Guide to understanding duffer’s arguments:
- Say something untrue.
- …
- Profit!
sleestak, your recovery seems a lot like a non-religious method I once came across in which the chief goal is to internally compartmentalize the cravings and hints and promises in ones own mind to a sort of “Beast” personality which has the power to convince, but never to actually make decisions to pick up a drink. It’s a little pseudo-scientific, because it purports that the “Beast” lives entirely in the lower lizard brain while you control the higher brain where volition lives: which is VERY oversimplified to the point where it might be just plain wrong. But it seems to work for folks too.
Hm, I am not sure where you got that about me. One of the things I did learn in AA, and something I think AA is totally correct about and covers in the steps though they don’t state it directly, is that compartmentalizing (sp?) is a bad thing for many alcoholics. Steps 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are the ones I am talking about.
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Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
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Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
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Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
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Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
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Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
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Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptlym admitted it.
For me, in step 4 remove God and in step 6 remove ‘have God remove’ and insert ‘work on removing’. One of my problems was that I had a lot of guilt, some deserved and some invented, that really bothered me. I didn’t know how to deal with that guilt and drinking was an easy way out. If you are absolutely blotto, there isn’t much guilt. However this leads to another problem, you tend to do stupid shit when absolutely blotto that causes more guilt when you are sober. A nasty little circle. Those steps allow me to find the guilt and deal with it. By the way, step 9 was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Anyway, when I do get a craving, thankfully I don’t get them often, my first response now is to figure out *why * I have that craving. I don’t lock it away somewhere, I pull it out and try to find the reason I feel that way. Once I figure out what is causing the craving I go deal with the underlying problem. It works for me.
The method you mention would probably be very bad for me. It may work for others and that’s cool. Whatever keeps someone sober.
Oh, another thought. I just read Valtrons post about a higher power which reminded me of something. When I first got sober I had an interesting conversation with my Dad. Turns out my Dad believes in god, which kind of suprised me. We had never really discussed it since I was like 6. He is a very smart man (not that smart people can’t believe in god) and a hard science guy (math and physics). Anyway, somehow we got on the subject of me being an atheist. My Dad was insistant that I couldn’t be an atheist and have the AA program work. The steps say god so you gotta believe in god. This discussion was interesting. I asked how you make your self believe in something. He responded with ‘You just make yourself believe it’. I responded, ‘Ok, Dad, make yourself believe in the toothfairy. Once you can do that I’ll make myself believe in god’. It is not often that I win an arguement with my Dad, he is a very bright guy, but I won that one.
Slee
Guide to Apos’s retorts:
- Slam a Doper
- …
- Profit!
I’m done with him, but still reading with interest the other posts. Almost sounds like AA isn’t a valid alternative.
Duffer, don’t single out Apos. All of us have seen you get creative with your facts.
You know, all you have to do is tell us where someone said it was wrong to gain sobriety through AA.
I can’t help thinking that a lot of the criticism on this thread is from people who do not really understand what AA or being a recovering alcoholic is all about.
Just to put my cards on the table, I am an atheist or agnostic (never quite sure which) and I have attended 2000 or more AA meetings over 16 years, and remained beautifully sober all that time. On my own, I was unable to stop drinking more than one or two days a year for 20 years or more.
The problem is that these threads always get way off topic. The OP says: “AA is a religious organization”. The question of whether anyone should be forced by the courts to attend AA is a sub-issue. Relevant, but not the original issue.
I guess most of us have no trouble with “organization” but the Devil is in the details when you get to the word “religious”.
Since “religious” in most dictionaries sends you back to the root word “religion”, let’s look at that:
My dictionary says: "1. Belief in God or gods; 2) the worship of God or gods; 3) a particular system of religious belief and worship."
For what it is worth, here are indisputable facts about AA: Examine them in the light of the assertion that AA is a religious organization.
- Hundreds, perhaps thousands of atheists and agnostics regularly attend AA and enjoy continued sobriety. They are NEVER told they must believe in God; they are told that other alcoholics have found that if they wish to recover from their addiction, they must admit they cannot do it alone, but need the help of a higher power outside themselves.
