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Addiction is a contentious area. The causes and the treatments are subject to much debate. But there are two basic truths about recovery to which I subscribe. Others may choose to agree or disagree. The first is that there needs to be proper self-acknowledgement of a problem and a desire to get well. The second can be summed up as “you can’t do it on your own”. I used to tell quite a few people that I’d lost control of my drinking. I was aware of it. You have to choose carefully who you can tell, of course. I told some friends and close colleagues at work who I could trust. Admittedly, it was sometimes to find excuse for my poor behaviour. But I had already reached the first stage of self-acknowledgement and confession to others. When I look back, it was an early cry for help. Despite this, however, it was several years before my first referral to alcohol treatment and more than ten years before my eventual recovery. I didn’t really make clear to others the depth of my suffering – they were certainly not aware until my brief hospitalisation and entry into alcohol treatment. Too often, there is a failure to acknowledge the problem. Nobody wants to admit openly to what might be judged as a flaw. We don’t want to admit lack of self-control because it might be perceived as weakness. We don’t want to confess that our behaviour may be very hurtful to others. We don’t know who to tell – it might be dangerous to family relationships and work. Elton John told the story of his turning point in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1997. He said that it takes three little words – “I need help”. But many fall at that first hurdle, for whatever reason, and the outcome is usually a continued downward spiral. Acknowledgement of the addiction to self and to others is a necessary but not sufficient condition of getting better. It’s a necessary first step because you will not commit to getting better if your starting position is one of denial. Having acknowledged the problem, here are some of the reasons why you can’t get better on your own: First, it’s too easy to slip back. That’s because it’s too easy to cheat if you haven’t told anybody else. I remember a business conference when the drinks tray came around. I thought nobody would know, so I just took one glass and it turned into several. Second, it takes a lot of motivation and discipline to stick to a recovery programme – there is more chance of success when the process is properly designed and supervised. Third, and most importantly, trying to do it on your own, without the support of others, and after repeated failures, puts you in a very lonely and tough place. You need somebody to look out for you. I remember being at a leaving party for somebody at work. I had started to drink again. A colleague walked across the crowded room, took the glass from my hand and walked away again without saying anything. I thanked him. We need somebody to perform the role of Virgil. In the Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, Dante describes how the Roman poet Virgil acts as his guide through the nine circles of hell. On their journey, they encounter the suffering that results from past behaviour. Virgil acts as a fellow-traveller, somebody who can guide and point to a way out. We can think of this as a person who can spot the warning signs and knows where it will end. It is important to keep in mind that the outcome is positive. I came across the story of the American Eric Arauz when looking into the Divine Comedy and addiction. Eric suffered a tough upbringing and was a veteran of the Gulf War. He battled against mental ill-health, and addiction to alcohol and drugs. In his book An American’s Resurrection, he discusses how his friend and fellow-sufferer became his Virgil or buddy. Arauz later became a member of the faculty at Rutgers Medical School, an adviser to public health bodies, and an inspirational speaker. In a blog post in 2014, he said of his friend Kevin, his Virgil, “He didn't lecture me. He spoke honestly to me and let me speak honestly to him when he needed a Virgil. We would suffer, bleed, and succeed together”. In effect, in my opinion, the same approach is advocated by Carl Rogers, the eminent American psychotherapist, who developed Person- or Client-Centred Therapy in the humanist tradition. He coined the phrase “unconditional positive regard”. Simplifying, inevitably, (and using some of my own artistic licence) what he said was as follows. When he was conducting therapy, he found what was very effective was when he took off his white coat, put down the clipboard and stepped into the shoes of the other person. He listened in a non-judgmental way and showed empathy. Such an approach, he found, elicited a positive response. It encouraged the person to discover his or her own path to recovery through a process of self-actualisation – achieving “congruence” between the “ideal self” and the “real self”. Who can perform this role of confidante in a less formal setting? It could be a friend or work colleague. It might be a member of the family, though it is often very difficult for sufferers to open up to people who are too close. Rather than a single person, it might be a support group or a fellowship meeting. None of this is to deny that proper medical attention may be required, through medication or formal therapy. It’s just to say that the sufferer needs somebody to join him or her on this journey. Ideally, this would be a person who has “been there and done that”. You can’t get better on your own – many will be there for you because they have been in your shoes before!

