By and large, alcoholic addiction is the result of a wrong adjustment to life. It is the result of an emotional unbalance, following one's inability squarely to meet the situations and conditions that arise in personal experience. This inability to meet situations is, of Course, largely unconscious; that is, it is subjective, hidden, and therefore unknown to the conscious faculties.

When this maladjustment to life reaches a point where one becomes a habitual drinker, it is evident that in an unconscious manner he or she is seeking self-destruction! This attempt to avoid the realities of everyday contact with life has reached a point where delusion alone can compensate the imagination for whatever one desires to become or to attain. Unconsciously, alcoholics seek oblivion through self-destruction. Of course, the mental process whereby they arrive at this conclusion is mostly subjective.

We are all familiar with people who, at a critical point in their careers, get drunk: the ones who throw their finest opportunities to the wind and seek oblivion through the loss of consciousness. At the moment that faith is needed, fear dominates. The desire to lose themselves, even to destroy themselves, becomes stronger than the assurance that they can meet and handle any situation that arises.

This does not mean, however, that everyone who drinks is seeking self-destruction. We are talking about that class of drinkers who become submerged in the habit, and unfortunately all too many drinkers of hard liquor are of this type. It is for those who suffer from an irresistible desire to become submerged in the habit that this was written.