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• Friday, June 22, 2007 08:05 AM

  Bush is a dry drunk

  I am an atheist who has been sober in AA for 18+ years. There are more of us (recovering alcoholics who do not need a conventional "higher power" to become and remain sober) than one might think. But whether one believes in "God", the Buddha, the light-bulb, or Maxwell's Equations is not the point. After having traversed the 12 steps honestly (which is not easy, not done in a few minutes) you hope that you have changed your fundamental way of perceiving the world. And the core of the change comes in accepting that all of us make mistakes, including ourselves. The 10th step says (in part) "and when we were wrong promptly admitted it".

  Could anything be farther from the mode of operation of George W. Bush?

  There have been persistent rumors that Bush has been drinking again. Who knows, and who cares? You don't have to actually "go out", as we say, to be intoxicated. Pride, arrogance, inflexibility, and resentment are excellent substitutes for ethanol in producing destructive behavior, and you don't escape these traits in yourself just by putting down the glass. Indeed, without that "searching moral inventory" prescribed by the 4th step, those traits are likely to lead to relapse with significant probability. And Jesus won't save you all by Himself...you have to do the work too.

  Someone who stops drinking but doesn't essentially alter the way he engages reality is called a "dry drunk". And those of us who have been around for a while can recognize such, especially when it is so obvious...partly because every one of us has many times acted the same way ourselves. Fortunately, most of us when in that state are not likely to create serious harm. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush can, has, and will.

  —jprfrog Read jprfrog's other letters
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