The Creed

The philosophy system I follow is called critical. I’m absolutely sure of no use from any didacticism for people having alcohol addiction. In most cases, they’ve heard a lot of times they're wrong and even thought how to improve themselves. Frankly speaking, the philosophy can build up any system even the one justifying an addiction. Let’s take, for example, “Huxley, Aldous (1954): The doors of perception.” or O'Brien, John (1995): Leaving Las Vegas, known as a suicide note. But the dilemma to drink or not to drink nearly always puts an inevitable choice between two more fundamental alternatives – life and deliberate suicide. Although the latter lasts for years, but I’m deeply convinced the outcome is inevitable, even if scaring consequences come unnoticeably. As a philosopher, I see the evidence that a human always makes decisions despite any external preventive efforts. When I had to decide I chose life.  And also I’m deeply convinced that a human dignity is an unconventional value, which can be simply put as being one’s own self i.e. someone respected by at least one person – himself or herself. Thus, I can’t influence any choice. Like the majority of those who tried to fight the addiction before me, I believe no one can help a human, if he/she doesn’t want it, but my main point is even stricter: no one can help a human except himself or herself, and to help yourself you need to understand yourself first. To understand how alcohol-affected mind works is one of the targets of my project.

How the Initiative Began

Despite its being unlike other books of this kind this book was supposed from the very beginning as a classical drinking story. In January 2016 having my Fullbright courses in Washington DC I thought again how to make my alcoholic experience useful for those who fight the addiction. So, the idea to write a book was born. This book was supposed to tell about my “bumping into” the addiction. However, next I realized that I’d tell you nothing new. Indeed, each human’s story is unique, but it accuracy is restricted with its language. Repeating experiences of alcoholic behavior, fighting the addiction as a bad habit, small victories and bitter defeats and, in most stories, a happy end, though, as a rule, related to a certain wonder. A typical example, Minnesota model suggests including recovering alcoholics’ experience to the fight against the addiction when the recovering ones succeeded following the dogma of the model. There’re other ways to believe in wonders. For instance, I’ve read with a keen interest the book Ameisen, Olivier (2009): The end of my addiction, promoting alcoholism treatment with Baclofen. I don’t want to go deeply into medical detail of the drug (which is out of the scope of my competence), but the author’s believe in its wonderful properties amazes. Of course, I could simplify my task and just claim to follow my example and find a “useful” addiction. However, I well know that this experience is just an instance, which cannot suit everyone in this postpostmodern world of swift-passing events and the reality demanding to live this day. Thus, the idea of a drinking story got stuck. The next step was to find more or less comprehensive books on the alcohol addiction and write a popular brochure promoting the US experience of fighting the alcohol addiction. Nevertheless, I was disappointed too. Firstly, no general pattern of the problem description have been found. Scientific schools, different theories (which will be described in this book in details) working with individual aspects of the problem exist separately from each other and almost never coordinate their achievements together. Secondly, the addiction treatment practice applies very little from the scientific gains preferring proven methods from Alcoholics’ Anonymous traditions, for example. Indeed, the studies of alcohol addiction neurobiology issues are about the understanding biochemical processes, but psychotherapeutists and other specialists in addicts’ treatment usually treat with words, psychiatrists use proven and approved drugs. There isn’t and probably won’t any methods to influence neurotransmitters by words. As regards a medicine correcting human behavior, not his/her health state, it can’t be invented at all.

I found the addictology to be unlike other study fields I’m used to; and there’s another reason for it. The philosophy is traditionally considered to be a theoretical activity and its scope of interests matches the practical issues very rarely. Truly, it provides additional problems for proving the significance of this work, but in return, the philosophy gives a nearly unlimited freedom of creative work. Fighting the addiction is a very pragmatic thing. And every theoretical research targets certain practical solutions one way or another. Neurobiologists, for example, torture poor mice with different amounts of alcohol to find a way to make new medicines.

The sphere of real-life practice is controlled by determinants uncommon for pure science. The addictology is just a business according to many its properties. Soul salvation is pushed out by the competition to the best access to the purses of those who pay for this salvation. This, in particular, means that different rehabilitation programs try to prove they’re the best ones and the most suitable for potential customers’ demands. The programs based on the Moderation Management concept make a good example of this. They suggest drinking moderately and avoiding getting drunk. It immediately puts the question “why, what for?” If moderate drinking doesn’t get the effect that made an addict of a human, the drinking is of no use.

The Project Philosophy

With great respect to all the methods of external influence on human mind and behavior we emphasize their limitation; they are based on the idea of a mass personality or the thought that certain method is suitable for everyone.  Meanwhile, every human is unique and only he or she can understand all the complexity of his or her attitude to alcohol. We understand well that any addiction including alcoholic always means unfreedom. And, alas, the declaration that a human choses himself or herself when and how much to drink is based either on lie or misunderstanding. In philosophic terms, the chemical addiction created something unconscious in the mind. This unconscious controls the mind imperceptibly governing even such fundamental issues as daily rhythm, behavior models, interpersonal relations and the very human ego. Experiments with animals show that alcohol changes the general life program.  The program for a mouse or rat is amazingly simple: be born, survive, bear offspring and die. Instead, during the experiment it presses a pedal regularly to get another portion of alcohol, digests this alcohol and wants to press the pedal again. This model isn’t much different from that of a humanoid addict.

