Step 1 Detailed Guide: Conceding to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic.

 

A detailed guide to taking step 1 

Step summary from page 59: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

1. The Core Instruction

    The Text: Page 30 ("More about Alcoholism")

    The Passage: "We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."

It is not enough to admit to a sponsor, a meeting, or a spouse that one is alcoholic; the alcoholic must concede it to their innermost self to do step 1. But how can they “fully concede” without full knowledge of what alcoholism is? How can they admit being alcoholic with only their limited understanding? Most alcoholics entering AA have only a vague idea of what alcoholism is and the Big Book authors understood this. In pages 1–43 and "The Doctor’s Opinion" they provide their description of alcoholism and its hopelessness. 

Coming to terms with the utter hopelessness of active alcoholism and realizing it applies to you is the true definition of hitting bottom in AA. Realizing there is no way out on willpower alone  is itself an admission of powerlessness. In this powerlessness is the unmanageability. Alcoholics cannot manage their drinking problem. If they could, they would not be alcoholic. They’d realize it’s a problem, handle it and go on with their lives.

 Circumstances  of the alcoholic life varies greatly from sufferer to sufferer, but the hopelessness of the illness is certain and in many cases this realization is enough to motivate an alcoholic to take direction and action on the remaining 11 steps. This is one of the reasons doing a thorough step 1 is so important. Either one has the hopeless illness or just a drinking problem. Which is it?

Alcoholism: An allergy of the body coupled with a mental obsession.

To thoroughly take Step 1, studying key passages of the Big Book is essential to determine if one has this illness. It is important to understand alcoholism first and then identify whether you have it or not. Lets now look at the Book to know more.

In this passage below the authors explicitly point out what they have spent the first 43 pages teaching the reader. Namely alcoholism. They also give the two features of the illness to yet again help the reader identify (Page 44):

"In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer."

Knowing now that the authors teach about alcoholism in the preceding pages let’s now study some key passages about alcoholism from pages 1 through 43.

"The Doctor’s Opinion" chapter contains two letters by Dr. William D. Silkworth in which he describes the physical allergy as a "phenomenon of craving." This craving develops AFTER an alcoholic starts drinking. This allergy is something he found common among all alcoholics; in fact, it defines them as alcoholic.

2. Part A: The Physical Allergy (which is the  phenomenon of craving )

    The Text: Pages xxviii–xxix ("The Doctor’s Opinion")

    Key Passages:


Page XXX

"All these [types of alcoholics he's identified], and many others, have one symptom in common: they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence."

Page XXVIII

"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."

"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. 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."

Page 21:

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.


3. Part B: The Mental Obsession

    The Text: ("There is a Solution" and "More About Alcoholism")

(The alcoholics lack of will power to defend against the first drink:)

Page 23 ("There is a Solution")

At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most power­ful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.]

      "The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."

Page 30: (“More about Alcoholism") 

( more about lack of “control” or in other words - no power to choose.)

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control.

Page 34: 

(In this passage they illustrate again the alcoholic's absence of will power. “Utter inability to leave it alone”) 

For those who are unable to drink moderately the question is how to stop altogether. We are assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop. Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not. Many of us felt that we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it—this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.

Page 39: 

(Here they write that self knowledge and knowing one is alcoholic is not enough, again because alcoholics lack will power to solve their drinking problem).

But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.

Page 43:

Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.

 

 Illustrations of the “Insanity of the first drink”  (The thinking of the alcoholic mind.)

Page 36:  (From the story of Jim)

“Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn’t hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach.

He [ Jim ] had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!

Page 41: (From the story of Fred )

“I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner. As I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner. That was all. Nothing more. I ordered a cocktail and my meal. Then I ordered another cocktail. After dinner I decided to take a walk. When I returned to the hotel it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed, so I stepped into the bar and had one. I remember having several more that night and plenty next morning. I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York, and of finding a friendly taxicab driver at the landing field instead of my wife.

 

 The insanity of both the casual and deliberate relapse:

Page 37 (More about alcoholism)

We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences. But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. Next day we would ask ourselves, in all earnestness and sincerity, how it could have happened.

In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy, or the like. But even in this type of beginning, we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.

Taking Step 1

Now, equipped with this understanding of the illness—first, how the physical allergy triggers the phenomenon of craving once drinking begins, and second, how the mental obsession manifests as the insanity of the first drink—readers can evaluate their own behavior. By recognizing these two facts about themselves, they can fully concede to their innermost self that they are alcoholic and, in doing so, complete Step 1.