Is an alcoholic ever really happy? When I went into psychotherapy, I was asked at some stage, "When you were younger, when were you really happy?" Interestingly, at least to me, I answered quick as a flash. I didn't even need to give it much consideration. I replied "When I was on the football terraces". According to many of the Greek philosophers, we are only truly happy when we are "living well", practising virtue in pursuit of the good. That sounds quite tough to achieve even if we can understand what it means. We could be hedonists instead. We could devote ourselves to bodily pleasures regardless of the consequences. Epicurus believed that we should pursue “pleasure” but in a more nuanced sense. He was really arguing that we should seek pleasure as a middle way between pain and fear to avoid suffering. “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” is a saying used in different contexts. One is that if we lack faith or hope in the future then we may as well get on with pursuing pleasure. Another is to say that much happens in the world that is beyond our control. We therefore need to be more accepting, and follow our natural pursuits. Pure hedonism, instead, says “let’s party while we can”. How does this hedonist philosophy usually work out for people? Not all that well, generally. It usually entails a fairly hollow and meaningless existence. In some sense, it suggests that we ourselves are each the centre of the universe. It then comes as a shock when things don't work out and something goes wrong. It doesn’t provide an answer to chaos and suffering. Was my answer about happiness curious? (It was as a supporter of Swindon Town FC – there wasn’t very much to be joyous about most of the time!) I could have recalled things like when I was awarded my degree, when I got my first job, my wedding day, when my children were born, and so on. On reflection, and it doesn’t take very much, those things were of course greater sources of joy. But there was something revealing about the immediacy of my answer. It was instinctive. It was raw, existential, given at a time of crisis in my personal life. Why was standing on the football terraces the answer given straight from the top of my head? It was saying something about a sense of freedom. Saturday afternoons were about letting go of the cares of the world for ninety minutes. It was being with others in a community who shared my passion. It was about freedom to express myself, albeit in a primitive way - singing, shouting and screaming at the top of my voice in a crowd. We can leave it to the anthropologists and sociologists to examine how our primal instincts are reflected in the behaviour of football supporters. But I can see some parallel with the (initial) euphoria of being drunk – the sense of being carefree, the brief but intoxicating feeling of happiness. Can't alcoholics regain that childlike happiness in everyday life as an adult human being without the assistance of drink? Of course we can – but it might need the guidance and support of others in recovery treatment. As the cliché says, happiness, or the answer to life’s problems, is not to be found at the bottom of a bottle. Let’s see what is going on here in the reply I gave. True happiness is not to be found in hedonism, as already said. It’s also not about behaving irresponsibly. We can't just not work and go to football every day (and I fully accept that some people detest football anyway!). But my reply was saying something about how we attach meaning to the things and people that truly matter to us. True happiness or well-being is found in some sense by letting go. But it's not about abandoning responsibility or not caring. It's about having the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s about finding true freedom through self-discovery. It’s about doing what really matters to us, how we assign meaning and value to what we do. It’s about how we do this in community with shared lives, friendship and loyalty. It’s also about how we put these into practise with ritual, stories, and outward signs of common identity. Some might find these aspects of life on the football terraces but we can also find them elsewhere. We can’t find them at the bottom of a bottle. Some will capture these feelings of camaraderie and freedom in other ways – white river rafting, mountaineering, fresh water swimming – or, more down to earth, joining a book reading club. When were you really happy? Give your instinctive response – then unpack it and see where you might find it in a life of recovery and sobriety.

Alcoholics and drug users find it tough to stick to a treatment programme. Motivation comes and goes. Discipline is something different. It’s a planned, concentrated effort, sustained over time. It involves practise and the build-up of good habits. Staying sober requires discipline. It’s important not to get tied down by rules, however. The purpose of discipline in recovery is to achieve the ultimate reward. The prize is freedom. When the going gets tough, keep your eyes on the prize. Sometimes I just can't do it. I can’t get started on the article I should be writing. I easily get distracted. Alternatively, it’s a day when I really ought to go for a run. But I look out of the window and just can’t be bothered. I know what I ought to do but I just can't wake up. I feel sluggish. There are many excuses. I've lost the motivation. Actually, it reminds me of when I was younger. I used to splash cold water all over my front before playing for the school football team. It was a way of waking up. Then when I played for a non-league team, the coach told me to kick the cat or pick a fight with my mother- in- law before the game. The point he was making was that I often seemed to lack the motivation. I performed better when I was fired-up before the game. I was talking to a friend who is in the armed forces about motivation and he told me this. He was shown an interview with a commando as part of his training. The soldier said you can't rely on motivation alone to get things done. That's because motivation comes and goes. This is obviously true and we all experience the feeling. Instead, he said, what is needed is discipline. You know what has to be done. So you need to make a plan, stay focused and execute it. Get it done. Alcoholics and others suffering from addiction disorders can easily relate to this. When I started to recognise that I had lost control of my drinking and it was causing me harm, I felt motivated to cut back and be more watchful of my consumption. I would write down the units of alcohol consumed over the course of a week. But the enthusiasm soon waned. Sometimes I could abstain altogether for days or even weeks but my old drinking pattern always returned and steadily got worse. The need for focused discipline in the military is very understandable but it’s also true for those suffering from addiction. When alcoholics reach rock bottom and enter treatment, they usually start with good intentions. To be sure, they are full of trepidation but they are motivated to get well. Unfortunately, the motivation tends to slip over time and the alcoholic is constantly vulnerable to relapse. We can use discipline to build up good habits to replace “substance use disorder”. Habit is how we think and act in the world through repetition and memory. We may well be disposed to do what is right and good for us. We presumably do not choose deliberately to undertake repeated actions that we know are harmful. But our reasoning is flawed. We are often unable to truly discern the good from the bad. We make wrong choices when we become enslaved by our passions and this is revealed in our habits. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote on the subject of habit in Repetition in 1843. He argued that repetition through time is part of our “becoming”. We work out who we are and become the persons we are through repeated practise. In other words, habit is part of our identity. We reveal our identity to others, at least partially, through our habitual actions. Changing or developing our identity as a person means changing our habitual practise. The disciplined performance of habit individually or collectively sometimes takes the form of “ritual”. It’s not unthinking. When we look at organised religion or spiritual practise, we observe the purpose of ritual. It’s symbolic, it’s a reminder and it’s collective – what you do, why you do it, and who you do it with. What disciplined actions do we have in mind? Here are some suggestions. Choose a favourite non-alcoholic drink for the beach or a dinner party. Stick with it. Decide ahead of time how you will respond when offered alcohol. Similarly, prepare for what to say when somebody asks why you are not drinking. If you find it helpful, then perhaps commit to attend fellowship meetings on a certain day every week. Make it a habit. Be disciplined about it. There are a couple of additional points to be made here. First, you can't get better on your own. Motivation and discipline are hard to maintain on your own. It’s easier if you do it with others. This allows you to lean on others when you are flagging. Others can be looking out for you and impose a form of external discipline. Second, it’s important to keep it simple. Don't be overambitious. Set some simple targets like “one day at a time”. Don't make it so complicated that you then beat yourself up because you can't keep to it. Also, the important thing to keep in mind here is that the discipline is serving a higher purpose. We don’t want to replace one form of enslavement with another, living our lives bound by rules. The promise of reward is what provides us with hope to endure our current suffering. It's interesting to me that several mentees have asked how they can replace the supposed “reward” of drink or drugs. Ultimately, we can think of the reward as the prize. With regard to addiction treatment, the prize is freedom. More generally, the prize of spiritual well-being is freedom from all forms of enslavement. Freedom from enslavement to drink or drugs, to material possessions, from worrying about what others think of us, and from fearing things that we cannot control. We are running a race. We need disciplined habit to reinforce motivation. We also need perseverance until the finishing line. Keep your eyes on the prize!

