Iโve written a lot about the alcoholic personality, a theory that each alcoholic has within them a personality who steps forward when triggered by complex emotions. This personality is usually adopted when the alcoholic figured out that alcohol could shield them from feeling pain. Conversely, they learned that alcohol was far more enjoyable than sobriety. This personality is trapped in amber, so to speak. The more the alcoholic consents to the control of the alcoholic personality, the stronger it becomes. Therefore, whenever the alcoholic is faced with frustration of any form, a teenage version of themselves steps up and says โwe have to drink.โ Basically, this theory is about the multiplicity of alcoholism.
Multiplicity goes by many names. The theory of multiple selves is a popular one. Multiplicity is the notion that we do not have one singular personality, but many different personalities inside of us. Our egos might tell us that we are of a single self, but it is believed by many psychologists and scientist that this is not true. This is not a new theory, itโs been around for years and has been touched upon by both famous psychologists and philosophers alike โ from Carl Jung to Friedrich Nietzsche. Even politically divisive, but highly regarded psychologist Jordan Peterson claims that alcoholism is โabsolutely a personalityโ and that you โmay have to change your entire personality just to corner itโ.
In the book Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are, writers Fadiman and Gruber ask the reader to whom you are speaking with when you argue with yourself? The point of all this being is that the human psyche is far more complex than we currently understand. It feels like we are of one personality, one self, but if that were so then why do we so often become distraught when we are torn between wanting two, yet distinctively different things? Why do we defy ourselves and sometimes act completely out of character?
Okay, so I am rambling here. Itโs a little complex and I suppose I am just trying to make my own sense of it. But I do believe in multiplicity. I believe this tear, or competing wants between personalities can cause severe mental anguish. And of course, I mean to use my alcoholic personality as an example of this anguish.
Before I ever got help for my alcoholism, I believed I was of one mind/personality/self. I just believed that I lacked willpower. I thought I had no resolve and that I was weak. Yes, I know there are some of you, whoever ends up reading this, that think I am absolutely weak and lacking any resolve. Oh well. However, when I was confronted with the idea that I had an โalcoholic between my earsโ I was suddenly struck with the thought that maybe it was a little more complicated than willpower. I had to ask myself if there was someone else in there (my head). Now, according to a large number of people, there are far more than one self in my head.
According to Fadiman and Gruber, there was a symphony of characters with their own wants inside me, and that some of them will have competing agendas. So my question to myself was โdo I have an alcoholic personality and if so, what does it want?โ Since I had been trying to quit drinking for so long but unable to, I had to at least consider that there was another voice in my head that not only did not want to stop drinking, but clearly didnโt care about what I wanted.
This voice did not care that my life had become unmanageable. It didnโt care that it was affecting my health and it also didnโt care than alcohol killed so many people I love. So to answer my question of what it wanted was that it wanted alcohol no matter the consequences. The next logical question is why does it want alcohol when it is so harmful to me? Does it hate me? That last question Iโm not so sure of, but if it is its own personality, then the hate it has is likely for itself. To the first question, it wants alcohol to not have to feel anything painful.
Breaking it down, it sounds a lot like how I was when I started drinking. At 16 I really hated myself. I was severely depressed and severely angry with the world. I had all these big emotions and pain, but with no way to handle them. My only answer to my problems were to ignore them. When I found alcohol I realized it was effective at turning these dark emotions inside out. It made me more confident. It was a magic elixir. This was the first real answer I had ever found and to a teenager with no real connection to his own mortality, spending my days in an alcoholic haze sounded like heaven.
Of course, with age came the realization that spending all that precious time in an alcoholic haze was actually a nightmare. But, how would he know that? Theoretically this is a personality that was formed at a crucial time when a major coping mechanism was found. This personality only wants to drink because it cannot handle emotional pain. It has no sense of the future because it is unable to. It is scared, selfish, and immature.
I cannot speak to the alcoholic personalities of others but from what I have heard from the hundreds of stories from fellow alcoholics, their alcoholism is also due to an alcoholic personality.
What to do with this information? Well, for me, it was crucial to getting sober. I do not think I could have gotten to where I am at had it not been for that perfect moment during a counseling session and I was told that I had an alcoholic between my ears. I took this theory seriously since at that point, I had too much to lose. If I kept drinking then it was going to kill me slowly like it did my uncle. I decided to treat this alcoholic personality like I would a teenager living under my rules. Itโs a little more complicated than that, but thatโs the gist of it. Read more about it here.
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