A. Here’s another wonderful old AA slogan for you: “It’s the engine that gets you, not the caboose.” Meaning it’s the first drink, drug, or substitute that gets you in trouble, not the seventh, eighth, or ninth.
This simple idea is actually revolutionary from the perspective of most alcoholics and addicts. We tell ourselves that “this time, I’ll only . . .” I’ll only have one or two drinks. It will only be a few hits. A couple bumps. Whatever your poison, “this time” will be different. But before long, we’ve gone way past that “just one or two.” Reflecting the classic formulation presented in the Big Book, before long we’re “beating on the bar,” wondering how on earth we overshot the mark and either used or drank five or ten times more than we had intended.
“The Doctor’s Opinion” at the beginning of the Big Book provides a phrase that pretty much every sober alcoholic and addict can buy in to: “the phenomenon of craving.” The first drink, the first use, the first step into old behaviors sets off a calling in the body for the next and the next and the next. We drink or use until we’ve run out of alcohol or other drugs. That escalates until we pass out, are restrained, are arrested, or in some cases, die. The whole emphasis is on believing and practicing that we cannot drink or use moderately on a consistent basis. So the focus of the program is avoiding the first drink, the very first use.
If you combine the idea of “One day at a time” with the idea that it’s the “engine and not the caboose”—that it’s the first drink or use that gets you into trouble, because that’s what sets off the phenomenon of craving—you end up with the idea that AA was set up to answer the following calls for help: “Please keep me from one drink for one day.” That translates to “Please keep me from using for one day.” “Please keep me from overeating for one day.” “Please keep me from gambling for one day.”
You get the idea. Again, pick your poison. Apply it to the idea.
You can boil down all of Twelve Step practice to that simple phrase. Only it’s not so simple. Please keep me from one drink, one use—which one? The first drink. The first use. Why? Because the very first one sets off the phenomenon of craving. Why do we say it’s a phenomenon? Because it’s unusual. “Normal” drinkers and normal users don’t have this phenomenon. Only we lucky few. For one day. Why one? Because we live one day at a time, we get and stay clean and sober one day at a time, or we’re back to suicide on the installment plan, which means drinking and using and therefore dying one day at a time.
At heart, the program is simple. The principles of the program work for anyone. That’s the beauty of Twelve Step programs.
When I first got sober, I remember looking around the room and thinking, “I know this works for all of you people, but how do I know it’s going to work for me?”
I also thought about the old joke about the guy who was strapped to the electric chair, and he looks up at his executioner and he says, “Are you sure this thing is safe?”
It’s safe.
And real life is a lot safer when you are asking to be kept from the first drink, the first use, for nothing more than one day.