This thought again confirms my personal experience that no moderate drinking program can liberate from the slavery of alcohol. Any groans of a discomfort due to the impossibility to raise a glass in a company are just a lame excuse. The idea that any small drink will return everything back even after many years of abstinence is doubtful. However, it’s better to avoid the risk. And it’s not good to justify another relapse with a necessity of social drinking. The problem here is much deeper. Admitting the presence of the alcoholic unconscious in the mind that won’t disappear even after years of total abstinence the question shall be if a human can control what controlled him or her. Taking into account the fact that numbers of  people get free the question if a human can suppress his / her desire to drink can be answered yes. Another thing, I doubt the possibility of any precise, algorithm to be written for it. The easiest way is to trust certain external control system. Thus, becoming a believer in God, finding a ghost-father and being obedient to him even in every trifle thing one can build up a sober life under external control. A similar ideology is practiced by Alcoholics Anonymous requiring an addict to let the Society control his or her life. But I’m more than sure that a human with an unlimited internal reserves of the wit must solve the problem of regaining the control of alcoholic unconscious. My experience shows that this problem can be solved, especially when a human is absolutely sure he/she needs to do it.

What We Suggest

I may disappoint some visitors looking for a concrete solution. For something like: “Read it to the end and you’ll forget about alcohol forever”. The Internet swarms with such offers. The further from the matter, what can be conditionally taken as the conventional medical treatment, the more wonderful are the results proposed. Listen to a song a get healed, read the book to the end and the strife for drinking goes away. The philosophy doesn’t usually believe in wonders and resents any magic at all. The trouble is also that the sciences on the alcohol addiction is a patchwork quilt pattern. Reading reference literature of different spheres of knowledge related to the alcohol impact on humans I constantly meet such conclusions as “it isn’t clear yet”, “no precise information about it is available so far” and “the issue needs additional study”. Then according to the classical scheme of the scientific construction, the patchwork is tied together with hypotheses or even mere guesses. Instead of an accurate theory, there’re philosophical generalizations like “It seems to be so, but we can’t say it for sure”.

Nevertheless, the addictology is a science about the Human. No matter which approach is taken biological, physiological, psychological – they’re just glimpses of a person charmed with the force of the addiction; a person is greater than any his/her own biological or physiological trait. Thus, we arrive to the point of pure philosophy.

The fundamental question WHY that makes a child become an adult, by the way, is the cornerstone of my search. The following questions are essential for me: Why did I tumble to the addiction? What was happening to me under it’s power? Why did I stop drinking? What is sober life after the addiction and how is it different from the existence of an ordinary human, after all? Thus, we shaped the outline of the Book. The Book about myself, of course. All its difference from an ordinary drinking story is that we are gaining inspiration not from ordinary-life experience, but from the every possible sphere of the research of the alcohol addiction and the programs of fighting it.

It makes me an attentive and thankful reader. The study of resent works shows I’ve somehow found myself in a new stream of philosophic conceptualization of the addictive behavior. Several days ago, I finished reading a new book Shelby, Candice L. (2016): Addiction. A Philosophical Perspective where I discovered similar thoughts and approaches to my amazement. But my approach is slightly different. On getting to a field of knowledge new to me, I do have a temptation to say I don’t agree with everything done before me and I’ll tell a new truth. However, firstly there can be no absolute truth, which say the basics of science and philosophy; а secondly, (as my experience reveals) readers are more interested in examples  and information rather than the author’s viewpoint.

Thу philosophical generalizing insight  is unlikely to be of interest for the researchers in certain fields. It may seem exuberant to a practicing using proven methods and techniques. However, an individual that wants to understand his/her own personality and become free from addiction independently from any external source does need knowledge. It can also be interesting for the people around an addict; the people who care for him or her or who suffer from his or her behavior perverted by alcohol.

Our enterprise is like the Enlightenment idea that a human does bad things because he/she’s ignorant, for he/she doesn’t know how to do good things. If viewed attentively this illusion is a big chance for an addict because, like I said, freedom from an addiction is possible only through regaining self-control over the whole complex mixture of conscious and unconscious, natural and modified by the addiction; the mixture that makes the mind of a suffering human. The only thing the philosophy can suggest doing is gnothi seauton (know thyself) an ancient Greek motto that never loses its relevance.

The Project Spirit

As a philosopher, I’ve always tried to avoid two things – dogmatism and didacticism. It’s really difficult to make a wise  man or woman take your opinion. So, the only thing I can suggest is using the materials and thoughts that I’ll endeavor to publish regularly for my visitors. I suggest that everyone could set up his/her own liberation program following the habitual way of thinking, values and beliefs of his/her own. Indeed, the addiction is a complex phenomenon; some of its elements are beyond the human competence. However, this makes the study of the addiction and the control of the liberation process interesting; it partly changes the strict obligation into a sort of entertaining rebus of self-actualization and self-change of a personality. That’s why I invite you into my virtual laboratory of a researcher writing an alcohol addiction philosophy and daring share with his dear visitors the and not ready-made results. Such thoughts and ideas that constantly appear in the head of any researcher working with a difficult problem.

Our project is a philosophic metamorphosis of the open code concept, which is very popular on-line nowadays. When I publish the fragments of the new book, interesting materials, articles and my own thoughts I create an open code for self-knowledge or some details of a puzzle that everyone can try to match. Either about or for himself/herself.