Sensible Thinking

Do alcoholics have a drinking problem or a thinking problem?

This was a question thrown out for discussion at a meeting we attended recently. The member posing the question offered his own answer to the question. He insisted that, even after more than 16 years of absolute sobriety, he still had a drinking problem – that as long as he concentrated on that fact each day, he would not have a thinking problem! After a short pause, a lively discussion was in progress, some agreeing and some disagreeing.

Those that believed alcoholism was a thinking problem agreed that alcoholics as a whole were rebels against an established social order and this attitude indicated wrong thinking. We rebels, he argued, had a tendency to disregard the rights and opinions of others, rushing headlong into trouble, risking reputations, jeopardizing jobs and amicable home relations by wrong thinking. This wrong thinking inevitably included a total lack of respect for the potency of alcohol.

Traveling from one saloon to another, seeking excitement, his pattern of behavior soon gave him an unsavory reputation even to the bartenders and the barflies who found in him a perfect sucker for free spending. All they had to do to keep him coming was to feed his vanity, swallow his insults, patiently listen to his wild harangues and his ridiculous bragging of being the indispensable and all-wise man.

Didn’t this behavior pattern prove his contention that wrong thinking caused his drinking problem? Certainly his attitude toward the rights of others must have begun long before the became old enough to find liquor and the society of others with similar attitudes. Drinking, he argued, dulled the brain and completely destroyed the ability to think.

When the wires finally were all down and he was finally persuaded to try AA, he still had his anti-social inclinations; but, if he really was licked and developed a desire for that mysterious quality which others seemed to possess respect he started finally to do some sensible thinking. Sensible thinking changed his whole life. He recognized, finally, that as long as his thinking was right, he wouldn’t drink or have a drinking problem.