The Philosophy of Courage - Alcoholics Anonymous. AA, Meeting ...

hence, indeed, its apparent strength the violence of a compressed force. If we lookmore closely at the dipsomaniac, we shall see that it is also a rejection and runningaway—in short, unmistakable fear. For his secret is not that he makes for drink andtakes delight in it as desirous people make for and take delight in that which theydesire. Of delight there is very little in his life, and as his dipsomania grows he cannotbe said even ordinarily to like drink, still less to delight in it. But as his dipsomaniagrows, there is something which does grow along with it and proportionately to it,and it is that something which explains it. It is his fear or even horror, of life without drink.That life is a wild beast which pursues him, and his dipsomania is just a runningaway from it. He desires or makes for drink only in the sense in which we make fora refuge; drink is for him a refuge from life. His repetition of the doses is the actionnot of a desirous lover but of a coward desperately defending a position with arepeating rifle against an oncoming foe.We may sum up by saying that greed is diseased desire. Diseased desire isimpure desire—that is, desire mixed with its contrary, fear. In its extreme ormaniacal form it is almost wholly fear masquerading as desire. The marks of diseaseare: compulsiveness, violence, narrowness, repetitiveness, monotony, inelasticity,pleonectic grabbing, isolation, tyranny, defensiveness, contraction, withdrawal,rejection.SELLING ONE’S SOULDipsomania, cleptomania morphinomania, onanomania, nymphomania,satyromania—these and some other diseased desires like them have received the titleof mania officially or technically.* But common speech, which is largely moulded bythe common perception of resemblances important for ordinary life, has fixed uponthe similarities between these and far more widespread desires, and has extendedthe title to the latter.Commonly we may call a mania any desire when we are “attached” to its object,or have “set our heart” upon its object, or have “sold our soul” to or for it. We maysell our soul to or for anything—power, riches, glory, skill, knowledge, “goodness”even, in the sense of a fixed code deciding what shall stand for goodness. The liferesulting from selling our soul may be a very rich one reckoned quantitatively—that is to say, it may cover a very large field of manifold activities. But somewhereor other in it there is something that is starved, or subjugated, or treated merelyas a means to that for which the soul has been sold. That something may be theimagination in the busy man of affairs or in the scholar; or it may be the intellect inthe man of feeling; most generally it is something in the affections. Whatever it is,it marks a shrinking from developing to the full all the possibilities of that life; it is asign of impurity or of the admixture of fear, and acts like a piece of dead flesh upona large and fine body, gradually infecting its quality or lifeblood. It is that infecting* For an illuminating account of them see Fritz Kunkel in Charakter, Leiden und Heilung, section 17.50