Alcoholics and other sufferers from addictive disorders have a hard time accepting help let alone reaching out to others in a similar situation. In the early stages, this is part of self-denial. If you will not acknowledge to yourself that you have a problem, then you are hardly likely to welcome the intervention of others, however well-meaning their offer of support. But as you progress on the recovery journey, you find that in accepting help you want actively to reach out to others in the same situation. That is because giving and receiving are about reconciliation as part of a healing process. Giving and receiving are about what it is to be a human person living in communion with others. I was talking to one of my addict mentees about summarising various aspects of the 12-step recovery programme. In a related vein, he asked me whether he really needed to seek out people who he had hurt and ask for their forgiveness. My response didn’t directly answer the specific question but made a more general point. It was as follows. As you emerge from recovery in sobriety you find yourself actually wanting to reach out to others. You feel the benefit of being well and you want to share it with others. I told him it was a bit like the old “faith versus works” debate during the Reformation. It’s not the doing of “works” as such which is primary, but faith gives rise to works. In other words, a sign of an alcoholic getting genuinely well is that he or she will want to reach out to others. That is because reciprocity is part of recovery. In reaching out to help somebody else, you find that you receive back from them. This is part of the healing process. It is why the 12-step programme culminates in so-called "service". It doesn't have to be interpreted as a "commandment". It's actually what you will find yourself wanting to do. When I first volunteered as a mentor, I was quite daunted. After I had spoken to my first potential mentee - and discovered, unsurprisingly in retrospect - that he was another person just like me, I reported back that I had "enjoyed the experience". Actually, I felt the experience to be uplifting and it gave me a feeling almost like elation. This might seem like a surprising thing to say. What I found and confirmed as I continued this journey is that it was helping me. I came to look forward to these private discussions. They were helping me to open up, to remind me of my journey. There was an element of risk in setting out on this journey. A work colleague warned me to beware of picking at old wounds and he was right. Triggers to relapse can occur in surprising ways. But what the process was really showing me is how recovery works in practise. Interestingly, and rewardingly, I found that when I started to suffer in my own personal life (with problems unrelated to drink), my mentees asked after my own health. I was trying to support them in recovery but the process was reciprocal. This provides an important insight into a key aspect of personal growth. It is in being known by others that we come to know ourselves. Augustine said that loving and knowing are integrated. What he meant by this is as follows. We are subjects of experience. Our experience of others and the world around us comes through our subjectivity. Different people perceive things differently. We only come truly to know both ourselves and others when our subjectivity and the objectivity of the other person are reconciled and integrated. This occurs in love, when there is unconditional giving and receiving between persons. Knowing is unhindered and not distorted through the lens of what we want to see. What does this rather complicated idea mean in practice when we think it through? It is in helping others to get better that we are healed. The message is this. Don't close down and shut yourself off from others. Move outward, not inward. Accept and receive the gift. In doing so, you will find that you have something to give also in return. All of this was summed up beautifully in an address by the Bishop of London at the 10th memorial anniversary for Princess Diana in 2007. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the spiritual significance and insight of what he was saying: “And the mystery is this - the more you go beyond yourself, the more you will become your true self; the more you lose yourself in loving and serving others, the more you will find yourself; the more you keep company with those who suffer, the more you will be healed”. In summary, for alcoholics in recovery, one of the best ways of continuing on your own personal journey is to reach out to others in a similar situation.

I’m an alcoholic in recovery. There, I’ve just said it. It wasn’t that difficult. But I’ve been saying it for many years, so I’ve got used to it. Taking the first step in self-acknowledgement of a problem and confessing it to others is not easy. It’s a major hurdle to be overcome. It’s the first part of “coming out” at the start of alcohol treatment. Confession is cleansing, liberating and, ultimately, part of a restorative process. Memory or recollection is part of confession. The seventeenth century philosopher John Locke argued that memory is part of our identity as persons. That is because memory constitutes our continuity as subjects of experience. It plays an important role in how we think and act. How can we use confession and memory as part of an alcohol recovery treatment? One of the things I’ve recommended to mentees is to write down the memories of their drinking experience. I’ve done this myself. The fundamental purpose of doing this is twofold. First, there is an element of confession, albeit this might not be shared with anybody else, at least in the first instance. Second, it also provides a record of the many fruitless attempts to stop drinking. This demonstrates that you can’t get well on your own. When I started re-attending fellowship meetings in preparation for volunteering at the clinic, I was a bit worried about how I would be perceived. After all, I hadn’t had a drink for twenty years. I was concerned that people might ask “why are you here?” Daft as it seems now, I was a bit concerned that people might see me as a fraud. I was wrong, of course. People who have been sober for many years are commonplace at fellowship meetings, encouraging others on the path to recovery. Fundamentally, though, I had to start at the beginning and ask myself, “was I really that bad?” So I wrote it all down in a timeline from my early experiences as a young teenager, through the countless episodes of drunken exploits to my ultimate collapse and referral to an alcohol treatment unit. It didn’t take long to re-discover that the answer to my question was of course, “Yes!” These memories can serve a useful purpose. The inevitable time will come, perhaps after a long period of abstinence, when the alcoholic will be tempted to drink. The initial temptation will recall only the supposedly positive aspects of drinking alcohol – the short-lived feeling of well-being. Regular review of the written history will provide a counter balance, a reminder of where a resumption of drinking will lead to. It might also help to identify the triggers of relapse. The written track record provides another purpose. It’s important to write down all of the various attempts and strategies to control the drinking. I’m not saying that self-control is impossible. But at minimum, a reminder of what happened is needed the next time you tell yourself “this time it will be different”. In my case, I ran out of strategies – changing what I drink, rationing units, having dry days, and