10. Alcoholics will fight to preserve habits

By Tom O'Connell

A habit is an action repeated so often it becomes a fixed tendency and is automatic. With alcoholics (and other addicts) the habit is so entrenched by repetition that no power on earth seems able to remove it, as millions of spouses have learned.

If you are struggling with a relationship in which you are paired with an alcoholic, and you're wondering why you're so frustrated, I suggest that you reflect on the comments  psychiatrist Harry Tiebout provided as an appendix to the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (AA, New York: 1984). It was first printed in 1957 when AA was 22 years old and had reached some maturity. Here are a few of Tiebout's important comments:

"Characteristic of the so-called typical alcoholic is a narcissistic egocentric core, dominated by feelings of omnipotence, intent on maintaining at all costs its inner integrity...a common character structure...defiant individuality and grandiosity...must be master of his destiny...will fight to the end to preserve that position." (i.e. he/she will keep drinking no matter how much harm the habit causes.) 

"If the alcoholic can truly accept the presence of a Power greater than himself, he, by that very step, modifies at least temporarily and possibly permanently his deepest inner structure and when he does so without resentment or struggle, then he is no longer typically alcoholic. And the strange thing is that if the alcoholic can sustain that inner feeling of acceptance, he can and will remain sober for the rest of his life."

"The success of the group with any alcoholic depends upon the degree to which the individual goes through a conversion or spiritual activation."

"A religious or spiritual awakening is that act of giving up one's reliance on one's omnipotence. The defiant individual no longer defies but accepts help, guidance, and control from the outside. And as the individual relinquishes his negative, aggressive feelings toward himself and toward life, he finds himself overwhelmed by strongly positive ones such as love, friendliness, peacefulness, and pervading contentment, which state is the exact antithesis of the former restlessness and irritability. And the significant fact is that with this new mental state the individual is no longer literally 'driven to drink.' "

"Unless the individual attains in the course of time a sense of the reality and nearness of a greater Power, his egocentric nature will reassert itself with undiminished intensity, and drinking will again enter into the picture...most of the individuals who finally reach the necessary spiritual state do so merely by following the Alcoholics Anonymous program....The central effect, therefore, of AA is to develop in the person a spiritual state which will serve as a direct neutralizing force upon the egocentric elements in the character of the alcoholic....overthrowing the negative, hostile set of emotions and supplanting them with a positive set in which the individual no longer need maintain his defiant individuality, but instead can live in peace and harmony with and in his world, sharing and participating freely."

Until the alcoholic is willing to surrender and voluntarily enter recovery, you as the loved one are powerless. But you can build your strength in Al-Anon where loved ones of alcoholics share experience, strength , and hope.

- Back -