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).
