Alma Turner Test Page: Step 1

Step 1
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

“Lack of power, that was our dilemma.”
(Big Book page 45)

Sickened Body

“We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy;
that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker.
These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all…”
(Big Book page xxvii)

​Do I have power over the next drink?
Can I control how much I drink once I start?
What happens when I try to control how much I drink?

When I take a drink, I want another and another and another….
I don’t want to start drinking if there isn’t enough.
The Doctor’s Opinion calls it “the phenomenon of craving.”
I didn’t come to AA because I drank too much, but because I couldn’t drink enough.

Simple, logical solution…
just don’t take the first drink…
but can I do that on my own?

Sickened Mind

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.
Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent.
We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.
​We are without defense against the first drink.”
(Big Book page 24)

Do I have power over the first drink?
Can I control what leads me back to the first drink?
Can I choose to not drink or have I lost the power of choice?

I can’t stay stopped on my own because from a sober state I justify the first drink.
A slimy serpent slips up my back to whisper:
“You aren’t really an alcoholic.”
“This time it will be different.”
“Aren’t you making a big deal out of a small one, as usual?”
“Don’t tell anyone you have these thoughts.”
“I feel so bad. What’s the use?”
OR it doesn’t say anything at all and keeps me in total denial.

Sickened Spirit

“Selfishness, self-centeredness,
that we think is the root of our problem.“
(Big Book page 62)

Do I have power over my self-centeredness when I’m sober?
“I don’t think much of myself… but I’m all I think about.”
When sober, am I able to deliver myself from my own bondage, ego, trauma, bedevilments (page 52)?

​Is drinking the problem or the solution?

“We were having trouble with personal relationships,
we couldn’t control our emotional natures,
we were a prey to misery and depression,
we couldn’t make a living,
we had a feeling of uselessness,
we were full of fear,
we were unhappy,
we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people
– was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important
​than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight?
​Of course it was.”
(Big Book page 52)

“If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism,
many of us would have recovered long ago.
But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us,
​no matter how much we tried.
We could wish to be moral,
we could wish to be philosophically comforted, 
in fact, we could will these things with all our might,
but the needed power wasn’t there.”
(Big Book pages 44 – 45)

“For I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.”
(Paul, as quoted in Romans 7:15)