More "Lies" About AA

At the beginning of AA "Chapter 3", the Big Book tells us"

 

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. 

 

Of course most people are unwilling to admit this. "Alcoholic" means nothing.

 

No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. 

 

People are not mentally different from their fellows because they are struggling with alcohol addiction.

 

Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. 

 

The issue with drinking, as with any other abuse or perversion or addiction, is a desire to end the pain of self-loathing self-preoccupation.

 

The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

 

Not so. Many "alcoholics" have broken free of the addiction, and they never died or went insane.

 

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.

 

"Concede to our innermost selves" leads to people identifying with something both evil and wrong. Give me a break!

 

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. 

 

What does it mean "control"?  Gina Petralli outlines that neuro-chemical problems within a person which leads individuals to obsess on any substance, and how the proper treatment, based on truth, helps people break free.

 

We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. 

 

What is this control that the "Big Book" is talking about? I find in strange and disturbing that the "control" mentioned in this statement is not qualified by anything. So, certain people have no control over anything?

 

All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals - usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. 

 

The issue of control has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with resting in the loving arms of Him who has everything taken care of for us -- past, present, and future. This "God" is not whatever "Higher Power" that Bill W. concocted, but the Lord revealed in the Word of God.

 

We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

 

"Progressive" illness is the biggest whopper I have read yet. "Illnesses" are never "progressive", but rather they are regressive, are they not?