# What does "absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" mean?

**In short:**
- The sentence is in Chapter 3: "the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" ([p. 39](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)). The book calls it "a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize" ([p. 39](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)).
- "Self-knowledge" there means knowing the facts about yourself and your alcoholism: understanding your condition, remembering what drinking did, and knowing you must not drink. The chapter's two cases, Jim and Fred, both had that kind of knowledge and drank anyway ([pp. 35–43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)).
- The reason given is that at the moment of the first drink the knowledge is not there to use: the alcoholic "at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink" ([p. 43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-43/)), and will power and self-knowledge "would not help in those strange mental blank spots" ([p. 42](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-42/)).
- The book's answer is not more knowledge. "His defense must come from a Higher Power." ([p. 43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-43/)). The same lesson is in Bill's story: "Surely this was the answer—self-knowledge. But it was not" ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)).

## Where the sentence sits

Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism," sets out to describe "the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem" ([p. 35](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)). It gives two cases, Jim ([pp. 35–37](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)) and Fred ([pp. 39–43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)), with the self-knowledge sentence between them.

The sentence is the book's reply to a reader it imagines on [p. 38](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-38/). That reader admits "some of these symptoms" but says "we understand ourselves so well after what you have told us that such things cannot happen again" ([p. 38](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-38/)). The book allows that this may be true of "certain nonalcoholic people" who drink foolishly and heavily but can still "stop or moderate" ([p. 39](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)). Then it says that "the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" ([p. 39](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)). It adds that this is "a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience" ([p. 39](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/)).

So "self-knowledge" in the sentence is the reader's own claim turned back on him: understanding yourself, knowing your condition, knowing what you have been told about alcoholism.

## What Jim knew, and what happened ([pp. 35–37](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/))

Jim had been told "what we knew of alcoholism and the answer we had found" ([p. 35](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)). After "half a dozen" drunks in rapid succession, the members "worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened" each time, and he "agreed he was a real alcoholic and in a serious condition" ([p. 35](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)). He knew he faced the asylum again and the loss of his family ([p. 35](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)).

The book's summary: "He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all 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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-36/)). It calls this "plain insanity" ([p. 37](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-37/)). The book also notes, just before telling of his drunks, that Jim "failed to enlarge his spiritual life" ([p. 35](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-35/)).

The book says this is not an extreme case: "this kind of thinking has been characteristic of every single one of us" ([p. 37](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-37/)). Alongside sound reasoning "there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink," and "Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check" ([p. 37](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-37/)). See: *Who is "Jim," and why the whiskey in the milk?*

## What Fred knew, and what happened ([pp. 39–43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-39/))

Fred is the case the sentence introduces, and his story is told as an illustration of it. He "conceded that he had some of the symptoms," but was positive that the humiliating experience, "plus the knowledge he had acquired, would keep him sober the rest of his life" ([p. 40](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-40/)). The book's own summary of his thinking is that self-knowledge "would fix it" ([p. 40](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-40/)).

In his own account he had "every right to be self-confident," and thought staying sober would be "only a matter of exercising my will power and keeping on guard" ([p. 40](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-40/)). On the day he drank, "Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries." ([p. 41](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-41/)). He ordered a cocktail without thinking: "I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all." ([p. 41](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-41/)). What he had learned about alcoholism "did not occur to me at all" ([p. 42](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-42/)).

His conclusion is the plainest statement of what the sentence means: "I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots." ([p. 42](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-42/)).

## Why knowledge doesn't hold

The chapter's explanation is that the knowledge is real but is not available at the moment it is needed. The alcoholic "at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink" ([p. 43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-43/)), and "neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense" except "in a few rare cases" ([p. 43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-43/)). Chapter 2 says the same thing: "We are without defense against the first drink." ([p. 24](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-24/)), and that the consequences "do not crowd into the mind to deter us" ([p. 24](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-24/)).

The chapter also says, earlier, that "utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish" is "the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it" ([p. 34](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-34/)). Knowing the necessity is not the same as being able to act on it.

## Bill's story says the same

In Chapter 1 the kind doctor at the hospital explained to Bill that he "had been seriously ill, bodily and mentally," and that in alcoholics the will "is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor" ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)). Bill's reaction: "Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope." ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)). For three or four months, he says, "the goose hung high" ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)). "Surely this was the answer—self-knowledge. But it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more." ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)).

## What the book offers instead

The sentence does not say knowledge is useless. The book spends its first three chapters giving the alcoholic knowledge of his condition, and asks the reader to diagnose himself ([pp. 31–32](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-31/), 44). What it says is that knowledge alone will not stop the drinking. Its answer is a spiritual one: "His defense must come from a Higher Power." ([p. 43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-43/)). Fred's own turn came when the members "outlined the spiritual answer and program of action" and he "made up my mind to go through with the process" ([p. 42](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-42/)). Chapter 4 opens by saying that if the reader is alcoholic, he "may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer" ([p. 44](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-44/)).

See: *Is the definition of insanity in the Big Book?*, *Is "it's the first drink that gets you drunk" in the Big Book?*, *Is "your best thinking got you here" in the Big Book?*

## Read it yourself
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" ([pp. 30–43](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Chapter 1, "Bill's Story" ([p. 7](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-7/)): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt1.pdf
- Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" ([p. 24](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-24/)): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt2.pdf
- Chapter 4, "We Agnostics" ([p. 44](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-44/)): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt4.pdf
- The full book: https://onlineliterature.aa.org

## Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 1 | 7 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 2 | 24 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 3 | 30–43 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 4 | 44 | 1939 |

*Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.*