The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically nonexistent. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p.24
My powerlessness over alcohol does not cease when I quit drinking. In sobriety I still have no choice – I can’t drink. The choice I do have is to pick up and use the “kit of spiritual tools” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 25). When I do that, my Higher Power relieves me of my lack of choice – and keeps me sober one more day. If I could choose not to pick up a drink today, where then would be my need for A.A. or a Higher Power?
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I recently had my recurring drinking dream, in which I am allowed to have just one drink once a year. Even after many years of sobriety, my disease works through my subconscious to try to convince me that I can drink like other people. In the light of day, I realize that I am powerless over alcohol, and that to have one drink means that I will drink to the point of oblivion, just as I always did before. My life depends on remembering what the Big Book says: Over a period of time, we get worse, never better.
Without God in my life I couldn’t stay sober. My desire to drink is too great, so I must rely on my higher power to give me the desire to keep clean and sober.
When I entered AA I objected to the idea that drinking was not a choice. I thought that it was a choice; that I just needed to restore the ability to make that choice. I thought that the attitude of no choice was an excuse to give up. I thought about how every time I drank I made the choice to drink.
Someone took me back through the last time I drank. I swore that day that I wasn’t going to drink after work but I ended up at a bar. I told the bartender that my car turned itself that way. I remembered that this was something the bartender was very familiar with hearing from me.
I went back through my past and looked at all the times that I had intended not to start drinking but had wound up drunk. I thought about all the particularly inappropriate times that I drank. I thought about the unpredictability and the fear this caused my loved ones. I thought about some other things I loved intently but never did them inappropriately or unpredictably. I thought about how much I valued and achieved self control in other areas of my life yet I could not predict when I would drink. I looked at all the ways that I had quit for a time and then resumed drinking and could not quit again. I looked at how my ability to choose had degraded over time.
I read about the distinction between the moderate, hard drinker, and the alcoholic of our type. I realized many of the times that I quit that I still had the power to choose. I realized that every time I started drinking and tried again to quit it was progressively harder. I realized that at some point I had lost the ability to choose to the point of no return. I sensed that alcohol made the choice for me and had become my master.
This realization of powerlessness offended and frightened to the extent of radically altering my perception of my sanity. I realized that I became honest about my nature and willing to rethink all of my objections. I became open minded enough to consider that only a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
It occurred to me that the distinction of powerlessness made in AA was something that I had never taken into consideration. I realized that the concept of loss of loss of choice only applied to certain and severe cases. I realized that some drinkers can be heavily dependent on alcohol but have not lost the power of choice. The AA book addresses this and does not claim to have the only process of recovery but that is a way out for those who choose it.
When I entered AA I felt that I was forced to go there by society. I felt that I was not given a choice. Later I realized that this was not true, that people, society, God, and AA give me many choices. Alcohol is the one thing that does not. That is the choice that I still have today.
I choose to stay with AA.