Before I examine possible quibbles, let's reintroduce the theoretical alcoholic we're discussing. He has complete knowledge of himself, at least pertaining to his thinking concerning alcohol. He is entirely sane in every respect except his alcoholism. In other words, since we're discussing step two of the AA program, we can assume this person has completed step one: he has fully and honestly realized that he is powerless over alcohol and that his life has become unmanageable. He may even have long term sobriety, and is certainly long since through with acute withdrawal and PAWS*. He is a high-functioning member of society, indistinguishable from any “normal” nonalcoholic person other than alcoholic drinking in his past. Yet he relapses again and again. For brevity's sake, let's call him Al.
(By the way, this alcoholic is theoretical here, but there are many real-world examples. If you're in recovery, you either were or are this person yourself or know somebody who is or was this person. The Big Book, when discussing this "self-knowledge" problem, includes the stories of several contemporary (1930s-40s) people, only fictionalizing their names.)
So let's begin with Quibble 1: our quibbler might say that though all these things are true of Al, in the moments before his relapse, he backslides into old thinking--he mentally relapses. He believes that he is "cured" and now can drink normally. He believes that this time will be different. I propose that he cannot truly believe this in any rational way. He has dozens of examples to the contrary in his past. Any logical argument that he tries to make to himself that he can now drink safely is easily defeated by both his past experiences and his new self-knowledge that he is powerless over alcohol and that his life has become unmanageable because of it. He knows what horrible stuff is going to happen if he starts drinking. The backsliding story is usually just him inventing an excuse after the fact. During the relapse, he may not think of it at all, or only faintly. In fact, sometimes there is no backsliding at all and Al drinks anyway, telling himself that he knows it's going to kill him, but he can't imagine life without it.
But wait, our quibbler says. As per the DSM definition, the alcohol use itself has impaired Al's mind. So he isn't thinking clearly enough to apply the ideas that he knows. True and false become confused. To put it more bluntly, AUD has rendered him too dumb not to drink. But remember: Al is in his right mind. He's very logical and intelligent. In the Big Book, there's an example of a man who is sober for thirty years before returning to alcohol. Is that person really still impaired in his judgment after thirty years of sobriety?
That brings us to Quibble 2, which approaches Al from another direction. Okay, we agree that Al is intelligent and high-functioning, our quibbler says, and so the thought that alcohol has made his life unmanageable isn't sophisticated enough for him. What he needs is some higher sense of morality or perhaps even some religious belief. Once he adds that sense of a higher good, in addition to the arguments from logic and experience, there's no way he can drink.
I'm not going to bother laying out this new, augmented rationality-plus-morality argument against drinking here; you can make it anything you want. For the fact is that, a priori** (I'm getting analytic-philosophical here), any thought X that could replace or augment "drinking destroys your life" in Al's mind will still not be sufficient to keep him from drinking. X can't be something that analytic philosophers would call "propositional," a statement or set of statements that can be regarded as true or false. It can't be a morality that you can articulate as a set of propositions that a person can believe or not believe. It can't be a belief in some kind of God.
Here's where AA may surprise you: though it's often considered a fundamentally religious program, the Big Book actually says that religion or morality are not by themselves sufficient to keep the alcoholic from drinking. The Big Book relates a story about an alcoholic who went to Dr. Jung himself, who tells him that there's nothing he can do for him (nothing Carl Jung can do for him!) unless he has some kind of "vital spiritual experience":
"Our friend was somewhat relieved, for he reflected that, after all, he was a good church member. This hope, however, was destroyed by the doctor's telling him that, while his religious convictions were very good, in his case they did not spell the necessary vital spiritual experience."
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