so on – and I always ended up back in the same place. This becomes clear when I read what I’ve written. There is not really a template for how to do this. The most famous of all is probably Augustine’s Confessions, albeit for a different addiction. That’s a major reason why he appears regularly in my writings. I don’t necessarily recommend reading it, however. That is because it’s hard going for somebody not trained in philosophy and theology. One of the things I did, wearing my hat as a philosopher-theologian, was to work through the Confessions and record key quotations about events in Augustine’s life that related to the topic of addiction. Under each of these, I related my own experiences to what Augustine was saying. This was an attempt to understand both my slide into alcoholism and a possible pathway to recovery. There is a simpler way to get started. Pick an autobiography of an alcoholic who was respected and talented in a field that interests you. It could be in sport, for example, or it could be a novelist or actor. There are countless examples. Read about what they went through and relate it to yourself. Next, as an alternative, go to fellowship meetings. Listen to the stories of fellow sufferers. Forget about the supposed rules of the meeting and any imagined pressure to share, at least for now. Instead, focus on what is being said and relate it to your own experience. Afterwards, write down those elements of common experience. Now you can use this material. When you feel tempted by the thought that this time it will be different, just remind yourself of how that worked out on previous occasions, and how your own personal experience is similar to others. It’s important not to forget the forward-looking part. Further to the observations about your own past experience and the common elements shared with others, make notes about the path followed by those in recovery. Note the common elements. They will typically include confessing to others, sharing, doing new things and finding new meaning and purpose in life. We can do all of this in formal therapy, of course. It’s about working out where you’ve come from, where you’ve been, who you’ve been with and the new path forward in recovery. Make a plan!

Alcoholics in recovery often talk about the need to hit “rock bottom” before a commitment to treatment will have any possibility of success. Some treatment practitioners don’t really like this idea because they believe, understandably, that intervention should be possible before reaching this stage. What this dispute might show, however, is simply that “rock bottom” means something different to different people. If we take the phrase at its literal meaning, I suppose it means when you reach the stage where nothing can get worse. Well, yes, but very unfortunately, and too often witnessed, that might mean exiting this world altogether – a point from which no return is possible. Does it mean, instead, when you’ve lost everything – your job, material possessions, home and family? Sadly, many alcoholics and drug users find themselves ultimately in this position. This is what medical and treatment practitioners have in mind when they say, “it doesn’t have to be this way”. Perhaps, instead, the sense of a personal rock bottom is just meant to signal the mix of circumstances when the alcoholic is ready or "triggered" to turn around. This might be understood as reaching a point at which there is a balance of pain against pleasure, when the alcoholic is ready to reach out or respond to the offer of help. What do I mean by this? Consider the problem of memory and relapse. The mind plays funny tricks. When you’ve been through withdrawal and perhaps succeeded in a period of abstinence, something initiates the memory of what you previously deemed to be pleasurable. So you start to imagine that this time it will be different, that you can manage to drink in a controlled manner. In this situation, it’s almost as though something is not sufficiently bad to provide a memory of pain to place against the memory of pleasure. Behaviourists have a way to look at this and to train us to behave differently. Memory plays a significant part in the formation of habit. We need to change the balance of risk and reward when acting impulsively. This is what countless studies have shown can be achieved in laboratory experiments. In my case, it was that I didn’t really enjoy the experience of my first full-blown panic attack and tetany. I told the person tending to me that I was “going” and that is what I quite literally believed – that I was dying. That shock was sufficient to put me on the straight and narrow for about three years, with a lot of support and therapy, before I could control the panic attacks. But I still came back for more after five years of sobriety. When the full- blown panic attacks returned, it meant that I couldn’t easily do the things that I took for granted in a normal life. I couldn’t easily answer the phone at work. I developed a fear of heights. I was uncomfortable in tall buildings and sitting by the window in aircraft. I even recall walking across a bridge and not being able to make it back again. Finally I made the association between drinking to excess and my illness. After recovery, friends would comment on my sobriety – “we admire your strength in getting well and refusing to drink”. But it was not strength. It was fear. And I didn’t want to live with fear for the rest of my life. I had reached my own “rock bottom” – the definition that worked for me and turned me around. Whenever I find reminders or people ask me why I don’t drink, I find it easy to answer – I don’t want to go back to that place and there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that is where I would be headed. Reaching “rock bottom” is like arriving at a crossroads or a potential turning point, when the alcoholic may reach out for help. We can think of turning around as a form of conversion. Theologians have a Greek term for conversion – metanoia – which has been taken up by psychologists. Interestingly, the literal translation of the word also implies repentance. But what is really going on in conversion is a “transformation” or “renewal” of the mind. This turning around or conversion involves acceptance and confession in addition to repentance. The process, which needs to be ongoing, is cleansing and liberating. The transformation of the mind involves perceiving and acting in the world in a new way. How can we help the process of conversion or transformation before it becomes too late? We can help alcoholics to anticipate “rock bottom” through providing teaching and insight. We can be ready to provide treatment, including psychotherapy and drug intervention, if useful. We can better train people to use memory and reasoning. We can try to identify triggers of behaviour and break the habit through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), for example. Most of all, we need to listen. We can use the “rock bottom” as an opportunity – there is openness in the alcoholic at this stage. This is openness to consider a changed attitude to life, perhaps using a spiritual dimension. This does not have to entail religion. Some philosophers would say, as I would, that it takes something like CBT back to its deeper roots in Stoic philosophy. It’s probably controversial and frowned upon by the medical profession to say that an alcoholic has to reach “rock bottom". It implies inevitability. But it doesn’t mean you have to lose everything – it means that you need to reach a turning point, which will help you to gain everything instead!

