Bill's first example is of Jim, the car salesman. When Bill ask him about his state of mind just before drinking, Jim said:

I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern that I once owned . . . went to see a prospect, got hungry and stopped at a roadside place where they had a bar. I had no intention of drinking . . . just of having a sandwich . . . I had eaten there before. Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach . . .

Our book continues:

Thus started one more trip to the asylum for Jim. Here was the treat of commitment, (1st loss) the loss of family and position, (2nd & 3rd loss) to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him (4th and 5th loss). He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!

     We can now see what Bill meant by "lack of proportion." Jim was facing five big losses if he drank but he drank anyway. Jim drank because the reasons for not drinking were "easily pushed aside." Today we would call this pushing aside repression. Repression is the involuntary blocking out of our conscious minds unwanted, painful, or undesirable memories.

      This happens without the person knowing it is happening. All the evidence about the five big losses that Jim would suffer as a result of drinking were blocked from his consciousness. He had no way of making a proportionate decision because he did not have the facts at his conscious disposal to make this balanced decision. Thus any idea that he could drink with impunity, no matter how trivial, was enough to outweigh the missing information that would have allowed him to make a rational, balanced, decision. To Jim, with his limited facts, the decision to drink was a good decision. There was no evidence to the contrary. Jim was:

"unable . . . to bring into his consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people."

     When we accept the idea that the insanity of our disease is such that we did not have in our conscious mind the facts with which to make a proportionate decision about whether of not to drink, many other things fall into place. It explains for instance why we did the same thing over and over expecting different results. Naturally we did the same thing over and over. The same repression of the facts with which to make a balanced decision kept happening over and over again. This ensured that we would make the same decision time after time. The lack of evidence was the same in each case so the decision had to be the same.

     It also explains why knowledge of our disease is not enough. How could it be? All the knowledge we had about the consequences of drinking would be lost just when we needed it most--when we were making the decision to drink or not to drink. This also explains why the same percentage of very bright people suffers from alcoholism as do the rest of us. Their knowledge is of no help when it is repressed from consciousness and not available for consideration.

     This explains too why will power was not enough. The will is the part of the mind that chooses between the emotions on one hand and the intellect on the other hand. When all the information was lost to the intellect (through repression) the will had no evidence with which to say no to the emotions that demanded a drink. The will rendered its verdict based on balance and there simply was nothing in the intellect to balance out the emotions' demand for a drink. No amount of will has ever been, or ever will be, effective under these circumstances.

     We now see that insanity is just a lack of proportion in our thinking. We also see how it ties in with what Bill was saying in the big book up to the point where he first used the word insanity. But how does it fit in with the rest of the book you say?

     Let's look at the two paragraphs following the insanity paragraph we have just discussed. In these two paragraphs we find Bill using other words that he contrasts with our sound thinking. It reads in part:

     But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out.

     This paragraph is no problem at all with our new knowledge. We know before we start to read the paragraph that in times of stress the mind will repress information that causes it pain. When Bill uses the words "insanely trivial excuse," we know at once that the mind has repressed the losses incurred from drinking so that sound reasoning was not possible. Thus the "insanely trivial excuse" won out. There was actually little or no other information available to the mind except the "insanely trivial excuse." In a sense the insanely trivial excuses were not insanely trivial. It was the only information available to the mind for decision making.

     Still the next paragraph in the big book talks about the times we have gone out deliberately to get drunk. At times our repression or our insanity was not entirely complete. When repression, (insanity) did not entirely repress all the information about the pain and suffering which follow a spree, our mind used justification and rationalization to overcome the objections that managed to bleed through the repression. Using lots of rationalizing and justifying is the same as getting drunk deliberately. Rationalization and justification are conscious ego defense mechanisms. When we use rationalization and justification it simply means we are conscious of our reasons for getting drunk as opposed to being unaware as happens when repression is involved. Even then Bill says "we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened."

