You Drank for a Reason
If you’re anything like me, you assumed the drink was the problem.
Remove the drink, remove the problem. Simple.
Absolute nonsense.
The drink was doing a job.
For me it handled relaxing, confidence and socializing. (It never did get around to my taxes.)
Take the drink away and the job is still sitting there, waiting for somebody to do it.
You already know you drank too much. That’s why you’re reading a sobriety blog.
The better question is what job was the drinking doing?
It wasn’t doing the same job for everybody.
The one holding court at the bar and the one drinking alone in the garage have the same problem and completely different reasons.
Which is why a 2,400-year-old idea deserves a spot in your recovery toolbox.
Enter the Four Temperaments
I’ve touched on the four Greek temperaments before, in my post on the signs of humility.
Quick refresher:
- The Sanguine is the entertainer. Warm, loud and fun, and gone the minute things get boring.
- The Choleric is the driver. Decisive, productive and rarely in doubt.
- The Melancholy is the thinker. Deep, gifted and their own harshest critic.
- The Phlegmatic is the peacemaker. Calm, steady and very hard to get off the couch.
Nonetheless, nobody is one pure type. You’re a blend, with one temperament behind the wheel and a second riding shotgun.
The Personality Temperament Test is how you find yours. [Link the worksheet here.]
It’s 120 words in four columns. You score each word from 1 to 5, total the columns, and your top two name your blend. A SanChlor. A MelPhleg. Twelve possible combinations.
It takes about 45 minutes and a willingness to be honest about words like “bossy,” “easily angered” and “slow and lazy.”
[Your own blend goes here, plus one line on how it showed up in your drinking.]
So, What the Hell Does This Have to Do With Sobriety?
Everything.
In that humility post I argued that humility means knowing your shortcomings and trusting somebody else to cover them.
Fine. But which shortcomings?
Most of us show up to recovery with a vague sense that we’re “a mess.” A mess is a mood. You can’t work on a mood.
The test hands you an actual list. In your own handwriting.
Your temperament tells you why you drank, how you’re likely to relapse, and who you need in your corner.
How Each Temperament Drinks (And Recovers)
Same bottle, four different reasons.
(Not a meeting person? Swap “sponsor” for coach, counselor or the one friend who tells you the truth. The temperaments don’t care which road you took.)
The Sanguine: Life of the Party
Drank for: the fun. The crowd, the laughs and the terror of missing out.
Early sobriety loves a Sanguine. They hug everybody, volunteer for everything and announce at thirty days that they’ve never felt better.
Then the pink cloud burns off and sobriety gets boring. A bored Sanguine is a dangerous Sanguine.
The trap: “I can’t have fun sober.” That, and a trail of forgotten commitments, because follow-through was never the strong suit.
What helps: a calendar, a routine somebody else designed, and proof that sober fun exists. It does. I still go to the bars and the parties. I just remember them now.
The Choleric: The Boss
Drank for: the off switch. The reward at the end of a seventy-hour week. “I earned this.”
Cholerics treat recovery like a hostile takeover. They finish the book by Tuesday, critique the meeting format by Thursday and ask how soon they can graduate.
Admitting defeat? Asking for help? Taking direction from another human being?
That part stings.
The trap: “I got this.” Self-reliance is what the Choleric does best. Consequently, it’s the last thing they’ll surrender, even after it failed them. The Big Book calls it self-will run riot. Add a short fuse and you get resentment, which the same book ranks as offender number one.
What helps: following a suggestion before you understand it. Sitting through a whole meeting without fixing anybody. Then pointing all that horsepower at something useful, because a surrendered Choleric is the one who starts the meeting your town didn’t have.
The Melancholy: The Deep Feeler
Drank for: quiet. Anything to turn down a head that never stops keeping score.
A Melancholy will hand you the most thorough inventory you’ve ever seen. Color-coded. Footnoted. Then they’ll use it as evidence for the prosecution.
They compare their insides to everyone else’s outsides and lose every time.
The trap: perfectionism and isolation. One slip, one bad day, one cross word from a sponsor, and the verdict comes back: hopeless, why bother. They also hold resentments like savings bonds.
What helps: progress, not perfection. Saying the dark thing out loud before it festers. Picking up the phone when every instinct says to disappear. And remembering that the depth that makes them miserable also makes them the one a newcomer can actually talk to.
The Phlegmatic: The Peacekeeper
Drank for: nothing in particular, which is the problem. Habit, mostly. A beer because it’s six o’clock. A few more because the hard conversation can wait and the couch is right there.
Nobody saw the Phlegmatic’s drinking coming, because Phlegmatics don’t make scenes.
They don’t make scenes in recovery either. They sit in the back. They’re “fine.” They’ve been getting around to that next step since last spring.
