"Father Martin's Chalk Talk on Alcohol"

He's right about alcoholics drinking because they are alcoholics. There's no hidden reason or trauma. We do it because it's who we are.

As for his statement that the further away an alcoholic is from his last drink, the closer he is to his next drink, he can kiss my ass. I heard that line in AA many times. Then how does he explain people who die with twenty, thirty, or more years sober?

Such self-defeatism permeates present day "AA" in Racine. Early editions of the "Big Book" (book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous) talked about recovered alcoholics. not "recovering" alcoholics. By "recovered" alcoholics, the early Big Book didn't mean that it was OK to go back to drinking. What it meant was that the craving for alcohol would be removed from you.

But there's no money for the treatment industry in recovered anything. Thus the mess that AA is today.