Gnawing on My Own Soul

"A.A. does not teach me how to handle our drinking.  It teaches us how to handle sobriety. It's no great trick to stop drinking; the trick is to stay stopped."

The Big Book P. 554  "To Handle Sobriety"   

There's a passage in The 12&12 that includes the phrase "gnawing anxieties."  Whew, that is an excellent adjective.  "I can ask myself to what extent my own mistakes have fed my gnawing anxieties."

Gnawing:  A sensation of dull, constant pain or suffering; feelings of doubt or worry that last a long time; to wear away by constant biting or nibbling.

I love the image of constantly biting something that is already sore or injured with my sharp incisors.  And doing it for a long time, never stopping, nibbling on the open wound.  Maybe not even using my sharp incisors - maybe using my back teeth, my flat molars that are designed for grinding up chunks of food into manageable bits.  I like the phrase "to nibble."  Doesn't it sound like what we do to a bowl of potato chips?  

\Man, that sounds like the end stages of my alcoholic life.