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Posted by on Dec 23, 2012 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

A Broader Vision for AA

Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA, wrote in the ‘Big Book’ Alcoholics Anonymous, Ch. 11, A Vision for You:

“Some day we hope that every alcoholic who journeys will find a Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at his destination.”

Bill wrote that in 1939.  His vision seemed possible, until 1993.  That’s when AA stopped growing.  In 1993, it attained its greatest reach, with 2.1 million rotating members (mostly white males) in more than 110,000 groups worldwide.  In 2012, those numbers haven’t budged, while the population has risen 20% into a drastically different demographic makeup.  AA is stagnant, in decline and lacking in diversity.

That doesn’t mean individual members or communities aren’t thriving.  AA has grown dramatically in some cities.  That’s great, but that growth has been offset by losses elsewhere.  We don’t know exactly where since GSO doesn’t publish detailed geographic figures, only high-level summary data.

So what is our vision for AA?  Well, if we are to help the most people, AA will have to grow again.  I think it has additional, untapped potential it can not reach.  What is holding it back?  There’s little good data, but anything that limits its scope should be a suspect.  One way AA members limit AA is by calling it ‘The Program’.  What’s ‘The Program’?  Why, the Big Book, of course.  Anyone who wants to stay sober can join AA, but the best way to stay sober is The Program.  Why is calling AA ‘The Program’ a limiter?  Because it defines AA more narrowly than necessary, and more narrowly than AA itself does in the AA Preamble.

The Preamble says AA is not a program, but a fellowship.  This is a much broader definition of AA:

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.

Why, then, do so many people in and out of AA consider AA synonymous with The Program in the Big Book?  Because the founder wrote it.  When someone asks about AA, it’s very tempting to just say “The 12 Steps” or “Read the book”.  But fetishizing a method or a book is a form of rigidity.  Why hamstring ourselves that way?  Where we come down on this issue depends on how much we value tradition vs. innovation.  Conservatives will accept some rigidity to get a strong foundation.  More progressive people will take more risks in the hope of growing or enhancing AA.

We can turn to the churches for a comparison:

Many churches say they are Bible-based.  This is attractive to some and less so to others.  But reading just a bit of the Bible suggests that few churches really are Bible-based.  No modern church could adopt all its rules.  Its members, if it had any, would go to jail for killing homosexuals.  Or they’d go broke by giving away all their wealth.  Clearly, ‘Bible-based’ means that they try to live according to parts of the Bible.  They necessarily emphasize some passages over others to fit their other values.  The story of Abraham and Isaac is read, but few parents would kill their child for God, though a few might feel they should but simply aren’t godly enough to muster that level of surrender.

Likewise, many AA members credit the Big Book Program for keeping them sober.  But of course no one verifies that connection.  How could we know whether someone has followed the 12 Steps, or that doing so is what keeps them sober?  We just take their word for it, which is fine.  But if there is no certification, how do we know that doing the Steps is really necessary?  Among religious people, we know they profess one faith and practice another.  They’re not hypocrites, they’re just human.  So, it’s possible that many or most of those who credit the 12 Steps for their recovery would have stayed sober without them, or without parts of them, such as prayer or meditation.  No controlled tests have been done, so we’re left with testimonials.  That’s fine, too, but testimonial data is of a different quality than data from controlled experiments.  It could be that the AA members who credit the 12 Steps are simply playing it safe, continuing to do what they have done, or as they were told, even though they aren’t sure they still need to.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But there’s still a problem.  If a Christian who reads her Bible, avoids adultery, votes against gay marriage and tells her kids that masturbation is a sin has a joyous life, we should she think about changing?  Well, I hope it’s obvious.  If she could be happy (without harming anyone) without some of those things, it seems she should.  We know masturbation causes no harm, so shaming her kids is counterproductive.  This woman should be relieved that she can drop this aspect of Christianity without consequence.  In fact, it would help her kids to do so.  She would be a more loving mother if she stopped it, but her religious conditioning tends to make her cautious about changing her ‘program’.

