1. The Easy way to Control Alcohol

• AA
  • "Alcoholism is a fatal illness for which there is no known cure"

2.  Keep an open mind

• Author states that he's going to go against what we've been told by experts and that in order for the system to work we need to keep an open mind and not dismiss the points that he's going to be making.

3. Are you an Alcoholic?

• Dr Christiaan Barnard
  • "The process of becoming an alcoholic can take anything from 2 to 60 years, although 10 to 15 years is the average. You may think you are immune, but do not be complacent".
• AA
  • "We are a fellowship of men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking and have found ourselves in various sorts of trouble as a result of drink. We attempt, most of us successfully, to create a satisfactory way of life without alcohol. For this we need the help and support of other alcoholics in AA".
• The implication that alcoholics are genetically different to normal drinkers is quite astounding when you consider it.
  • It means that the actual alcohol is really just a side issue.
  • You can be an alcoholic without ever having drunk alcohol!
• Let's just play along with the idea that alcoholics are physically different from normal drinkers, and that if they allow one drop of alcohol to pass their lips, they are compelled to have another, and then another, ad infinitum.
  • If there were the case then how could it be a progress illness often of gradual onset?
  • How could it take 2 to 60 years to become an alcoholic?
  • AA states that it is a fellowship of men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. This implies that they were once in control, which means it cannot therefore be a genetic disorder.

4. The Pitcher Plant

• reverses the usual process of nature, by which animals eat plants, and supplements its diet by trapping and consuming insects.
  • inside of plan is covered with sticky nectar
  • flies cannot resist the nectar
  • the hapless fly is not the guest, but the meal itself
  • similar to drug addiction
• similarities to alcoholism
• When you try and cut down your drink, you feel miserable because you can't drink.
  • When you do allow yourself to drink, you still feel miserable because you can't drink enough.
  • The more both the fly and the alcoholic struggle to escape, the more imprisoned they become.
• Even if you find my comparison of the pitcher plant with the alcohol trap difficult to accept, the main object of the analogy is to consider the possibility that we were never, ever in control; or to put it another way: there is no innate difference between normal drinkers and alcoholics. Aren't all drinkers just flies at different stages of the slide down the pitcher plant?
  • So why do most drinkers never reach the alcoholic stage?
    • Every victim that falls into the trap is unique
    • The rate at which you descend will depend on a myriad of circumstances
      • Upbringing
      • Whether your parents drank and encourage you to drink
      • Your friends and colleagues
      • Your hobbies and pastimes
      • Your physical resistance to poison
      • Your finances
      • Even your religion
• At what stage did the fly lose control?
  • The fly was never in control
    • The moment it got the waft of the nectar, it was being controlled by the plant
• You are not cheating the alcohol, alcohol is cheating you
  • The trap is designed to imprison them for life, by making them believe that they drink because they choose to and that they are in full control.
  • After all, why should any drinker want to quit if they enjoy drinking and it doesn't cause them any problems?
• You were never in control
  • New definition of alcoholic:-
    • A drinker who realizes that he is not in control
• Smoking
  • We all know the only reason that adults continue to smoke is either that they've failed to quit, or that they believe they couldn't enjoy life or cope with stress without smoking.
  • When you first see a youngster experimenting with his first cigarettes is your reaction:-
    • Keep working at it son, it'll provide you with years of pleasure; or
    • You poor sap, if you could only see what you are letting yourself in for
    • Isn't that youngster the same as the fly on the pitcher plant?
  • If you realize that you don't have control, it means that you are already way ahead of all these normal drinkers that alcoholics envy so much.
    • Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drugs is to fool you into believing that life without it won't be as enjoyable, and/or that you'll be less able to cope with stress.
    • You haven't been abusing alcohol; on the contrary, it's been abusing you.
    • By the time you have completed the book, you will realize that the true perpetrator of those sins was not you but alcohol, and that you were the victim not the villain.
• Two other terms used in the book
  • Recovering alcoholic
    • A person who intends never to take alcohol completely again
  • Ex-alcoholic
    • A person who suffered from alcoholism and is completely cured

Chapter 5 - The Prison