This can be anything that works for you. The AA group, the power of love in the universe, the power of humans who are willing to share their strength, your AA sponsor, a network of loving, supportive friends, God, Jesus, Allah, Gichi Manitou, Vishnu, Krishna, whatever. The steps and traditions use the word “God” as shorthand because most AA members use some conception of a divinity as their higher power. But all of the steps and traditions are suggestions only and open to interpretation.
The important thing is for the addict to let go of the illusion that they can control the addiction themselves without help. Anyone who comes to AA but refuses to believe this last sentence is welcome to either keep attending meetings anyhow (sometimes they change their minds after hearing otgher people share their stories), or to go out there and practice their own form of self-control and see how well it works.
If it works for you and you can refrain from drinking or learn to drink responsibly on your own, hooray for you! Thanks for dropping by our meetings and saying hello, but I guess you don’t need us. (I am NOT being sarcastic here. I mean this very literally). Maybe you were not an alcoholic. Maybe you were just a guy who drank a lot under stress and got into a bad habit. 
But if you come back and report that your experiment at self-control was a failure, then we will give you a big hug, offer you some coffee and cookies and say welcome back.
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Nobody asks or cares if an AA member belongs to a religion or attends a church or mosque or temple. How many religions would do this?
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Probably the most famous single sentence in the so-called “mantras” we recite at the beginning of a meeting is this: “Our primary purpose is to remain sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.” Nothing whatver to do with God. Does that sound like the primary purpose of a religion to you?
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AA promotes spirituality, not religion. Some people have said that the two are inseparable. This would come as a surprise to famous atheists such as Michael Shermer, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic Magazine (one of my favourites) who holds worshops and seminars on spirituality for atheists. If the word “spirituality” really bothers you, call it “healing psychology” or “freedom from the tyranny of self”.
BTW I am against courts ordering people to attend AA because I think it works only for those who come voluntarily. The posts that said that an AA “leader” had to sign that you had done the 12 steps make no sense. First, we have NO leaders. Every few weeks, a member agrees to set up the hall and to chair the meeting for the next month or so.
But if a person comes up to the chairman and says that the court wants to see a signed document that he attended X meetings, or else he will go to jail, what do you want us to do? Tell the guy to fuck off?
All the guy would get by way of a signature would be initials or the first name of the chairman, anyhow. And the next week there could be another chair.
It would be IMPOSSIBLE for us to sign a court document saying that a person did the 12 steps, because they are an intensely personal and private matter of self-examination that takes years and years. And each member defines for himself what constitutes “doing” a step. Who in AA could possibly sign such a document?
sleestak,
I think you sort of took the words out of my mouth. The program you are talking about is exactly what I mean: it’s one that’s very very focused on guilt, which is a very characteristically Christian preoccupation (not that non-Christians don’t feel guilty, but there just isn’t the same obsessive focus on guilt/sin as opposed to simply correcting problems).
I’m not saying that’s bad for everyone, but clearly, this is what keeps a lot of depressed alcoholics and a deadly circle in their cases, and why declaring oneself to be powerless and so forth can be very bad for many people. This conviction, which Val repeats (and note the assurance that if you don’t listen to him, you’ll relapse, and in some AA tellings “you’ll surely die”: this spoken to desperate people at some of the weakest moments of their lives), is not something that is well supported in the addition literature. And yet it’s treated as if it were holy writ (at the same time we’re told that you need not believe it and its not a big deal… if you want to die of alcoholism, of course!)
Once again, and I do not mean this unkindly, I definitely get the feeling that these remarks are inspired by ignorance anf prejudiced opinions of what AA is really about.
Powerlessness is not guilt. It is powerlessness. Admitting you are powerless against your addiction means powerless without help. When I admitted I was powerless and needed the power of the group to keep me sober, that was when it became easy for me to stop drinking, and I have been sober for 16 years.
If you will read my message above, you will note that we do not simply tell people “Admit you are powerless or you will die”. That is simply untrue. If a person says: “I can control my drinking” we say, “Good, good luck to you.”
