This is largely twaddle. The alcoholic is a sick person. Under the technique of Alcoholics Anonymous he gets well — that is to say, his disease is arrested. There is nothing unpredictable about him any more than there is anything weird about a person who has arrested diabetes.

SLIPS AND HUMAN NATURE
By William D.”Silky” Silkworth, M.D., published in the A.A. Grapevine, January 1947.

The mystery of slips is not so deep as it may appear. While it does seem odd that
an alcoholic, who has restored himself to a dignified place among his fellowmen
and continues dry for years, should suddenly throw all his happiness overboard
and find himself again in mortal peril of drowning in liquor, often the reason is
simple.

People are inclined to say, “There is something peculiar about alcoholics. They
seem to be well, yet at any moment they may turn back to their old ways. You
can never be sure.”

This is largely twaddle. The alcoholic is a sick person. Under the technique of
Alcoholics Anonymous he gets well — that is to say, his disease is arrested. There
is nothing unpredictable about him any more than there is anything weird about a
person who has arrested diabetes.

Let’s get it clear, once and for all, that alcoholics are human beings. Then we can
safeguard ourselves intelligently against most slips.

In both professional and lay circles, there is a tendency to label everything that
an alcoholic may do as “alcoholic behavior.” The truth is, it is simple human
nature.

It is very wrong to consider any of the personality traits observed in liquor addicts
as peculiar to the alcoholic. Emotional and mental quirks are classified as
symptoms of alcoholism merely because alcoholics have them, yet those same
quirks can be found among non-alcoholics too. Actually they are symptoms of
mankind!

Of course, the alcoholic himself tends to think of himself as different, somebody
special, with unique tendencies and reactions. Many psychiatrists, doctors, and
therapists carry the same idea to extremes in their analyses and treatment of
alcoholics.

Sometimes they make a complicated mystery of a condition that is found in all
human beings, whether they drink whiskey or buttermilk.

To be sure, alcoholism, like every other disease, does manifest itself in some
unique ways. It does have a number of baffling peculiarities that differ from those
of all other diseases.

At the same time, any of the symptoms and much of the behavior of alcoholism
are closely paralleled and even duplicated in other diseases.

The slip is a relapse! It is a relapse that occurs after the alcoholic has stopped
drinking and started on the A.A. program of recovery. Slips usually occur in the
early states of the alcoholic’s A.A. indoctrination, before he has had time to learn
enough of the A.A. techniques and A.A. philosophy to give him a solid footing.
But slips may also occur after an alcoholic has been a member of A.A. for many
months or even several years, and it is in this kind, above all, that often finds a
marked similarity between the alcoholic’s behavior and that of “normal” victims of
other diseases.

No one is startled by the fact that relapses are not uncommon among arrested
tubercular patients. But here is a startling fact — the cause is often the same as
the cause that leads to slips for the alcoholic.

It happens this way: When a tubercular patient recovers sufficiently to be
released from the sanitarium, the doctor gives him careful instructions for the way
he is to live when he gets home. He must drink plenty of milk. He must refrain
from smoking. He must obey other stringent rules.

For the first several months, perhaps for several years, the patient follows
directions. But as his strength increases and he feels fully recovered, he
becomes slack. There may come the night when he decides he can stay up until
ten o’clock. When he does this, nothing untoward happens. Soon he is
disregarding the directions given him when he left the sanitarium. Eventually he

has a relapse.

The same tragedy can be found in
cardiac cases. After the heart
attack, the patient is put on a strict
rests schedule. Frightened, he
naturally follows directions
obediently for a long time. He, too,
goes to bed early, avoids exercise
such as walking upstairs, quits
smoking, and leads a Spartan life.
Eventually, though there comes a
day, after he has been feeling

good for months or several years, when he feels he has regained his strength,
and has also recovered from his fright. If the elevator is out of repair one day, he
walks up the three flights of stairs. Or he decides to go to a party — or do just a

little smoking — or take a cocktail or two. If no serious after effects follow the first
departure from the rigorous schedule prescribed, he may try it again, until he
suffers a relapse.

In both cardiac and tubercular cases, wrong thinking preceded the acts that led
to the relapses. The patient in each case rationalized himself out of a sense of
his own perilous reality. He deliberately turned away from his knowledge of the
fact that he had been the victim of a serious disease. He grew overconfident. He
decided he didn’t have to follow directions.

Now that is precisely what happens with the alcoholic — the arrested alcoholic, or
the alcoholic in A.A. who has a slip. Obviously, he decides to take a drink again
some time before he actually takes it. He starts thinking wrong before he actually
embarks on the course that leads to a slip.

There is no reason to charge the slip to alcoholic behavior or a second heart
attack to cardiac behavior. The alcoholic slip is not a symptom of a psychotic
condition. There’s nothing screwy about it at all.

The patient simply didn’t follow directions!

For the alcoholic, A.A. offers the directions. A vital factor, or ingredient of the
preventive, especially for the alcoholic, is sustained emotion. The alcoholic who
learns some of the techniques or the mechanics of A.A. but misses the
philosophy or the spirit may get tired of following directions — not because he is
alcoholic, but because he is human.

Rules and regulations irk almost anyone, because they are restraining,
prohibitive, and negative. The philosophy of A.A. however, is positive and
provides ample sustained emotion — a
sustained desire to follow directions
voluntarily.

In any event, the psychology of the alcoholic
is not as different as some people try to make
it. The disease has certain physical
differences, yes, and the alcoholic has
problems peculiar to him, perhaps, in that he
has been put on the defensive and
consequently has developed frustrations. But
in many instances, there is no more reason to
be talking about “the alcoholic mind” than
there is to try to describe something called

the “cardiac mind” or the “TB mind.”

I think we’ll help the alcoholic more if we can first recognize that he is primarily a
human being — afflicted with human nature.