From Dr. Silkworth to A.A. in 1939: "All [alcoholics] have one symptom in common: they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. The only relief we [medical practitioners] have to suggest is entire abstinence...
"I earnestly advise every alcoholic to read this book ['Alcoholics Anonymous'] through, and though perhaps he came to scoff, he may remain to pray [in order to find out about having the inability to stop altogether taken away]."

The difference between the alcoholic and the normal drinker (someone who can drink safely) has to do with whether or not the person has a sufficient quantity of digestive enzymes of a sufficient quality to keep the alcohol from setting off a certain alkaloid trigger in the brain every time a drink is taken. In that regard, one drink is too many because then a thousand will never be enough...and none of that has anything to do with personal character or determination. The alcohol temporarily becomes acetaldehyde during metabolization, and then that acetaldehyde becomes tetrahydroisoquinoline (THIQ) and triggers the elbow to send another drink to the mouth if the available enzymes cannot keep the acetaldehyde from remaining for too long in the bloodstream.

I was sober and recovered for a number of years before hearing those details, but it was by first having tried again and again to drink safely that I had finally realized I could never be something I am not: a normal drinker.