If Drinking Isn't My Problem, What Is?

I spent years thinking alcohol was my great enemy. If you had asked me back then what the problem was, I would’ve told you—without hesitation—that drinking wrecked my life. Drinking ruined relationships. Drinking caused legal trouble. Drinking made me lie, hide, and hurt people I cared about. Drinking was the thing that had to go.

So I tried to remove it. I tried to outrun it. I tried to discipline my way around it. And for a while, in those brief stretches where I wasn’t drinking, I thought I had finally gotten ahead of the mess. But there was always this moment—usually quiet, usually unexpected—when I’d suddenly feel incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin. Restless. Tense. Uneasy. Like life was too sharp for me to touch without a buffer. And that old solution would come whispering back.

People talk a lot about alcoholism as if the bottle itself is the issue. But the longer I’m sober, the more clearly I see the truth that AA repeats again and again: alcohol is a symptom. And not just a symptom—sometimes it was the best solution I had at the time. As crazy as that sounds, that was my reality. Alcohol was my solution to living in a world that felt too big, too demanding, and too loud for a spirit as unsettled as mine.

For years, I genuinely thought drinking fixed something inside me. The first time I got drunk, that internal noise—the self-consciousness, the fear of being judged, the constant pressure I put on myself—finally quieted. It felt like I could breathe. The world softened. My shoulders dropped. My thoughts settled. Suddenly I fit, or at least I thought I did. And once I found that feeling, my brain locked onto it like a compass finding north.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of the mental obsession alcoholism brings into a person’s life. I wasn’t just craving the drink itself; I was craving the relief it provided from me—my thoughts, my fear, my constant need to manage everything and everyone. I thought the bottle silenced the chaos. But the truth was, the chaos came from inside me, carried around like a private storm.

People outside of AA don’t always understand how someone like me drinks themselves into the ground even after facing consequences. They assume the drinking is the disease. But anyone who has walked into AA long enough knows the deeper truth: the root cause of alcoholism isn’t the liquid—it’s the way I react to life without it.

AA explains it plainly: the root problem in alcoholism is self-centeredness—that constant belief that I need to run the show, control outcomes, manage perceptions, and protect myself at all costs. When that self-centered fear builds up, the spiritual malady in AA terms kicks into full swing. I get restless, irritable, and discontented, and life feels impossible to live straight. I start thinking the world is coming at me, not from me. And with enough pressure, my brain eventually lands on the only solution that ever seemed to give me relief.

A drink.

That’s the part I could never see in my early attempts to quit. I honestly believed if I removed alcohol, everything would magically sort itself out. But when I put the drink down, all the reasons I drank were still sitting there waiting for me—unresolved fear, unresolved shame, unresolved hurt, unresolved expectations of myself and everyone around me. And without something bigger than me to help handle those things, life felt raw and unmanageable.

This is where AA Step One explained finally made sense to me—not as admitting I can’t drink safely, but as admitting I can’t live safely on self-will alone. I had no power over alcohol because I had no power over the way my own thinking twisted reality. I was powerless over the fear. Powerless over the constant urge to control. Powerless over the way my mind replayed old wounds and projected disasters that hadn’t even happened yet. That powerless condition made the drink look like a reasonable choice, even after it nearly destroyed me.

That’s why why alcohol is only a symptom is such an important idea in recovery. If the drink were the true problem, removing it would fix everything. But removing it only exposed the truth: I didn’t have a drinking problem; I had a living problem. Alcohol simply medicated the symptoms of my untreated spiritual condition.

The moment I finally understood that was the moment I stopped fighting the wrong battle. The drink was never my real enemy. My real enemy was the way I tried to handle life with no spiritual grounding, no humility, no honesty, no connection to anything outside my own head. The Steps weren’t built to get me sober—they were built to treat the inside of me so that staying sober became possible.

The spiritual solution AA talks about isn’t a magic trick or a religious conversion. It’s a slow, steady shift from self-management to Higher-Power reliance. It’s learning that my first thought isn’t always the truth. It’s realizing that my fear often lies to me. It’s finding the humility to ask for help before I implode. It’s discovering I don’t need to grip life so tightly. And eventually, it’s experiencing the kind of relief I used to chase with a bottle—only this time, it doesn’t disappear when the buzz wears off.

Today, I still recognize flashes of self-will and fear in recovery, but the difference is I’m no longer trying to treat them with alcohol. I have daily tools—prayer, inventory, amends, service, talking to other alcoholics, and asking my Higher Power for help—that actually work. These tools treat the real problem, not the symptom. They keep me right-sized. They give me clarity when my head starts spinning stories. They reconnect me with something bigger than myself so I don’t have to live trapped inside my own thinking.

If drinking wasn’t my real problem, then what is? The truth is simple:

The problem was always me—my thinking, my fear, my attempt to play God. And the solution was never found in a bottle. It was found in a spiritual path that taught me how to live with myself, so I no longer needed to escape myself.

I used alcohol because it worked—until it didn’t. Today, the Steps work better. They don’t remove life’s challenges, but they remove the need to numb them. And for someone like me, that has made all the difference.

There’s lots of AA meetings available to attend in-person or virtually. If you’re struggling with drinking, seek out the help you need, you can’t do it on your own. I know I couldn’t do it on my own and still can’t.

Find a sponsor that will take you through the steps as outlined in the book. You’ll see more of the truth about who you are and eventually it’ll change your life.

Change Your Truth, Change Your Life.

Haler Smith