Maybe the person can. If so, more power to them. If they come back defeated and admit they can’t stop without help, then they are ready to take step 1 and admit they are powerless.
Listen all I can tell you is how I stopped and stayed sober. I cannot judge if you are powerlewss or if you can control your drinking. I only know that I, me myself, is powerless to control it without help.
I have NEVER felt that the AA program was making me feel guilty about anything. Not ever.
Here is a US Appeals Court case dealing with the issue, they find that AA is religious in nature and actually hold a probation department liable for making a guy go.
Smart Recovery is another recovery program similar to AA that does not refer to a higher power.
I am a probation officer, and we make people go to AA all the time. The cards that people bring back to show they have been to the meetings are a joke. There is no way to verify attendance, the person only signs their first name on the card (the second A in AA being “anonymous”) and there is no list kept of attendees at any meeting. So there is no way to check and see if even the person who supposedly signed the card was at the meeting. Around here, it is very rare for a judge to order someone to go to AA. The judge orders the person to undergo a substance abuse assessment and comply with all the recommendations. If the counselor doing the assessment recommends AA we enforce it through that. We avoid liability by allowing them to attend Smart Recovery if they choose. I have never seen anybody required to complete all 12 steps, although on occasion they will be required to obtain a sponsor.
Stopping and starting again occurs in both AAers and people who credit themselves with their sobriety. To me, that isn’t much of a testament to the effectiveness of the program.
Studies show that they aren’t the only game in town. Not by a long shot. People quit drinking when they’re ready to quit drinking. AA should be ashamed of itself for attempting to draw a distinction between religion and spirituality. It is inaccurate to say they are quitting because they handed something over to the God Doorknob that they had no control over. I’ve seen people quit without it and I’ve seen people die of alcoholism without it. And I’ve seen people who tried to “get” the bizarre dogma that comes out of AA’s big book, consider themselves hopeless because of it, and die of alcoholism anyway. Oh yeah…I also know a number of people who got sober for a while through AA and then fell off the wagon hard. And I’ve seen some AAers who are sober – for now. After all, their motto is “One Day At A Time.” Proof, to me, that even they know it’s not a magic wand.
I’ve only read te OP and I won’t be dissuaded by contrary arguments, because I’ve heard it all so many times before.
AA is not perfect. There are failures. All I can say if AA failed you go somewhere else. I don’t know what the Betty Ford program offers, but press reports seem to suggest that it works. Good for that program.
AA works. It works for a whole lot of people. The 12 steps have been recognized as successful. I’ve met a lot of atheists in the program and I know that they’ve had difficulty coming to terms with the higher power concept. A very few turned religious, but the vast majority of atheists, and there are lots in Canada, were able to accept it in their own way without compromising their atheism and rather than take issue with those who believe in a god, accept that we each have to come to terms with the issue of what a higher power actually means to us. Sure there are a few voices that demand the recognition for God, and quite often even in a small city you’ll find groups that will identify themselves as religious or otherwise. Everyone just has to accept that because above all we gain strength from each other regardless of what we ascribe to that elusive “higher power”.
Spiritual? You bet. What we are dealing with is the mind games we play on ourselves.
Really? AA usually calls that ‘denial’ and tries to convince someone that they can’t ever control their drinking and their only option is to quit entirely forever.
Unless of course you’re equating ‘control’ with ‘stop permanently’.
And you are equating ‘control’ with ‘permanent stop’. So if someone were at an AA meeting and said they weren’t an alcoholic and didn’t believe they need to stop drinking permanently, what would your response be? What would you tell the guy or girl who’s there on a court order and says they have no intention of ceasing to drink?
There is no difference between spiritual and religious. I’m an atheist, and I don’t believe in this ‘spirit’ or ‘higher power’ shit. When it comes to my behavior, there is no power higher than me in what I choose to do. If a judge tried to send me to some religious rehab program I’d have to argue that the judge was violating my Constitutional right to freely exercise my religion - none at all.
