Total. Always.

"I realize now that a drink did something for me or to me that was different from the way it affected others.  So I began making the rounds of the doctors in the hope that one of them might find some cure for my accumulating ailments, preferably something that could be removed surgically."

From the Big Book story "The Keys of the Kingdom"

I laughed out loud when I read the line about something being removed surgically.  THAT is the definition of the easier, softer way.  I nodded soberly when I read the line - repeated in various guises and forms throughout the Big Book - about alcohol affecting an alcoholic, fully developed or still in training, differently than it does the normal drinker.  There was no easing into it - I went straight to the moon, my head blown clean off my body.  I was never, ever interested in a moderated experience.

"Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one."

12 & 12, page 80

Always: Every time, on every occasion, without exception; to always do something is to never stop doing it, or to do it every time.

"The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being."

12 & 12, page 53

Total: Including everything; complete or absolute.

I do love the word choices in the literature.  I have no ability to have a normal, healthy relationship without a spiritual awakening and when I was drinking I always fucked up my relationships.