A few years ago there was a story going around the 12-step rooms about a frog in the water.

The story goes like this:

If you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will jump out faster than the eye can see. But if you put the frog into a pan of water that is the frog’s body temperature and then slowly turn up the heat the frog will stay in the water — even to the point of boiling alive.

Why? Because the frog does not notice the gradual change in temperature.

Alcoholism works much the same way… the heat is slowly and continuously turned up but nobody notices the change. Cunning and baffling!

It?s a progressive disease. It typically begins with casually accepting unacceptable behavior. As time passes the behavior has slowly grown more and more intolerable, but it is still being accepted and becomes the “norm.”