Paul Merson is a famous ex-football player who still features as a popular TV pundit on Saturday afternoons. He is equally famous for his struggles with addictions. In his book titled ‘How Not To Be a Professional Footballer’, he recounts one story of what happened when he returned from rehab. He says that one of his teammates at Arsenal welcomed him back with the offer of alcopops. Merson’s comment is that “some people just don’t get it”. The general point here is that most “normally functioning” people can’t properly relate to an alcoholic. They don’t properly understand what distinguishes their own enjoyable pattern of “social drinking” – even to excess - from the person claiming to be an alcoholic. They don’t get what’s going on inside the private life of the alcoholic, or why and how there needs to be change. In his Confessions, Augustine reports how he told his friend Alypius about his own obsession with sexual desire. His friend didn’t really get it. On the face of it, it sounded to him that what Augustine was talking about might be enjoyed and he wanted a piece of the action, so to speak. But he had no proper conception of what Augustine was going through. For the latter, his obsession had become a problem and a source of distress. It was literally driving him insane. I’ve been asked many times by different people, “Do you think I have a drinking problem? Am I an alcoholic?” I don't know whether you have a problem. What I do know is this. If you say that you have a problem, then you do. It’s clearly on your mind or you wouldn’t even be asking the question. Medical practitioners will give you a questionnaire to see whether you tick the boxes but it’s not that simple. The people who just don’t get it are, instead, dismissive. Their typical response to repeated drunken episodes is to say “you’ll be ok”, “we’re all the same”, and “you just had too much”. You'll get over it, basically, is the claim. But that's not the case. It may well be that you started bingeing at the weekends because everybody else was having a good time. Some people deliberately choose to do that even though it makes them ill afterwards. Aristotle calls this ‘intemperance’. But that's not what we're talking about. Instead, we are talking about ‘incontinence’ – or ‘inordinate desire’ – when you do it even though your own reasoning is telling you not to do it. The point made by Aristotle in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics is that, in effect, the people who choose to do it for the “pleasure” have no regret. People go out to drink to get drunk. They don’t regret it, despite the short term consequences of perhaps being sick or suffering a severe hangover. Intemperance is a deliberate choice. Incontinence, instead, is something different to this – it’s indicative of compulsive behaviour. The people who don't get it are sometimes trying to push their insecurity on to you. It’s because they feel doubt about themselves that they cast doubt upon you. They want you to take the first drink because they want you to be one of them. It makes them more comfortable in dealing with doubts about their own actions. So what do we do about people who just don't get it? How do we deal with them as part of recovery treatment? One approach is to build a community of believers. It can include both those who are suffering – mutual self-help groups - and those who are trying to help, including mentors, recovery workers, friends and family. Members of the community share a common belief and commitment – the desire to help the alcoholic stay sober. We develop our own customs and practises. The message promoted by those sharing common beliefs is that it’s alright to be different from the crowd. It’s alright to say this is who I really am. We are not talking about a sect trying to separate itself from non-believers. We are not trying to preach to others. We are simply saying that if those around you won’t listen to your story or are querying whether you have a problem or not, then it’s probably time to move on. It’s probably time to form new relationships and do new things. I didn't want to stay late after work and meet clients. I didn't want to attend unnecessary dinners or drinking parties late into the evening, especially during my recovery. I didn’t want to go down the pub every night and be the last man standing. Did that make me abnormal? But do you know what? It never did me any harm. It helped me to build a new life of sobriety and a successful career instead. Some people just don’t get it – let them get on with their own lives while you take care of your own.

Running helps to keep me sober. That is because it helps both my physical and spiritual health. If I go several days without running then I start to feel sluggish and less able to cope. I’ve long known this to be the case but watching Skid Row Marathon inspired me to write more about it. For those who haven’t watched it, Skid Row Marathon is an award-winning documentary movie about a Los Angeles Judge who forms a running club for those suffering from addictions. He promises a free trip to participate in an international marathon to those who stick with it. It’s very moving as we watch some but not all succeed in turning their lives around. If you can’t stand running – or you are perhaps physically unable to do it – then bear with me. It’s the insight of what’s going on in Skid Row Marathon that matters – and the window it opens on new possibilities for those in recovery. It doesn’t have to be running. It can be any form of group activity. I’ve worked out regularly in a gym for more than 30 years. I had to find an alternative to football. I was used to running on a treadmill. When somebody suggested entering a 5k race in Hyde Park, I thought it would be a piece of cake. I was wrong. Running outside is very different and difficult. But I came to love the park, no matter how tough I found the running. The positive aspects of running are obvious in terms of the benefit to physical health. The benefit to mental well-being may be less obvious. It provides a form of activity that requires focus and discipline if a target is to be achieved. Performing the activity provides a sense of freedom and an opportunity, perhaps, for silent reflection. Running with others provides additional benefits. You belong to a team, formally or informally, and there is a sense of “we are in this together”. You are looking out for somebody, and others are looking out for you. This is what we see in Skid Row Marathon. Most of all, running provides a sense of achievement and well-being. The completion of a run produces endorphins in a natural way – not artificially through a “substance use disorder”! All of this applies not only to running, of course. It applies to any form of outdoor physical exercise, including fresh water swimming, mountaineering, hiking, or meeting up with fellow dog walkers in the local park. What we need to keep in mind, however, is the tendency of the alcoholic or drug user to become obsessive about any form of alternative activity. I can see several warning signals in how I apply this to my own running. But at least I’m self-conscious about it. First, there is a need to “take it easy” – a bit like the advice given to those who stop drinking to take “one day at a time”. It’s going to hurt at first and it will take some time to feel the benefits. That’s a bit like entering recovery treatment. It’s tough at first and it requires commitment over the longer haul. Second, don’t be over-ambitious. Don’t start running with the target of completing a marathon (despite the incredible success of those on Skid Row) – that might be the unstated target but it’s a long way off. For me, it’s similar to advising somebody not to start treatment saying “I will never drink again”. Abstinence may be the ultimate goal that we’d all like to achieve but “never” is a very long time and sounds daunting. Third, don’t beat yourself up when there are the inevitable setbacks. There will be good days and bad days. I’ve read a lot about the science of running – what else would you expect from somebody with an obsessive mind? It doesn’t seem to matter much in my own case. I can’t figure out why there are some days when I just sail around and other days when I stop several times. It gets me down when I can’t do it but I just have to remind myself that the good days will return. It’s a bit like relapse. It sometimes happens and you will feel bad about it. But you just need to keep a positive mind. Accept it and move on. Skid Row Marathon shows several additional benefits from running with others, as already said. Doing it with the support of others makes it easier. Doing it on your own is a bit like becoming isolationist again – recall the title of the famous short story published in 1959, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Running on your own increases the risk of failure and experiencing the feelings of guilt and remorse if you give up. Running with another individual or as part of a team provides a sense of shared common purpose. It reminds you that others care about you. This is much the same as being in recovery treatment. You can’t get better on your own. Remember all of these things apply to any form of activity, preferably but not exclusively outdoors. Actually, it doesn’t even have to be physical exercise. Recovery is about sharing, working as a team, having a common purpose and finding a new interesting and rewarding form of activity. It’s the opposite of retreat into self-isolation and harmful activity, which becomes obsessive. Go find your own personal mountain to climb!