AA members are in this situation regarding prayer.  If praying causes you no harm, then you can keep it up even if it might not actually be necessary.  But many people, including Bill Wilson, have moral problems with prayer.  Here’s Bill W talking about prayer in the 12&12, p 97:

“What about all the accidents, sickness, cruelty and injustice in the world? What about all those unhappy lives which were the direct result of unfortunate birth and uncontrollable circumstance? Surely there could be no justice in this scheme of things and therefore no God at all.”

Bill then sets these concerns aside because prayer seems to work.  But many of us have found that prayer is actually optional in recovery.  For us, dropping prayer does no harm, and frees us from serious moral issues.

The problem is fundamental.  For centuries, religions have explained human suffering with a reward/punishment model.  When we are good, God rewards us, when we are bad, He punishes us or turns away.  This appeals to some people.  It’s straightforward and explains a lot.  But would it be moral if it were true?  What we do know is that loving humans don’t behave like this.  When a person, even an unrepentant criminal, needs lifesaving aid, we help them.  We stop their bleeding, or administer expensive treatments like chemotherapy, even when a person has done nothing to improve themselves.  Preserving life is just the right, compassionate thing to do.

We also have to notice that God gives most people freedom from alcohol for nothing, but according to the Big Book, alcoholics have to earn it.  “God could and would if He were sought” means God will do nothing to help us recover from alcoholism until we surrender to him.  We are conditioned by religion and AA to say this is reasonable and even loving, but there is no way around noticing that God gives with a hook.  Any alcoholic on Medicaid can get substance abuse treatment for free, without turning his life and will over to anything.

For many nonbelievers, atheism is a form of conscientious objection.  I myself am a former believer.  I gave up God reluctantly.  It took a deep moral pinch for me to go to the personal and social trouble of removing and replacing what faith had done for me.  But I had no real choice.  Just as many AAs trade in their punishing God for a loving one, I traded in my loving God for none.  I’d rather depend on human aid than accept help from a God who could help everyone, but waits in AA rooms for people to complete his obstacle course.

Despite these few examples, many AAs find nothing objectionable in The Program.  That’s up to them.  Such people seem to form the core of AA’s membership.  But we’d like AA to appeal to every newcomer, not just those who can swallow the Big Book program.  And there is reason to believe that social pressure causes members to extol The Program even if they don’t fully understand or practice it:

The bandwagon effect makes it very risky to say anything off-message.  Moreover, psychologists know that people tend to over-report socially desirable behaviors like going to church, voting and working The Steps, and under-report undesirable behavior like drinking or skipping prayer.  So, it’s likely that AAs actually practice a wide range of behaviors that are only more or less aligned with the Big Book.   Bill acknowledges this in several places:

  1. “Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery.”
  2. “No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.”
  3. “Our book is meant to be suggestive only.  We realize we know only a little.”
  4. “Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse no one who wish to recover. Nor ought AA membership ever depend on money or conformity.”
  5. “Most strongly we point out that adherence to these principles [the Steps] is not a condition of AA membership. Any alcoholic who admits he has a problem is an AA member regardless of how much he disagrees with the program. Based upon our experience, the whole program is a suggestion only.”

So why all the fuss?  So what if people identify AA with the Big Book program?  The problem is that AA is dying, partly from being strangled by the Big Book.  What if the public viewed AA as a fellowship of people who want to stay sober in any way at all?  Would that make AA an aimless, anarchic mess, unhelpful to anyone for lack of focus?  Or would it make AA a vibrant, diverse gene pool of hard-won experience that would make us useful to more people?

Your answer probably depends on your reaction to risk in general.  If risk scares you, you are more likely to hew to the Big Book program even if it turns some people off.  But if risk and innovation excite you because they break things open to new possibilities, then you’ll be interested in re-branding AA as a fellowship for anyone who wants to stay sober, not just those who want to find God through the 12 Steps.

A final brute fact may make the decision for us.  Nonreligious people are the fastest growing ‘religious’ group.  Protestants are now a minority in the US for the first time.  Minorities are growing.  This perfect storm of demographics has already transformed religion and politics.  One way or another, it will transform AA.  If AA adapts to serving these people, it will grow.  If it doesn’t, it won’t.  AA history buffs love to say our founders learned vital lessons from the failures of the Washingtonians and the Oxford Groups before them.  That’s great.  But AA could become the cautionary tale for the next successful approach to addiction.  Or it can lead, but only by making itself useful to a changing world.