In the movie ‘Young Frankenstein’ Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (who insists his name is pronounced “Fronkensteen”) played by Gene Wilder, becomes curious of his grandfather’s study of reanimating a dead human body, and has a task for his odd hunchback assistant, Igor, to break into the town’s morgue and steal a brain for his experimental subject.
Unfortunately, “Eye-Gor” played by Marty Feldman picks a defective brain, clearly labeled ‘Abby Normal,’ and when Gene Wilder as Dr. Fronkensteen, asks Igor what the label said on the brain under the glass globe in the lab, after seeing the results of the type of creature he animated, creates a very memorable scene, one of the several classics in the movie,
“What was the name on the brain that you picked?”
“Abby.” says Igor hesitatingly, unable to squint or close his huge eyeball in socket.
“Abby what?” replies Gene Wilder, summing up a tense slow burn reminiscent of Jackie Gleason’s slow burn as Ralph Kramden, an NYC bus driver in the series, “The Honeymooners.”
“Abby Normal.” says Igor, straining to twist and look away from seeing the doctor’s reaction.
This pretty much sums up half of the dilemma faced by alcoholics. They suffer from a mental twist whereby they completely forget the problems that alcohol creates for them, and completely forget the pain and misery of just a short period of time, like say a week or two, or even a day–and live in a sort of blank spot of denial about how inappropriate their drinking has become.
I say half, because, as Ron Popeil, the inventor or salesman of the Kitchen Magician would say,
“There’s more!“
As we learn in the chapter of the Doctor’s Opinion in the preface of the Big Book of Alcoholic’s Anonymous, an alcoholic faces not only the obsession of the mind, but the allergy of the body, when completely unable to stop drinking, say after one glass or pint, such as a normal man. Indeed, the resulting grouch or the brainstorm, are the dubious luxuries of such a normal man.
Yet not only does an alcoholic face 1. the obsession of the mind, 2. the physical craving of the body for more, but is finally brought down for the count with 3. the malady of the spirit. It is as if–and my sponsor is convinced as I am–that there is no if; that a dark spirit actually enters into our self and makes us feel good to do bad. That whatever test from entities “seen and unseen,” just as in the Nicene Creed, to see if we can do the right about face and drink like a normal person, sends us into the gates of the hell of what appears to be of our own doing, no matter how much the alcoholic discounts this.
Indeed, Alcoholics’ Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues, only the ones in our hearts, to help one another and to be of service, to help another alcoholic suffering from the dis-ease of alcoholism. And so the Primary Purpose in AA.
The single-most important question someone has to answer to their innermost self, is,
“Are you convinced you are an alcoholic?” Which means, I suffer from an allergy of the body, an obsession of the mind, and a malady of the spirit–that I cannot stop once I start, and I cannot take the first drink.
If you can’t answer the above question, or even hesitate to answer like Dr. Fauci, the Chief Medical Officer to the President, in a Congressional Hearing–no amount of frothy emotional appeal or self guided self-restraint or self-knowledge or self-reliance can help you.
This is why we alcoholics in AA oft repeat: Religion is for people who don’t want to go to hell. Spirituality is for those of us who have been to hell, and don’t ever want to go back!