I'd been dry for five years. It had taken intensive psychotherapy and three years to overcome excruciating panic attacks. I'd gone through a lot of suffering. But then I’d started all over again and repeated the entire cycle. Here I was, sat back in front of my GP hoping for another referral to an alcohol treatment clinic. He said to me, “You seem like an intelligent person, why did you do it?” I was amazed. It may have been a legitimate question to ask, but since when did intelligence come into it? Are there no intelligent alcoholics? It seemed like a fairly dumb question to me. After all, if I genuinely had the answer – and he clearly didn’t - then I probably would not have been sat there. So I said what any alcoholic would say, “Because I fancied a drink”. It's for others to examine us and find the deeper reasons behind our addictive behaviour. The addiction literature is full of competing theories and explanations. Let's go through the checklist of some of them. Was there trauma in my past? Yes, my elder brother died when I was only 15-years old. It had a devastating impact on my family. On the night of his death, I walked the streets alone drinking whisky for solace. I’ve often been asked whether this event triggered my alcoholism. But the truth is that I’d started the pattern of drinking to get drunk long before. Did I drink because of peer pressure? I started drinking seriously in my early teens but that wasn’t unusual. Later, I did encounter more peer pressure from the drinking culture in the City. But it’s worth pointing out from the standpoint of sobriety – and to encourage those in recovery – that refusing subsequently to attend client drinking parties never did my career any harm. What about drinking to cope with stress? Well, my work was tiring and stressful in a high-pressure environment. It took me all over the world. But I wouldn’t say that I got drunk as a mechanism to cope. It wasn’t really social either. The serious drinking was done on my own either at home or when away on business travel. At any rate, it seems to me that stress means different things to different people at different times. The simple truth is that I started drinking to get drunk when young and enjoyed it. But I got stuck in a pattern, ran into troubles of blackouts and panic attacks, and found that I couldn't turn back. With Augustine, I was "stuck fast in the glue of this pleasure", (Confessions 6.22). Augustine famously said of his own addiction, “For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity”, (Confessions 8.10). In other words, what starts as an enjoyable habit becomes a form of compulsion. Unfortunately, you only truly realise it when it’s become too late. Didn’t I know that continuing to drink was bad for me? Sure I did - eventually. There were embarrassing situations – too many to list here. There were dangerous situations like turning up outside of my hotel in Copenhagen at 4am not knowing where I’d been or how I got there. Blackouts are dangerous when you don’t know where you’ve been and who you’ve been with. Socrates said that choosing between A (sobriety or moderate drinking, for example) or B (uncontrolled drinking and serious health problems) the rational human motivated by the desire to be happy will always choose A. But Aristotle responded that our actions are sometimes driven by passions or emotions and we choose B. He called this “incontinence”. Whether or not it makes sense to say we will knowingly choose the worst option for us – what philosophers call “akrasia” – has led to much debate. One possibility is that we don’t always make careful evaluation of the options when we choose to act. The idea here is that alcoholics reach for the next drink without ever thinking through the consequences. To act in this way is in some sense to be deficient as a human person. To say this is not to be condemnatory. It is simply to say that choosing to act without at least some degree of rational consideration is to fall short of what is possible for a properly functioning human being. Another possibility is that we allow our judgment to be clouded by circumstances. Drug or alcohol addiction can be a form of self-medication, for example. In these circumstances, using alcohol to block out some form of underlying suffering is seen as the least-worst option. Clearly, in these circumstances treatment needs to target the underlying issues. Augustine introduced the idea of the divided will to explain the dilemma. He knew what he ought to do but found that he could still not do it. “The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance”, (Confessions,8.21). He had the will but lacked the power. He explains that this was like slumbering between sleep and waking up, when we know that we ought to get up but feel that we lack the strength. I can relate to this. When I was drinking, I was still asleep. I needed to wake up. So why, then, did I continue to do it? I suppose I suffered from the usual delusions of the alcoholic. I thought to myself “it won’t happen to me”. Perhaps I also thought that any serious consequences were a long way into the future and I could postpone making a change until a later date. But the plain truth is that I was locked into a pattern and it wasn’t until I hit rock bottom that I acknowledged that I needed help because I couldn’t do it on my own. It wasn’t strength of resolve. It was fear that made me change. Fundamentally, I believe that what alcoholics in recovery need most is a whole new philosophy of life. I spoke about these issues at a meeting once. At the end, somebody said, “What you are talking about is wisdom”. Wisdom can be taught but mostly it comes from experience. I'm not sure I can easily answer the question of "why did you do it?" I didn’t know then what I know now. But I do know that wisdom keeps me sober.

