The second conclusion of the Gitlow - Hennecke research was that all alcoholics and drug addicts are “stimulus augmenters”. This holds true for compulsives. For example: I'm sitting at a red light and somebody honks at me when it turns green; I go through my entire life cycle in about five seconds - all the way from giving him the finger to getting out of the car and asking him to get out so one of us can get his ar*e whipped and I don't really care who does. But, as I'm using a programme, I just drive away. Now, if I'm not in fit spiritual condition, I spend the next three weeks feeling less than because I didn't at least give him the finger. If I'm really in fit spiritual condition, by the time I get to the next red light, I'm praying for him and pretty soon we both get better. This is stimulus augmentation - one and one doesn't make two for us, one and one makes a hundred. And this extrapolates into the affective mood problems, such as anxiety and depression. These were the reasons we drank to begin with. Our addictions and compulsions were our medicine. Compulsive behaviour acts as medicine when it provides the brain chemicals that are in short supply due to affective mood problems.