Just
how does A.A. work?
Answer
I
cannot fully answer that question. Many A.A. techniques
have been adopted after a ten-year period of trial and
error, which has led to some interesting results. But,
as laymen, we doubt our own ability to explain them.
We can only tell you what we do, and what seems, from
our point of view, to happen to us.
At the very outset we should like it made ever so clear
that A.A. is a synthetic gadget, as it were, drawing
upon the resources of medicine, psychiatry, religion,
and our own experience of drinking and recovery. You
will search in vain for a single new fundamental. We
have merely streamlined old and proven principles of
psychiatry and religion into such forms that the alcoholic
will accept them. And then we have created a society
of his own kind where he can enthusiastically put these
very principles to work on himself and other sufferers.
Then too, we have tried hard to capitalize on our one
great natural advantage. That advantage is, of course,
our personal experience as drinkers who have recovered.
How often the doctors and clergymen throw up their hands
when, after exhaustive treatment or exhortation, the
alcoholic still insists, "But you don't understand me.
You never did any serious drinking yourself, so how
can you? Neither can you show me many who have recovered."
Now, when one alcoholic who has got well talks to another
who hasn't, such objections seldom arise, for the new
man sees in a few minutes that he is talking to a kindred
spirit, one who understands. Neither can the recovered
A.A. member be deceived, for he knows every trick, every
rationalization of the drinking game. So the usual barriers
go down with a crash. Mutual confidence, that indispensable
of all therapy, follows as surely as day does night.
And if this absolutely necessary rapport is not forthcoming
at once it is almost certain to develop when the new
man has met other A. A.s. Someone will, as we say, "click
with him."
As soon as that happens we have a good chance of selling
our prospect those very essentials which you doctors
have so long advocated, and the problem drinker finds
our society a congenial place to work them out for himself
and his fellow alcoholic. For the first time in years
he thinks himself understood and he feels useful; uniquely
useful, indeed, as he takes his own turn promoting the
recovery of others. No matter what the outer world thinks
of him, he knows he can get well, for he stands in the
midst of scores of cases worse than his own who have
attained the goal. And there are other cases precisely
like his own - a pressure of testimony which usually
overwhelms him. If he doesn't succumb at once, he will
almost surely do so later when Barleycorn builds a still
hotter fire under him, thus blocking off all his other
carefully planned exits from dilemma. The speaker recalls
seventy-five failures during the first three years of
A.A. - people we utterly gave up on. During the past
seven years sixty-two of these people have returned
to us, most of them making good. They tell us they returned
because they knew they would die or go mad if they didn't.
Having tried everything else within their means and
having exhausted their pet rationalizations, they came
back and took their medicine. That is why we never need
to evangelize alcoholics. If still in their right minds
they come back, once they have been well exposed to
A.A.
Now to recapitulate, Alcoholics Anonymous has made two
major contributions to the programs of psychiatry and
religion. These are, it seems to us, the long missing
links in the chain of recovery:
1. Our ability, as ex-drinkers, to secure the confidence
of the new man - to "build a transmission line into
him."
2. The provision of an understanding society of ex-drinkers
in which the newcomer can successfully apply the principles
of medicine and religion to himself and others.
So far as we A.A.s are concerned, these principles,
now used by us every day, seem to be in surprising agreement.
(N.Y. State J. Med.,Vol.44, Aug. 15, 1944).
Another
Answer
On
the surface A.A. is a thing of great simplicity, yet
at its core a profound mystery. Great forces surely
must have been marshaled to expel obsessions from all
these thousands, an obsession which lies at the root
of our fourth largest medical problem and which, time
out of mind, has claimed its hapless millions. (N.Y.
State J. Med., Vol. 50, July 1950).
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