The title of this blog is taken from a book published by Paul Tillich in 1952. At its broadest level, it's saying that we need courage to become. This immediately poses the question - the courage to become what? The implication is that we need courage to become someone or something. Alcoholics need a special kind of courage to turn their lives around in recovery treatment. In my own case, I needed courage to seek help and stay sober. It might sound surprising to say that we need courage to become someone. But we all have fears or insecurities in our lives, or circumstances in our backgrounds that need to be overcome if we want to become the person we’d truly like to be. We are held back by ourselves because sometimes it’s easier or more comfortable to stick with the status quo. Recovery treatment requires resilience and courage. Philosophers talk about being and becoming. Being, the universe of which we are a very small but significant part is not static. It is in process, continuously changing and evolving. We as individual human beings are on a journey in relation to others and the world around us. We are all in the process of becoming human persons on a shared journey, however flawed some might be, such as alcoholics struggling to turn their lives around. Travelling along this path, having the courage to be implies, for some, what is called an existentialist philosophy. At the risk of over-simplifying, this approach to life entails seeking to become whatever you want to be. It suggests that the alcoholic, or anybody else for that matter, can take the initiative in turning his life around through self-invention and self-assertion. We just need to grasp the moment or, better still, create the opportunities to become whoever we want to be. But this approach to life is not as easy as it sounds. It suggests that we as individual human subjects are always masters of our own destiny. This might contain some element of truth but in reality we face objective constraints. We can't deny our education and background. At the most basic, we can’t deny our genes. We can't deny our frailty as human beings when faced with choices about how to lead our lives. There are some things that we can control and there are other things that we cannot control. What we need is the wisdom is to know the difference. Instead, we can interpret our task as having the courage to ‘come out’ as human persons. We need to find our true selves in relation to others and the world around us. Why should this take courage for anybody but especially for alcoholics and those suffering from other addictions? In his book, Tillich identifies three major forms of anxiety that characterise the human condition. The first relates to a sense of being at the mercy of events that we cannot control including, ultimately, our own demise. Also, arguably, this gives rise to what psychologists call “catastrophising”, meaning a tendency to believe things will always go wrong. The second shows itself as a form of guilt or remorse because we lack self-worth and believe we are not capable of doing what we ought to do. The third form of anxiety is perhaps more existential and relates to an inability to find meaning and purpose in life. The alcoholic is full of fear and anxiety. I felt genuine fear because the panic attacks brought on by repeated bingeing were harming my life and for a very long period of time I was unable to see a way out. There were times when it was hard to leave the house, meet friends, or go to work. In both major episodic breakdowns during my cycles of drinking it took roughly three years to restore stability but the memory of what happened very much stays with me. When I listen to the stories of other alcoholics, or read their narratives, I see courage. It takes courage simply to attend meetings of what we call mutual help groups. As I can attest from years of speaking at business conferences and teaching, it takes courage to stand up and speak in front of other people. We’ve all witnessed nervous public speakers. Many famous actors have encountered “stage fright”. Imagine how much more courage it takes to tell your own personal story of alcoholism in front of others. It takes courage for anybody to acknowledge to others that they are addicted to a “substance use disorder”. That’s partly because addiction is stigmatised in the public sphere. It takes courage to acknowledge to others that you are struggling and relapsing on the path to recovery. It takes courage to ask for help. That is because it’s an acknowledgement of weakness and an admission that you can’t get better on your own. The alcoholic retreats into self-isolation. It takes courage to come out and be part of human interaction in society. You don't have to pretend to be something that you are not. You are responsible, you make choices, but you don't have to hide away. You don't have to feel shame because you show human frailty in one particular form. The whole point of our common shared journey in the process of becoming is that none of us are perfect. Being and becoming is about having the courage to be someone. It is about having the courage to become a real human being, with all of what that entails, finding meaning and purpose in life. This does not mean becoming self-centred. It means the opposite. It means you find your true self in relation to others. Alcoholics are shrouded in fear. They need to ask for the forgiveness of others but they also need to forgive themselves. They need the humility to recognise that they need help from beyond themselves. Alcoholics entering recovery might be surprised to hear that they are admired for having the courage to seek help. They are admired for setting the example of a life turned around in commitment to sobriety. This takes a special form of courage - the courage to be.

