A key piece of Alcoholics Anonymous literature states, “Our stories disclose, in a general way, what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.”
Here is what I used to be like: I occasionally drank a beer or two or a little bit of liquor in high school (in the late 1960’s), but when I reached college I was off to the races. Unlike many alcoholics, I rarely if ever blacked out (woke up with no memory of events during the previous day’s drinking), but I often drank to the point of “praying to the porcelain god.” For just one example, I carried a fifth of Southern Comfort to a football game one Saturday, expecting to share it with some friends, but my friends were nowhere to be found. Well, someone had to drink that fifth of Southern Comfort, and so I did. Some fraction of it returned the way it had come, about the time I reached my apartment after the game. Similar examples could be multiplied considerably.