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Who is "Jim," and why the whiskey in the milk?

In short:

  • Jim is the first case in Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism": "a friend we shall call Jim" (p. 35). "Jim" is a name the book gives him; it doesn't say who he was, and nothing in our sources identifies him.
  • After an asylum stay he came into contact with the early members and made a beginning, then got drunk again and again; the book says "he failed to enlarge his spiritual life" (p. 35).
  • The whiskey in the milk is his own reasoning at the moment of the first drink: an ounce of whiskey in his milk "couldn't hurt me on a full stomach" (p. 36). The book's verdict: "we call this plain insanity" (p. 37).
  • The story is there to show that a man who knows exactly what drink will cost him can still talk himself into it with an "insanely trivial excuse" (p. 37). The chapter's answer is that the defense "must come from a Higher Power" (p. 43).

Who he was

The book tells us only what it chose to (p. 35): a charming wife and family; an inherited, profitable automobile agency; "a commendable World War record" (p. 35); a good salesman whom everybody liked; intelligent and normal "except for a nervous disposition" (p. 35). He didn't drink until thirty-five, and within a few years was so violent when drunk that he had to be committed. After the asylum "he came into contact with us" (p. 35).

The book says "we shall call" him Jim (p. 35), so the name is not necessarily his own. Our history books (A.A. Comes of Age, Pass It On, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers) were searched for the whiskey-and-milk story and Jim's details; none of them tells who he was.

What happened before the milk

This part is easy to skip and it matters. The early members told him what they knew of alcoholism and "the answer we had found" (p. 35). He made a beginning, his family came back, and he went to work as a salesman for the business he had lost (p. 35). "All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life" (p. 35). Then he was drunk half a dozen times in quick succession. Each time they went over what had happened with him. He agreed he was a real alcoholic, knew the asylum was next, and knew he would lose the family he loved (p. 35). "Yet he got drunk again" (p. 36).

The whiskey in the milk

They asked him to tell exactly how it happened, and the book gives it in his words (p. 36):

  • He felt irritated at having to be a salesman for a concern he once owned, and had a few words with the boss, "but nothing serious" (p. 36).
  • Driving out to see a prospect, he got hungry and stopped at a roadside place with a bar, a place he had eaten at many times while sober. "I had no intention of drinking" (p. 36). He ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, then another of each.
  • "Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach" (p. 36). He "vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart" (p. 36), but the full stomach reassured him. It went so well he ordered another, and another.

"Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim" (p. 36).

So the honest answer to "why the milk?" is that there was no good reason, and that is the book's point. The milk and the full stomach were the excuse his mind supplied. The book says all his reasons for not drinking "were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!" (pp. 36–37). "Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity" (p. 37).

The book doesn't blame the hunger or the irritation. It names neither as the cause, and his account says the irritation was "nothing serious" and that he had "no intention of drinking" (p. 36). See: Is HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) in the Big Book?

What the story is for

The book doesn't treat Jim as an odd case. "To us it is not far-fetched, for this kind of thinking has been characteristic of every single one of us" (p. 37). Some of them had thought about the consequences more than Jim did, but "parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink" (p. 37). "Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out" (p. 37).

Jim's story opens the chapter's study of "the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking" (p. 35). It is followed by the jay-walker (pp. 37–38) and Fred (pp. 39–43), and the chapter ends: "The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink" (p. 43), and "His defense must come from a Higher Power" (p. 43).

Bill tells the same kind of moment in his own story. After resolving he was through forever, he came home drunk: "Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it" (p. 5). Another time he walked into a cafe to telephone, and "In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened" (p. 6). Chapter 2 puts it plainly: "We are without defense against the first drink" (p. 24).

See also: Is the definition of insanity in the Big Book? and Is "it's the first drink that gets you drunk" in the Big Book?

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages Date
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" 35–43 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 1 and 2 5–6, 24 1939
A.A. Comes of Age, Pass It On, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (searched; Jim not identified) — 1957, 1984, 1980

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.