     We see examples of the times when the repression was complete and when it was not complete in comparing Bill's illustration of Jim, the car salesman and Fred, the accountant. In Jim's case he "realized he wasn't being any too smart" in deciding to drink. This tells us that some information about the pain of losses to follow drinking was not repressed. Jim's mind had to deal with it another way so his mind rationalized the drinking by telling itself it will be safe to drink if only he mixed it with milk.

     In the case of Fred, the accountant, Bill's illustration is a little different. Bill quotes Fred as saying: "Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all!" We see clearly that in Fred's case the repression was complete. No information at all was available to counter the emotional "obsession to drink."

     On the page 42 Fred says; "I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in these strange mental blank spots." These strange mental blank spots describe our mental state just prior to the first drink precisely. Our minds were blank concerning the losses we would have if we drank. Our book says "Once more: The alcoholic at times has no effective mental defense against the first drink." How could he have a mental defense if the mental part of our decision making powers was blocked from our consciousness? There can be no sound reasoning when our mind has a blank spot where it should have the information concerning the losses from taking the first drink.

     Fred's story also differs from Jim's in another way. Jim drank because he had a resentment (although he doesn't realize it or admit it to Bill) because he was now working as a salesman at a car dealership he once owned. Fred had no problems whatsoever. Fred takes an entire paragraph to tell us everything was fine physically, financially, etc. In fact he says it was "the end of a perfect day."

     This tells us that he did not drink just to relieve negative feelings. He drank to get to the euphoria of alcoholism that the average temperate drinker never experiences. So the obsession, the insanity, to drink doesn't come about because of pain alone. While pain can be one motivator, just as often, especially in the early stages of our drinking, we drank to get from a state of well-being to a state of euphoria.

     Again, the insanity of the first drink can and does occur for the positive reason of experiencing a feeling of euphoria as often as it occurs from the stress of emotional pain. This is a critical difference between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic and the hardest concept for the non-alcoholic public to understand.

     One popular definition of insanity in AA is, "Taking the same action over and over again expecting different results." Of course this refers to the story of the jaywalker who progressively gets in more serious accidents as he continues to jaywalk. This analogy of repetitious harmful behavior is a good demonstration of the progression of the disease and the consequent progression of the denial system to prevent us from facing the truth, but it doesn't really explain insanity. The insanity is not in the repetition of the action. The insanity (as explained on page 5) is in the thinking just before the first drink in each individual incidence of the repetitious behavior. Naturally we take the same action over and over; the same disproportionate thinking keeps taking place when our mind is making the decision whether to drink or not to drink.

     Just as we earlier showed the need for understanding the context in which Bill Wilson first mentioned insanity we now need to understand his style or writing to further understand him and the Big Book. His peculiarity of writing we are referring to is that of using synonyms of words instead of repeating the word in consecutive sentences or paragraphs. The most notable instance of this is in the 6th and 7th steps where Bill uses the terms "defects of character" and "shortcomings" to mean the same thing. We know this is true because he was personally asked by one old-timer about this. Bill replied: "My English teacher taught me never to use the same word in successive sentences or paragraphs where another word could be substituted for it."

     We need this information in studying the way Bill used the words obsession, illusion and deluded (on page 30 of the chapter entitled More About Alcoholism). Where he is starting to build his case for the critical importance of the "type of thinking that dominates" an alcoholic in the time just before the first drink. Again our book reads:

     The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing . . . The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be, has to be smashed.

     The word obsession means: "a persistent, disturbing, uncontrollable thought that intrudes on our mind." This describes exactly the way we were preoccupied with drinking, even while focusing consciously on another subject. It also explains our book saying: "parallel with our sound reasoning ran some insanely trivial excuse" . . .

     Illusion means: "the state of being deceived or mislead intellectually. The perception of something existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature." Clearly the idea of controlling our drinking was not real. Our mind was functioning in a way that deceived us concerning the outcome of drinking.

    Delusion is the false beliefs steadfastly held by the individual despite contradictory objective evidence. And there was evidence by the score that we were out of control long before we ever came to see it.

     In comparing these three words--obsession, illusion, and delusion--to insanity we see that all pointed to the inability to see things as they really were. When Bill has built his case for the term insanity however, he quits using these other words.