Web Exclusive: Six Axioms of Alcoholic Thinking

Dr. Silkworth wrote that the alcoholic becomes restless, irritable, and discontent when all he is doing is not drinking. The Big Book describes us as egocentric, egotistical, self seeking, and self-will run riot even though we don't like to admit it. These observations were documented around 1939. In 1944, Dr. Tiebout added his comments, writing that the alcoholic, as a class of people, is narcissistic, has an egocentric core, feelings of omnipotence, is intent on maintaining at all costs its inner core; that alcoholics are defiantly individualistic, display grandiosity, insist on being the master of their own destiny, and will fight to the end to preserve that position.