Can an alcoholic ever drink normally again?
In short:
- The Big Book says no, from its members' experience: "We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control." (p. 30). "We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones." (p. 30).
- It rests this on experience and on the doctors of its day, and it leaves one door open: "Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet." (p. 31).
- It also says the line falls at the real alcoholic. Heavy drinkers who aren't alcoholic can often stop or moderate (pp. 21, 39), and the book doesn't claim everyone who drinks too much is an alcoholic.
- Long sobriety doesn't change it. The book's example is a man who stayed dry for twenty-five years, drank again at fifty-five, and was dead within four years (pp. 32–33).
What the 1939 text says
Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–34), is the book's answer: - "The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker." (p. 30). Many pursue it "into the gates of insanity or death" (p. 30). - "We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control." (p. 30). Periods when members thought they were regaining control were "inevitably followed by still less control" (p. 30). - "We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones." (p. 30). There doesn't appear to be any treatment that will make alcoholics of their kind "like other men" (pp. 30–31). - "Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic." (p. 31). Then: "Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet." (p. 31). - If anyone showing inability to control his drinking can turn around and "drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him" (p. 31). The book isn't forbidding anyone to try; it is reporting that its members tried "hard enough and long enough" (p. 31) and couldn't. - The man of thirty who stayed bone dry until he retired at fifty-five, then believed his long sobriety had qualified him "to drink as other men": in two months he was in hospital, and he was dead within four years (pp. 32–33). "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." (p. 33). "Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever." (p. 33). So there must be "no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol" (p. 33).
The Doctor's Opinion says the same from the medical side as it stood in 1939. "These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all" (p. xxviii). The craving "has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated." (p. xxx). "The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence." (p. xxx). One of his types of alcoholic is the man "who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time he can take a drink without danger" (p. xxx).
Chapter 6 describes what recovery gives instead of control: when tempted, "we recoil from it as from a hot flame" (p. 84), and the problem is removed so long as members keep in fit spiritual condition. "We are not cured of alcoholism." (p. 85). What members have is "a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition" (p. 85).
Where the line falls
The book draws its "no" around the real alcoholic, not around everyone who drinks hard: - The hard drinker, given a strong enough reason, "can also stop or moderate" (p. 21). - "That may be true of certain nonalcoholic people who, though drinking foolishly and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate" (p. 39). - With a prospect who insists he can still control his drinking, the member should "tell him that possibly he can—if he is not too alcoholic" (p. 92). - Of the heavy-drinking husband in Chapter 8, "Some will moderate or stop altogether, and some will not." (p. 109).
Who is a real alcoholic is the reader's own call; see How do I know if I'm an alcoholic?
Later
The Foreword to the Second Edition (1955) describes the membership's results as getting sober and staying that way, some "after some relapses" (p. xx); it says nothing of anyone returning to normal drinking. A search of our later texts (the histories, pamphlets and Service Manual) for normal or controlled drinking found nothing that revisits the question. The Big Book's own sentence that "Science may one day" (p. 31) change the picture is still printed in the fourth edition (2001); our sources have nothing on later science.
Read it yourself
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–43): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" (pp. 17–29): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt2.pdf
- "The Doctor's Opinion" (pp. xxv–xxxii): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_foreworddoctorsopinion.pdf
- Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 72–88): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
- Related: Does the Big Book say "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic"? · How do I know if I'm an alcoholic? · What does the Big Book mean by alcoholism as an illness?
Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, "The Doctor's Opinion" | xxviii, xxx | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 | 21, 30–34, 39, 84–85, 92, 109 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Foreword to the Second Edition | xx | 1955 |
Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program chapters have been "left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi).
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.