Between Scylla and Charybdis

Doctor Bob’s Nightmare, page 175;

“I was between Scylla and Charybdis now, because if I did not drink my stomach tortured me, and if I did my nerves did the same thing.”

Can you relate???

Scylla and Charybdis are two sea monsters of Greek mythology situated on opposite sides of a narrow channel of water, so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis will pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. The phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis” has come to mean being in a state where one is between two dangers and moving away from one will cause you to be in danger from the other, and is believed to be the progenitor of the phrase “between a rock and a hard place” or the more literal phrase “between the devil and the deep blue sea’.

Page 24; “At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail.”

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.”

There Is A Solution!

“Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet.”