A dozen men were sitting around a plain room one night this week in Johnson City, Tenn., and one of them – call him Freddie – wanted to talk about forgiveness. He had caused some trouble for his girlfriend, lied about it and then got caught. When he called her a few days later, she said she forgave him.
But Freddie was worried. Did she mean it? How can a person know he’s forgiven?
The other men murmured encouragement and then in turn talked about their own experiences and ideas about forgiveness. This was an important topic.
Each one introduced himself the same way: “I’m ____, and I’m an alcoholic.”
Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.
After everyone spoke, the chairman aimed some tough love in Freddie’s direction.
“Well, the first thing you need to do is to cut that s— out and not do it again,” he said with a laugh that softened the blow. “If you do that again, you’re just done.”
Then he cited Jesus’ words in the Lord’s Prayer: “She needs to forgive, if she wants to be forgiven. And so do you. We’re all in this together. None of us is clean. We’re all sinners.”
Alcoholics Anonymous and its members avoid the spotlight for obvious reasons, so it was easy to miss this week’s anniversary: On June 10, 1935, a stockbroker and a surgeon formed the first “AA” group in Akron, Ohio, with a simple idea: They would actively support each other’s desires to stop drinking.
That modest start has mushroomed into a worldwide network with more than two million members. Its legendary “12 steps” to sobriety is now part of the cultural vocabulary, applied to all sorts of compulsive behavior, from taking narcotics to shopping.
On any given day, at least a dozen AA groups meet in the Tri-Cities area. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
AA is determinedly not a religious group, as the chairman quickly explained when I introduced myself before the meeting. But it is spiritual, right? He nodded yes.
The “12 Steps” and other AA literature repeatedly refer to God or spiritual life in some form. (Step 2: “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step 3: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”) Members say it’s impossible to understand AA without that component.
That’s not to say spirituality is absolutely necessary for recovering alcoholics to get sober, according to Jon Webb, a psychology professor at East Tennessee State University who has studied both addiction and spirituality. Other effective forms of therapy don’t call on any “higher power.”
But AA is different: it presumes that recovering alcoholics need resources they can’t supply themselves.
“Part of the bottom line is the person’s own sense of spirituality, not something that’s imposed,” Webb said. “It has to fit for the person. AA is trying to help people find their own source of spirituality, their own source of power outside themselves. It works, we know, but we’re not sure why. Research is still being done. One paper indicates that as spirituality increases over time, drinking decreases over time.”
Being in a group is also an essential element of AA, to the extent that discussions about “spirituality” and “community” almost completely overlap.
AA groups meet five nights a week at Watauga Avenue Presbyterian Church, involving about 100 people, and Pastor George Rolling sees an interlocking relationship between AA’s spiritual dimension and its group life.
“In theory, community can be bereft of spiritual aspects, but not in real terms,” he said. “It takes a community for someone to acknowledge there’s a problem and to get help, as opposed to taking on the problem alone. A lone individual is working against tremendous odds. There’s no substitute for a community of faith or active belief. People need community to steer them in truthful directions.”
Rolling also thinks that Christians can learn some lessons from AA.
“They are totally nonjudgmental,” he said. “They will never call out a fellow member. They are supporters – encouraging, praying. One for all, all for one. They share a common need.”
He paused a moment.
“Don’t we all?”
First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 14 June 2008.
I have personal experience in this department. But not AA. NA. Narcotics Anonymous. My father is a drug addict. That is to say… he WAS. After being in rehab for the umpteenth time, it seems he’s finally clean. As part of his program, I went to meetings with him. My husband went too, mostly to support me. He’s spent time with his counselors and the whole 12 step thing. But I think what made it sink in was when someone else in his group cried that his own family (wife and children) had kicked him out of his own house in a moment of tough love. The counselor pointed at my father and said, “I see your daughter is here today. You should be thankful. After 20+ years, most anyone else would have given up.” That stunned my father. He didn’t think of the option that I could ever give up. Not me. Not his CHRISTIAN daughter. But I confronted him afterward and told him that I would always love him, but he couldn’t come back home until he was finally free of this evil.
Well, he finally is home now. He’s seen what patience and tough love can do. And very slowly, he’s beginning to see that the God of his understanding is really the God I’ve been praying for him to for twenty years. Now I’m just praying that he receives the gift that that God sent.
Keep the faith, everyone. God Bless.
Comment by Ashley — June 23, 2008 @ 8:56 am |
And about this “higher power” of one’s understanding. If anyone doubts that therapists, treatment centers, A.A. literature, and some AAs talk about a “god” of their understanding and call “it” a light bulb, a rock, a Coke bottle, Something, the Big Dipper, a tree, a radiator, Ralph, and other nonsense, I’ve documented the hundreds and hundreds of examples of these usages today. From it all, one can rightly conclude that A.A. today is not Christian. It does not require acceptance of Christ as it did in the early days. It does not even mention the Bible which was stressed as having the solution to their problems.
But let’s remember that there are thousands and thousands of Christians in A.A., in Twelve Step Fellowships, in rehabs and treatment programs, and prisons. There are thousands of others who would accept Christ if they knew they could do so without intimidation and if they knew that early AAs were members of a Christian Fellowship. There is room today for all of us. There is the privilege and choice of believing in the Creator and studying the Bible if we wish. Those who push an exclusionary, idolatrous secularism are free to do so; but they haven’t persuaded me to stop relying on God, reading the Bible, and trying to grow in my relationship with Him through prayer, guidance, and reading. The bottom line is that A.A.’s primary purpose was and is to carry an accurate and true message to the newcomer who still suffers. That message includes God and our early days. Then he or she can choose. God Bless,
Comment by Richard G. Burns, J.D. — July 6, 2008 @ 12:57 am |
It is helpful to know that the “God as we understood Him” idea came almost directly from Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson pointed out that almost every one of the Twelve Steps derived from the teachings of Dr. Shoemaker. My research discloses an even deeper role–a great deal of the language in the Big Book and Steps has a parallel in Shoemaker’s writings. Bill originally asked Shoemaker to write the Twelve Steps, but Shoemaker declined. Nonetheless, Bill dubbed Shoemaker a “cofounder of A.A.” One of the earliest roots of the “as we understood Him” idea can be found twice in Shoemaker’s book of the late 1920′s—Children of the Second Birth. Shoemaker wrote: Surrender as much of yourself as you understand to as much of God as you understand. For a complete discussion and bibliography see Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., http://dickb.com/newlight.shtml.
Comment by Dick B. — November 21, 2008 @ 5:22 pm |
When people ask how A.A. Cofounders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith understood God, they need only look at the extensive religious training each received in the Congregational Church of their youth, and the 4 year Bible course Bill Wilson took at Burr and Burton Academy. The two men grew up knowing who the Creator, Maker, Heavenly Father, God, and Father of lights was. The descriptions–in the Big Book and in their talks–came straight from the Bible and were incorporated in the Big Book
Comment by aahistorian — January 27, 2010 @ 4:45 am |