Alcohol Part 2: Carl Jung and the Psychic Change

Part 2 : The Repulsive Alcoholic.

Carl Jung and the Psychic Change

As we learned in Alcohol Part 1, there are opportunities to get off the alcohol rollercoaster before the onset of Chronic Alcoholism. Education programs around the world are creating awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking. Schools, hospitals medical professionals and governments have programs to assist individuals get off the rollercoaster before it's often too late.

Chronic Alcoholism has been described as developing an allergy to alcohol. Like with an allergy to nuts, at the allergy stage, the only cure is total abstinence.

Robert Downey Jnr, and Mel Gbison have been reported to say

“ I have developed an Allergy to Alcohol, and when affected I break out in Hand - Cuffs”

Personally, I don't have alcohol in anything. Not in food, mouthwash, over the counter medications such as cough syrups, and I need to be mindful of consuming medications or Substances that might have similar effects on my body to alcohol such as benzodiazepines, opiates, cannabis and any other medication that are not scrutinized and prescribed by a medically qualified professional.

It's been a very long and hard-won personal diagnosis that I personally am of the Chronic type of alcoholic, and I was of that type of chronic despair that I too broke out in handcuffs.

Although I have been free from active alcoholism for some 20 years I believe that I am only One nut or drink away from chronic relapse. I can't afford any risk at all of a relapse. My body, my mind and my friends and family in particular do not have another Recovery left in them.

During these past 20 years of sobriety with very regular attendance at 12-step programs, and with working professionally within the substance misuse community, I have seen countless individuals relapse and die, very few chronic alcoholics in recovery after consuming that first drink ever make it back into sobriety.

This effect of the first drink is often referred to as the Domino Effect, where one drink represents one domino being knocked over, and that domino continues to knock domino after domino, and it is a reaction over which we have absolutely no control. This dominio can have the power of an earthquake, demolishing everything in its path overnight.

So why you might ask has no one developed a pill to cure alcoholism? The facts are that medicine and psychiatry have battled for a very long time to separate alcohol from the alcoholic. Past interventions have included lobotomies, ECT electro-convulsive therapies, ice cold baths and all sorts of experiments and hideous interventions in between.

It was psychologist Carl Jung who first identified the phenomenon of a " Psychic Change" occurring in alcoholics during the 1920/30s. One example helped launch what is today a multi-million persons self-help membership of 12-step recovery programs. The record that we have of this " Psychic Change" has been handed down through 12-step programs for decades.

A New York lawyer by the name of Roland Hazard had been a patient of Carl Jung for several years. Hazard had visited Jung many times in Switzerland and over several years Jung began to consider Hazard as an absolutely hopeless chronic alcoholic. Jung is recorded to have said that even if Hazard employed bodyguards 24 hours a day to prevent him from drinking that Hazard would find a way to get alcohol. Jung saw few alternative solutions for Hazard apart maybe from a secure lock up in a sanatorium.

Hazard continued to fight his alcoholism and continued to visit Jung in Switzerland. Jung shared his observations of this " Psychic Change" with Hazard. Jung described how some patients were finding a Psychic non-religious solution to their drinking, a phenomenon never before witnessed and recorded.

There had been several attempts by religious and temperance organizations to swear individuals off alcohol with and without an oath but for the Chronic Alcoholic, these never had any sustainability.

This idea of a Psychic Change grew into the idea of a spiritual change, that seeking the help of a power greater than the alcoholic could perhaps restore the alcoholic to some form of sanity.

It was whilst Hazzard was representing a wealthy alcoholic called Ebby Tatcher in a New York court that Hazzard requested the Judge to suspend the charges facing Thatcher so that Thatcher could be introduced to the nuts and bolts of this Psychic Phenomenon.

Thatcher was so amazed that the compulsion to drink alcohol had been removed from him that he made a visit to his longtime friend Bill Wilson. Wilson was skeptical to say the least, a raging alcoholic drinking several bottles of bathtub gin a day Willson had tried religion and it had not worked for him.

But Thatcher emphasised the holy grail of what was to become the 12-step programs, the concept " of a god as you come to understand, him, her or it " and thus the 12-step programs that have saved millions of Chronic Alcoholics was born in the doom and gloom of the American depression and aftermath of the 1920’s stock market crash in 1935.

Would you like to learn more? Contact us today in confidence to discuss your personal or family needs with a free informal discussion and assessment. Or continue to read

Part 3

Neuroplasticity, a psychic change, a placebo effect, a spiritual malady and the

"No Muscle Gym"