Relapse & Surrender
…the acts which led to the relapses were preceded by wrong thinking. The patient in each case rationalized himself out of a sense of his own perilous reality. He deliberately
turned away from his knowledge of the fact that he had been the victim of a serious disease. He grew over-confident. He decided he didn’t have to follow directions.
“Slips and Human Nature”, by Dr. William Duncan Silkworth (wrote most of The Doctor’s
Opinion in the AA Big Book)
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One fact must be kept in mind, namely, the need to distinguish between submission and surrender.
In submission, an individual accepts reality consciously, but not unconsciously. He or she accepts as a practical fact that he or she cannot at that moment lick reality, but lurking in the unconscious is the feeling, “there’ll come a day”, which
implies no real acceptance and demonstrates conclusively that the struggle is still on.
With submission, which at best is a superficial yielding, tension continues.
Dr. Harry M. Tiebout (early non-alcoholic friend of AA)
(Source: lahacienda.com)