The trap: the slow fade. No blowup, no crisis. They come around a little less each month until one day they’re gone, and it takes three weeks for anyone to notice.
What helps: commitments with their name on them. A sponsor who pushes. A job at the meeting. Phlegmatics do their best work under outside pressure, and once they’re moving they keep moving. Indeed, that’s who is still showing up twenty years later.
Your Blend in the Wild
Your top two scores make your blend, and the blend is where it gets personal.
Find yours below. If it stings, it’s probably accurate.
| Blend | In recovery, this is the one who… | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| SanChlor | Chairs the meeting at sixty days and has notes for the old-timers | Talking over the people with the answers |
| SanMel | Cries during the reading and has the room laughing by the break | Treating every mood like a fact |
| SanPhleg | Is everybody’s favorite and hasn’t called a sponsor in a month | Charming a way out of the work |
| ChlorSan | Sponsors five people and just started a second meeting | Too busy fixing others to look in the mirror |
| ChlorMel | Works the steps like a performance review | Contempt for anyone doing it “wrong” |
| ChlorPhleg | Has a plan, a spreadsheet and a quiet grudge | Never saying “I was wrong” out loud |
| MelSan | Shares so honestly the room goes silent | Vanishing for two weeks after one bad day |
| MelChlor | Rewrote the inventory three times and still isn’t satisfied | Turning the microscope into a hammer |
| MelPhleg | Hasn’t missed a meeting in a year or spoken in six months | Suffering politely where nobody can see it |
| PhlegSan | Makes the coffee and makes every newcomer feel at home | Coasting on being liked |
| PhlegChlor | Nods at every suggestion, then quietly does it their own way | Going silent instead of speaking up |
| PhlegMel | Sets up the chairs and never asks for a thing | Turning down every chance to grow |
Exhibit A: Bill and Bob
Need proof that opposite temperaments need each other? Look at who started Alcoholics Anonymous.
Bill W. was a Wall Street man and a gifted storyteller. He later admitted he drank chasing fame and power. He had also spent six months trying to sober up other drunks and hadn’t landed a single one.
Big talker, big plans, zero results. That sounds like a Sanguine with a Choleric streak to me.
Dr. Bob was an Akron surgeon. His own son said he was guarded and proper with strangers and a different man once you knew him. Simplicity sat near the top of his values.
Steady, quiet, no flash. I’d bet Phlegmatic with a side of Melancholy, though his son also credited him with plenty of drive, so don’t hold me to it.
They met on Mother’s Day, 1935. Bob was so hungover he made his wife promise they’d leave after fifteen minutes.
They arrived at five. They left at 11:15.
Bill had the message and couldn’t make it stick. Bob had spent two and a half years doing everything he was told and still got drunk nearly every night. Together it worked.
Bill went on to write the Big Book and build the organization. Bob stayed in Akron and, alongside Sister Ignatia, treated some 5,000 alcoholics without billing one of them.
Years later Bill gave the credit for their partnership to Bob: “His quiet counsel kept me on the track.”
The promoter needed the anchor. The anchor needed the promoter.
Neither one could have built it alone. Neither can you.
How to Use This Without Turning It Into an Excuse
- Take the test honestly. Score the person you are today. The unflattering words are the valuable ones.
- Hand a copy to three people who know you. A sponsor, a spouse, the friend who has seen you at your worst. Let them score you. It will ruffle your feathers. Good.
- Circle your three ugliest high scores. The unflattering words you gave a 4 or a 5. If you work the steps, you just got a head start on Four and Six. If you don’t, you still have a short list of what trips you up.
- Find your opposite. Whatever you lack, somebody near you has in bulk. Ask them how they do it.
- Match the plan to the trap. Sanguine, schedule the fun. Choleric, take a suggestion. Melancholy, make the call. Phlegmatic, sign up for something.
One warning.
“That’s just how I’m wired” is the most dangerous sentence a personality test can teach you.
Your temperament explains you. It doesn’t excuse you. The point of knowing your defaults is to stop obeying them.
Moreover, don’t take any of this too seriously. It’s an ancient theory that started with bodily fluids. Around here we live by Rule 62: “don’t take yourself too damn seriously.”
- Know your wiring.
- Name your trap.
- Find the people who have what you lack.
- Stay.
Get honest!
The test is adapted from the temperament framework in Tim LaHaye’s “Why You Act the Way You Do.” I swapped the Bible characters for historical figures and cultural icons so anyone can use it.
Works Cited
- The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, A.A. pamphlet P-53. Biographical sketches and both founders’ last major talks.
- Tim LaHaye, Why You Act the Way You Do. The source of the test and the twelve blends.