By every form of self deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic.

We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself.
...try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once.

...to think that they can stop, as he did, on their own willpower. We doubt if many of them can do it, because none will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired, will find he can win out.

If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced there is scant chance of success.

Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.

This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it – this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.

…we shall describe some of the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem.

All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.

"I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart"

...to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him.

Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?

...there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out.

…feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like.

He tells you he has decided to stop jaywalking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both legs...He tries every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head.

However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.

But the actual or potential alcoholic...will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.

...would not believe himself an alcoholic, much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem...then came the hospital with unbearable mental and physical suffering.

Though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink.

I never have been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was a crushing blow...

...a hopeless condition.

But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic. It meant I would have to throw several life long conceptions out of the window. That was not easy. But the moment I made up my mind to go through with the process, I had the curious feeling that my alcoholic condition was relieved, as in fact it proved to be.

Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems.

"There is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help."

His defense must come from a Higher Power.