|
|
| print this
 Recovery
as Process-Utne Reader, November/December 1988 |
Magazine
and Newspaper Articles |
| Magazine
and Newspaper Articles |
|
Alcoholics Anonymous: From surrender to transformation
Why
does A.A. work? To answer such a question, we have to take
seriously the spiritual basis of the A.A. program, which
brings us face to face with what might be called the “God
stuff.” Many skeptics, like most actively drinking
alcoholics, are put off by the importance of God to Alcoholics
Anonymous and its Twelve Steps, and view participation in
AA as a substitution of one addiction for another, supportive
therapy, or group persuasion. AA’s embrace of a Higher
Power, or “God as we understand Him,” almost
inevitably elicits images of hypocrisy and smug piousness
that are often associated with organized religion.
AA early on made the distinction between religion and spirituality,
a distinction that is only now becoming more widely understood.
Religion more often involves accepting a specific dogma
about the attributes of what is called God, understood as
being separate from the universe and from human beings.
In religion, belief may be more highly valued than a direct
experience of a Divine Presence. With spirituality it is
just the opposite. The direct experience and relationship
with a Higher Power are primary, and belief systems are
secondary, or may even be considered an impediment, to developing
the relationship. The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, states
that to make use of spiritual principles one need accept
nothing on faith but only ask, ”Do I now believe,
or am I even willing to believe, that there is a power greater
than myself?” Only this provisional belief is required
to open the door to a radical shift in experience.
In addition to the confusion between spirituality and religion,
there is another aspect to the resistance to the possibility
of God. Western society is heir to the Freudian or naturalistic
mind-set that maintains that if it can’t be measured
or analyzed it doesn’t exist. Until 12 years ago,
I was convinced that all spiritual experiences were illusions
reflective of an underlying neurosis, and until five years
ago, never having read Carl Jung, I was convinced that he
was a woolly-headed mystic who was out of touch with reality.
My experience since then has persuasively demonstrated to
me a reality that I once thought was just wishful thinking,
and my prior presuppositions have been called into question.
It’s as if they divorced-Freud getting custody of
the neuroses, Jung getting custody of spirituality and its
application to the addictions-and there has been a family
split ever since. Freud’s heroic stoicism in the face
of the suffering associated with his cancer, his attitude
that “my head is bloody, but unbowed….I am the
master of my soul,” is simply inappropriate for the
addicted person whose task is to stop attempting to control
by exerting willpower and open up the discovery of a Higher
Power. An alcoholic has to give up willfulness in favor
of willingness.
Many alcoholics are sure that if they just change their
thinking or act differently, they will be able to control
their drinking. Initially they are often profoundly repelled
by the “God stuff.” Similarly, many therapists
don’t understand why conventional therapeutic techniques
are not enough to resolve a serious drinking problem, and,
after trying to apply such conventional approaches, will
dismiss the alcoholic or family as “Unmotivated,”
not realizing that the task of recovery is to discover a
new way of being that is not based upon conventional motivation
or willpower.
Alcoholics Anonymous is ingeniously arranged to generate
what might be called a planned spontaneous remission. One
does not know when it will occur, but one knows that it
will occur if the drinker participates in the AA program.
AA is designed so that a person can stop drinking by either
education, therapeutic change, or transformation. A small
percentage of people who attend AA may be able to stop just
by hearing the information presented about alcoholism as
a disease. The majority will go through a second-order change
similar to changes brought about in therapy. They bond to
the group and use it as a social support and a refuge to
explore and release their suppressed and repressed feelings.
AA serves them as a “protective wall of human community.”
A distinct minority will have a full-fledged transformative
shift or “real religious insight.”
Our world had become polarized between a doubting, self-willed
secular humanism and a dogmatic, repressive fundamentalism.
This century has been marked by erratic oscillations between
fragmented individualism and totalitarian collectivism.
What Buber called the genuine third alternative, the context
of I-Thou relationships, or the “between,” has
been almost totally occluded in our time. Recovery from
life-threatening addiction may be necessary to see that
there is a reality that cannot be reduced to individual
fantasy or to collective dogma.
The AA book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions states: “Everywhere…people[are]
filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring
fragments. Each fragment says to the others, ‘We are
right and you are wrong.’ Every such pressure group,
if it is strong enough, self-righteously imposes its will
upon the rest…..Therefore, we who are alcoholics can
consider ourselves fortunate indeed. Each of us has had
his own near-fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will,
and has suffered long enough under its weight to be willing
to look for something better. So it is by circumstances
rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to AA,
have admitted defeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith,
and now want to make a decision to turn our will and out
lives over to a Higher Power.”
“Turning
our will and our lives over to a “Higher Power”
needn’t inspire visions of the abdication of responsibility,
of religious cults, or Jonestown. If we look more deeply,
we can see that Alcoholics Anonymous is perhaps unique among
organizations in our culture in that it has been able to
tap into the human thirst for oneness and belonging, while
respecting individual dignity and avoiding coercive tactics,
exploiting its members, or relying upon external support.
Surrender by AA members to a Higher Power, in fact, consistently
leads to expanded, not diminished, responsibility for self
and others. AA serves as proof that it is possible to surrender
to a Higher Power without giving one’s individual
power away.
-David
Berenson
-Family
Therapy Networker
Excerpted
with permission from The Family Therapy Networker (July/Aug.
1987). Subscriptions: $20/yr. (6 issues) from The Family
Therapy Networker, 8528 Bradford Rd., Silver Springs, MD
20901. Back issues $4 from same address.
(Source:
Utne Reader Nov.-Dec. 1988)
|
|
GO
BACK
GO
BACK