What is alcoholism?
Answer
Alcoholism is a malady; that something is
dead wrong with us physically; that our
reaction to alcohol has changed; that
something has been very wrong with us
emotionally; that our alcoholic habit has
become an obsession, a obsession which can
no longer reckon even with death itself.
Once firmly set, one is not able to turn it
aside. In other words, a sort of allergy of
the body which guarantees that we shall die
if we drink, an obsession of the mind which
guarantees that we shall go on drinking.
Such has been the alcoholic dilemma time out
of mind, and it is altogether probable that
even those alcoholics who did not wish to go
on drinking, not more than five out of one
hundred have ever been able to stop before
A.A. (Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies,
June 1945).
