From: rdh@Veritas.COM (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: AA beliefs?
Date: 10 Sep 92 20:42:39 GMT
Organization: VERITAS Software

In article <1992Sep9.214224.28981@zip.eecs.umich.edu> carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>
>>>Some of you may say that because I was able to stop drinking on my
>>>own, gradually, and because I can drink an occasional drink without
>>>going on a bender, that I'm not an alcoholic, but I think you would
>>>have thought differently if you had been hanging out with me 10-12
>>>years ago.
>>
>Well, I wonder what would happen if I went to an AA meeting and stood
>up and said, "Hi, my name is Richard, I have a moderate drinking
>problem but I'm not an alcoholic."  Possibly in *your* group this
>statement wouldn't raise any eyebrows, and there would be no
>pressures, spoken or unspoken, subtle or unsubtle, on me to label
>myself as an alcoholic, but I think that such a group would be
>unusual.

I think so too.  One of the problems that hard-line alcoholics have is
with the illusion that they can achieve control.  Some people just
can't.  So if you were to show up and claim that you weren't an
alcoholic, people would wonder why you were there.  If you went on to
say, "I'm just here to see whether AA can help me to get my drinking
under control," I think you'd get a clear-cut answer.  No.  AA can't
help you with that.  AA can help you to stop drinking and not drink
again.  That's what AA does.  I don't know of a group that helps people
keep their drinking under control.

>This brings up another way in which the AA program sometimes does
>harm.  When one accepts a self-definition as an "alcoholic", as AA
>tradition requires, one then undergoes changes in identity that often
>aggravate and perpetuate the problem drinking.

Well, yes, that change of identity happens.  But I've yet to see
someone who actually makes that shift persist in their drinking career
for very long afterward.  Doesn't mean it doesn't happen.  I know that
when I got the message about _my_ addiction, it scared me so badly that
I desperately wanted to get sober.  I wanted that badly enough to
endure whatever pain was necessary.  And it was pretty damn painful.

>In addition, persons
>labeled as alcoholics are often regarded (by themselves and others) as
>outcasts from society, and they bear the stigma of having a permanent
>handicap.

It's funny, because I always regarded myself that way anyway.  I just
didn't know why that was.  After I got into recovery, I could see why.
At first, because of my addiction, and later, because of the
developmental wounds that led to my chronic feelings of alienation.  It
may well be that after I get those issues cleared up I'll be able to
indulge my former activities without getting caught up in my addiction
again.  But you know what?  I like my serenity better than I liked that
other stuff.   What the programs do is to break the hold of the
addiction, and then replace it with something that feels better--a
sense of calm and the skills to maintain one's emotional balance.

>>	If a person _can_ quit, then, at least by the definition of
>>the Big Book, he _isn't_ an alcoholic. 
>
>In any case, how we define "alcoholism" is immaterial to [the person's]
>point.  I understood her to say that she repetitively drank
>in such as way as to cause physical, psychological or social harm to
>herself or others, and that she learned to moderate and control her
>drinking without entering a formal treatment program.  I wonder how
>things would have turned out if she had attended AA meetings and was
>talked into believing that she had an incurable disease, that she was
>powerless over alcohol, that the AA program was the only way to
>control the disease, and that she had to abstain from alcohol for the
>rest of her life.

Well, since she was able to bring her drinking under control, I suspect
that she would also have been able to maintain abstinence with the
support of the program.  Years later, she may have come to the
realization that AA could have been overkill in her particular case.
Nevertheless, she would still be alive and well.  She would still have
curtailed her drinking to a manageable level (albiet a lower level than
what she could have gotten away with).  Although she might continue
to be unnecessarily phobic about alcohol, the overall result would
still be better than if she'd continued to drink to excess.

AA is designed to work even in the worst cases, and it does sacrifice
some flexibility in doing so.  But again, if all someone loses is
alcohol, and that is replaced with a sense of inner peace and
serenity, and a toolkit for maintaining emotional balance, how much
of a loss is that really?  For me, it's been a very good trade.

-r