What can I tell you, Kalhoun? I agree 100% with every thing you said in your posting except for this line. “AA should be ashamed of itself for attempting to draw a distinction between religion and spirituality.” I fail to see why I should be ashamed of myself for making a distinction between religion and spirituality when an atheist like me and leading atheists like Michael Shermer agree that atheists can have spirituality and that it is not the same as religion.
But except for that, every single thing you said in your post is 100% correct in my experience! I am not joking and I am not being sarcastic, Kalhoun. Please believe me. I agree totally with everything you say except that one sentence I pointed out.
Of course, AA never claimed to be a magic wand or the only game in town, in my 16 years of experience with them.
I disagree with Michael Shermer. Spirituality is nondescript belief in the supernatural. Put it in an organized setting such as AA, add the dogma, and you have religion.
They may not claim to be a magic wand in so many words, but the message is loud and clear. The reality is that the drinker is the only one who can stop drinking. Most people do it without AA.
I’ve heard this argument a lot, and I don’t find it very convincing. If “higher power” meant “the collective power of AA membership”, then they would say that. It’s quite obviously referring to God. Saying it’s not is just being an apologist, in my opinion.
Define “spirituality”. Doesn’t the word spirit refer to a supposed incorporeal, supernatural entity that resides inside your body and is the essence of what you are? What is it supposed to mean in a non-religious context?
Thank you for asking those questions, catsix, because they are an excellent chance to explain better what I am trying to say.
- Q. **So if someone were at an AA meeting and said they weren’t an alcoholic and didn’t believe they need to stop drinking permanently, what would your response be? **
A. There would not actually BE a response, because we do not give advice and we do not rebut what people say when they are sharing at an AA meeting. No matter WHAT the person says, we just listen, respect what they say and say “Thanks, John (or whatever)” and then the floor is open to the next person who wants to share.
The person who makes the statement in your question would be welcome to keep coming back to as many meetings as they want and still keep drinking. They can announce that they intend to go out to the bar after every AA meeting and down a few martinis if they wish and nobody will reprimand or criticize.
Indeed, many, many, AA members who tell their stories of 20 or even 45 years of sobriety during an AA speaker meeting tell us they kept drinking but going to meetings in the first few months, until they decided of their own free will to to take step one and admit they were powerless over alcohol.
If a person said they were not an alcoholic, and have no problem with alcohol, I would wonder (in silence, to myself) what they are doing in Alcoholic Anonymous meeting. They want free coffee and cookies? But I would not correct them or argue with them.
But if you are asking ME what I would say if someone came up to me and actually asked ME to respond to the above comment, I would say, “You have to judge if you are or are not an alcoholic, or if you can drink reasonably without alcohol ruining your life. MY own experience is that I cannot. What I have learned in 16 years of complete abstinence in AA is that my drinking was only a symptom. I drank because I was unhappy and unable to face life sober. As I work my program, I become the kind of person I was meant to be. I enjoy life, and I find sobriety wonderful. Because I have changed as a person, and I will continue working on myself all my life. But that is me. **You ** are welcome to come back and learn more from all our sharings, but if you feel you don’t need AA, that is up to you to decide.”
Q. What would you tell the guy or girl who’s there on a court order and says they have no intention of ceasing to drink?
Once again, it depends. If I am the chair that day and they ask me to sign their attendance paper (the Court’s attendance paper-- AA has no such document) and said they had no intention of ceasing to drink, I would sign my initials only and say: “There ya go, pal! Hope we aren’t boring you to death. Have a nice day!” What do you expect me to say: “I won’t sign and I hope they put you in jail?”
If they asked me what I thought, I would say that I have serious reservations about courts doing that, because AA is for people who come to us voluntarily convinced that they have been defeated by alcohol and that without help they are powerless over it. That is why the first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.
The alcoholic has to be convinced of it. WE do not convince them. There is no we and they in AA anyhow. We have no bosses, no directors. We are all drunks who became individually convinced we could not longer fight it alone but found we could fight it sucessfully if we helped each other. That is why alcoholics come voluntarily to our meetings.