One of the ancient Greek sayings much beloved by philosophers is “know thyself”. With this in mind, I recall being asked at an addiction conference, “who told you that you're an alcoholic”? The question partly betrayed the fact that many addiction specialists don't like the term “alcoholic”. Instead, the terminology has been switched to “alcohol use disorder”. There are some good reasons for doing this. But the implication, at least to me, was that the person asking had doubt about my story. Why should an alcoholic have to conform to somebody else’s definition or caricature? I wasn’t permanently drunk. I wasn’t unemployed. I wasn’t dishevelled, sleeping on park benches or in shop doorways. But I did sleep on the floor of hotel bathrooms and a work colleague once had to sleep with me to stop me from choking in the night. I also knew that I had lost control of my drinking and it was having serious consequences for my health. Resistance to use of the term alcoholic partly marks an attempt to move away from the very old debate over whether alcoholism is an illness or disease for which the drinker is in some sense not responsible. Instead, diagnosis of a “disorder” focuses on key behavioural criteria. These include loss of control, craving, blackouts and withdrawal symptoms. I ticked all of those boxes. This is all well and good if it helps alcohol treatment practitioners. But isn’t there a risk of undermining the person who is trying to be understood if the identity of “alcoholic” is denied? Might it not imply lack of belief or superior knowledge on behalf of the hearer? Addiction is a complex subject. There is no knock-down proof that somebody is what we commonly call an alcoholic. How can I demonstrate that I know I’m an alcoholic? Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with what it means to know, and how we can know what we know. Michael Polanyi talked about “intuitive knowing”. What he had in mind was given by an example. When we learn how to ride a bicycle, we are encountering the laws of physics in the form of Newtonian mechanics and the law of gravity. I know how to ride a bike. I don’t have to show that I have an advanced degree in physics. This points to an important distinction between “knowing how” and “knowing that”. I can know that I’m an alcoholic without being able to demonstrate knowledge of the chemical properties of the substance or its impact on neural pathways in the brain (although I can certainly learn more about the latter from experts at the clinic). Another way to think about this is that all knowing is personal and involves belief. Philosophers talk about “justified belief”. We can ground our belief about who we are partly in the witness and testimony of others. The words of the speaker or confessor convey truth as they resonate and are appropriated by the hearer. The sharing of common stories and the rituals we surround them with is part of the way we build our identity as human beings. When we say who we are, we can't just make it up. I can’t just say that I’m an airline pilot or a professional football player. We only find our identity as a subject in relation to objective facts and criteria. If I say that I’m an airline pilot then I should be able to produce the relevant certificates of expertise and logbooks of flying hours. We find out who we are in relation to others and to the world around us when we examine the lives of others and listen to their stories. When I attend fellowship meetings, and listen to personal testimony, I find myself over and over again saying – “that's how I got started”, “I did that”, “that’s the recovery process I went through”, and so on. Actually, it's an emotional experience. That's because you discover who you are at your deepest, you find acceptance, and you can rebuild and move forward in a community of shared lives. It’s a bit like coming home. There are sometimes tears and there are sometimes laughs. Yes, you eventually learn to laugh at yourself and with others as you emerge from recovery treatment. We all have a story to tell and stories of others to listen to. What is your story? Peg O’Connor, the American philosopher, writes about "epistemic authority". She says we need to listen to the testimony of those in recovery with humility. We need to hear their story because this coming out, as it were, is part of the healing process. I once told a friendly GP that being an alcoholic defines me. He said "well don't let it define you". But he misunderstood. He was saying, “don’t carry it around like a ball and chain” and “move forward with your life”. I meant, instead, that it's part of who I am as a person. It’s part of the experience that I’ve lived through, and I try to use the insights from my recovery to apply to my sober life in a positive way. So who did tell me that I was an alcoholic? Well, there was a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist and at least a couple of GPs. It didn’t really matter because I already knew. I found my identity in alcohol treatment and in encountering other alcoholics. It takes one to know one. You get to know yourself in others, as already said. Why not take this a step further in recovery? Go and watch a Shakespeare play, for example, learn to play the piano or join a running club. You might discover other aspects of the true self within. Returning to the Greeks, Socrates said, according to Plato, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. I don’t just identify narrowly as an alcoholic in recovery. I’m also part of a much broader community. I’m a human being.

Sometimes you press the send button and instantly regret it. You’ve reacted to something said about you. Or maybe you’re upset about work. Electronic communication is now at our fingertips. We don’t need to wait until we meet somebody face-to-face. This has its advantages but it also means that we can sometimes be impetuous and we don’t think through carefully before we press send. Before we know it, we’ve acted and responded on impulse. Once done it’s done. It can’t be undone. It's already gone and it’s become part of our history. It may have consequences, whatever regret we have, and we will have to get on with it. We didn’t stop to think and we didn’t deliberate enough before acting. The result could be a lost job or friendship. It's the same for an alcoholic. He picks up the drink. He's said he won't do it again. But he breaks his promise often without thinking much about it. It's gone and it can’t be undone. It leads to feelings of regret and failure. And the pattern is repeated. Somebody once gave me a piece of advice about thinking things through. We were talking about having arguments at work and wanting to resign. He said that he would not react immediately. He would go back home to think it through. Then he would come back the next day. If he still felt like resigning then he would go home and think it through again. I’ve kept his advice on many past occasions when I’ve thought about resigning! Don’t send the email today – see how you feel tomorrow. Unfortunately, we don’t always act in that way. We all have good intentions. We map out the future as we would like to see it. We all have hope. But we live in the present moment. We all live in the Now. Some of us crave satisfaction now and don’t want to wait for the greater reward in the Not Yet. Augustine was a sex addict and famously prayed “grant me chastity and continence but not yet”. He went on to say, “I was afraid that you might hear my prayer too quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress”, (Confessions, Book VIII). Augustine knew what he ought to do and what would be better for him to do, but he preferred the Now to the Not Yet. I was the same. I acknowledged that I had a problem with my drinking and I accepted that life would be better without it. But I kept slipping back. I tried every trick in the book. I tried rationing alcohol units. I tried having dry days – “I won’t have a drink today”. But the result was always the same. The bingeing resumed, there were never dry days, and the downward slide continued. Why do some of us put such weight on instant gratification? The addiction literature is full of possible answers and there is not the space to list them here. Is it rational for alcoholics to continue to drink when knowing it is bad for them? Or is the ‘choice’ in some way taken away from them by impulse and processes in the brain? The puzzle is that we sometimes even plan ahead to indulge. Indeed, part of the ‘pleasure’ is the anticipation. We all live in the here and now. We are not perfect. The alcoholic knows he is not perfect. But we live in hope. We can build hope into alcohol treatment and through the encouragement of others, including family and close friends. Hope bears on our present actions. It shows its fruits but we continue to live between the Now but Not Yet. We should not dwell on the past. Relapse is a common part of the alcoholic’s journey. We all have setbacks. I've always been in a restless search for peace. I’ve been aware of this restlessness through the stages of my past life and there is no doubt that it played a part in my drinking. Although I’ve been sober for more than 20 years, I’m often still restless. The difference today is that I believe I know the source of peace. But I continue to live between the Now and the Not Yet in hope.