How Could It Have Happened?

I swore I wouldn’t do it again! The wife complained. The kids complained. My boss complained. Okay, enough already. I swear!

Inside my head I’d think – now just how the he** am I going to stop – I have to have one! Just one. One won’t kill me (or them).

Ya’ know, if you guys would just qwitchyerbitchin’ and leave me alone I could stop. Why do you have to bring up those same da** problems again and again? Nag, nag, nag.

I’m doing everything I can! Leave me alone! What more do you want?

Gotta stop on the way home. Just for a couple of minutes. I worked hard today. And that last customer – whadda ba**breaker! I earned one anyway. F It…

I don’t know, I’m sorry. I was only going to have one to relax and we got talkin’. You know how it is. Besides, it’s not that bad, it can be fixed.

God, I hate myself. Why can’t I stop. They don’t love me anymore. Life really sucks, ya’ know? Everything is so da** unfair! Time for a new job, that’ll fix everything. Time I started earning what I was worth anyway…

“There was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning 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. Next day we would ask ourselves, in all earnestness and sincerity, how could it have happened?”

“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.“

(pgs. 37, 39 of The Big Book)