So if the person walks through our doors because a court forced them to do so, I have serious misgivings about their ability to recover. On the other hand, if they are not alcoholics at all, then the judge was kind of stupid to order them here. But if it will keep them out of jail, I will sign the court form and they can just relax, have a coffee and some of Mary’s cookies, and listen to us talk, and then go out and get behiond a cool brewski! 
They do not need to say a word or do a single thing. They do not need to agree with a singfle belief.
I will even agree with them that the judge is an idiot for imposing AA on ANYBODY who does not want it, let alone a non-alcoholic.
Then again, what has **sometimes ** happened is that a person forced to attend by the court decided to keep attending after they are no longer forced to because they have heard others sharing and have realized that they ARE alcoholics, and that other people like them who understand them have found hapiness.
Others go off and have a nice drink and say, “Boy, am I glad to be rid of those fucking freaks!”
There is only one agenda in AA. To help people who want to quit drinking forever and ever. The objective has nothing to do with the supernatural. People of all religions and atheists are welcome and are accepted for whatever they believe. There is no dogma associated with the higher power. There is an outline of steps, one of which suggests the employ of a higher power. Most AA members will admit they haven’t suscribed to all twelve steps
I don’t think any AA adherent would disagree with you.
I don’t think that’s true. Completely decide to not have another drink in their life and are successful without AA ? Got a cite? I know quite a few people that are like that. I know a hell of a lot more people who thought they could without AA and were successful as a result of the program. The program is merely for those who need AA to quit permanently or at least quit for as long as possible. It’s a success every time the alcoholic spares himself the grief as a result of his association with AA.
Got a cite that AA has a better success rate than anything else?
I will respond to your comments in reverse order, if I may. You will see why in a minute.
You are absolutely right that the drinker is the only one who can stop drinking. AA certainly **cannot stop ** anyone from drinking, nor to my knowledge has anyone in AA ever tried. You are 100% right on that one.
"Most people do it without AA." Are you saying most people who notice that they have abused alcohol too often can correct their behaviour on their own with discipline and will power? You are probably right. I agree with you.
Kalhoun, what the Hell are we arguing about? I belong to a group called AA made up of drunks like me, who found they could not control alcohol, no matter how much they tried, but that when they joined with others who understood them and had the same problem, they could not only stay sober for years and years, but also develop a manner of living that was happy and meaningful in sobriety.
With the exception of court-ordered attendance, which I disagree with and which represents about .001% of attendance at our meetings anyhow, this is a completely voluntary association of drunks helping each other to stay sober and learning with each other’s help to overcome the personal defects, fears and real or imagined problems that made them unable to face life without a snootful of booze in them.
Why anyone could possibly be hostile to such an organization is beyond me.
I do not know how you define spirituality, but I see it this way. It is daily meditation, it is reflection and sharing at AA meetings, it is talking about values, fears, problems, concerns. It is being more than the sum of my parts, more than my mind and the space between my ears. It is exploring avenues of thought and viewpoints that are greater than me. It is finding out that humility is a pleasure, not a duty. It is finding out that I am part of a much bigger universe than my own little problems. It is studying philosophers like my favourite, the (atheist) Roman Epictetus who said that “We are not disturbed by things, over which we are powerless anyhow, but by our reaction to things, which we can learn to control”.
My spirituality is sitting with a copy of Epictetus or the sayings of the Bhudda on a sunny porch and breathing slowly and thinking about how much more there is to life than just what little me thinks. And feeling a marvelous serenity that I could never get from booze.
Look, Kalhoun, what do you think we talk about in AA meetings? Do you think we sit there with white knuckles saying "I want a cold beeeeeeeer! 
"
Of course not. We talk about anger, fear, humility, letting go and living one day at a time, letting life live itself without trying to control everything, learning to let go of resentments, enjoying life, learning to love ourselves etc. etc.
You will have to take my word for this, but from the day I admitted I was powerless over alcohol 16 years ago, I have had no serious desire for booze. But what I have had is a fantastic adventure in discovering that I can be happy.
Somebody on one of the postings referred to AA as a punishment. I thought I would fall off my chair when I read that.
Bottom line: The past 16 years have been the happiest of my life.