Here are some of them.
* If alcohol is causing you problems, you might have a problem with alcohol.
* If, when you drink, you do things you can't remember or are ashamed of yet you continue to drink and do things you can't remember or are ashamed of, you might want to look at that. (I never wanted to look at that stuff but, hey, to each his own.)
* I didn't get into trouble every time I drank, but every time I got into trouble I'd been drinking. (This was my favorite.)
* Only alcoholics have blackouts.
* Once I started drinking I couldn't stop.
* It's not about how much you drink or how often you drink, it's about what happens when you do drink.
* If someone asked me not to drink at an up coming event (I'm thinking wife and party), I'd drink any way, even if I'd promised not to.
* Alcohol does something to a normal person. Alcohol does something for an alcoholic.
Not what it says in that alcohol questionnaire with 25 or so questions to ask yourself, but still interesting points to consider. After all, these observations came from people who know they are alcoholics - people who know the most about active alcoholism. Because we lived it.
Interesting quotes from the BB. I've often wondered about the real alcoholic too and have read about that in the BB. I think that Al-Anons are very attracted to alcoholics because they are so witty and captivating.
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