Overcoming Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
Joining in Support, Not Splitting in
Departure
By Dick B.
Copyright 2012
Anonymous. All rights reserved
Some Comments and Some Questions
Introduction and Three Approaches
It would be naïve to think that there are only three
ways—mutually exclusive ways—to overcome alcoholism and addiction. Why?
All three of these three ways have fathered strong failure
rates, particularly as they are seemingly and frequently viewed today.
Regrettably, they are often considered to be exclusive of each other. They are
often called unscientific, irreligious, ineffective, or downright devilish or
dangerous. But those roads have been traveled before. And there may be a new
way to examine and utilize them together.
This article does not presume to be authoritative,
“evidenced based,” or “peer reviewed.” This should be clear even though (in addition
to being a recovered alcoholic and addict with more than 25 years of continuous
sobriety)—I am often introduced as an historian, writer, speaker, Bible
student, CDAAC, and thoroughly “qualified” alcoholic and addict who has paid
his dues.
Additional Approaches with Mixed Results
I would be the first in line to mention that there are
additional and alternative ways which have succeeded—and also have produced an
impressive failure rate.
The first has been is to quit cold turkey and never touch a
drink or an addictive drug again. I’ve seen such cases succeed. One personal
example I learned occurred when my father quit a heavy smoking habit before I
was born. He never smoked again. Nor have I. Nor have my two sons. And
apparently not even my two adult granddaughters. Yet there are also widely
respected arguments that one can never quit by himself or with human help alone
if really hooked—if a “real” drunk or an addict. Nonetheless the legacy of stringent
abstinence has worked at times.
The second approach has been to set up guard rails in
advance. Prevention! Perhaps a “just say no” technique. Sometimes a kid will
see his father or mother die of cancer-related smoking, of drug overdose, or of
alcoholism and its outpourings. Yet that very same kid will sit in an A.A.
meeting, telling about his parent’s horrible death and his own resolve never to
start—only to titillate his audience with his own drunkalog and disaster story.
Can one resolve in advance to avoid the plague of alcoholism and drug
addiction? I did not. And, for a variety of reasons and innumerable crazy excuses.
Still, both of my sons—now in their fifties—seem to have no desire to follow my
path. And they haven’t. For most, however, neither willpower nor personal
experience nor intensive education have shown invincible strength and
resistance when temptation or peer pressure or bad company or fear or anger or
ungodly behavior have intervened to offer solace or joy as a reward for taking
a chance. “This one didn’t get me” is a brave and hollow victory cry as one
steps into the drunk tank.
A third method has often involved enforced isolation. I
talked about this option with a distinguished narcologist from the USSR. And he
pointed out that the Russian solution was often to chain the addict to his bed.
But he didn’t say for how long. And imprisonment itself has often proved to be
a spawning ground for making booze, sneaking drugs, and trading poisons. I know
because I was in prison and saw these things happening. Courts have watched
frequently jailed offenders return time and time again. And, as an attorney and
A.A. sponsor, I frequently saw such futile punishments. I believe it fair to
say that neither punishment, nor imprisonment, nor enforced isolation have
amassed high success scores in my areas of observation. In fact one man that I
tried to help in Maui had been jailed 7 times for drunk driving. He remained
piously dry on our beautiful island for a short time only. He then returned to
booze and many more court adventures until he finally was forced to stand
alongside the highway with a sign stating he was a drunk driver. The result? He
soon went back again to his beloved booze.
Finally, there have been repeated, vast, costly government-financed
grants and research projects, and the investigations of scientists and
academics attempting perhaps to add other options to the previously mentioned
alternative ways. Relapse prevention has become a profession and a frequent
prelude to recidivism. Pharmaceuticals have become a bountiful source for
scientific writings. Behavioral analyses have been tendered. So have counseling
and psychological techniques proliferated. Have they proved effective answers? I
attended and spoke at one prestigious statewide conference in Pittsburgh where
the medical speaker was explaining: “Relapse is OK.” Maybe it is, in his
learned view; but the number of revolving door prisoners, treatment patients,
A.A. failures, and even vitamin therapies have seemed to have failed to meet
the requirements for successfully beating frequent relapses. Boldly, Bill
Wilson himself (a law student for years and an A.A. co-founder) erected a
confession and avoidance guard by stating that AAs had no “monopoly on God.” Despite
his premise, more and more AAs today are substituting higher powers, meeting
makers, nonsense gods, and unbelief for the Creator’s power that gained such
prominence in early A.A.
The Three Ways of Approaching Recovery That Were First Mentioned Above
The first approach could be called that of medical and psychiatric
management and perhaps hospitalization. I leave that discussion to those who dote
on the reliability—exclusive reliability, they claim—of evidence based
professional techniques and outcomes. The problem for me is that I’ve seen and
participated in them all and watched them fail in my own case and in the case
of the countless drunks and addicts I have sponsored and/or tried to help. More
persuasive to me were the three points made by the physicians who had a
connection with the A.A. story itself. The first, of course, was the eminent
Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Carl G. Jung who treated the case of Rowland Hazard,
failed, and said that—except for a few conversion cases—he had never seen one
case like Rowland’s recover. “You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic,” Jung
told Rowland. The second medical evaluation involved the repeated writing and
testimony of Dr. William D. Silkworth, who was chief psychiatrist at Towns
Hospital. Silkworth had treated Bill Wilson three times—along with thousands of
others--and then pronounced Bill and his fellow suffering alcoholics: “medically
incurable.” But Silkworth then told Bill that the “Great Physician” Jesus
Christ could cure Bill. The third medical encounter among early AAs included
the story of two top psychiatrists who met with two recovered drunks and
observed the miraculous result. But they stated clearly that, in their opinion,
had these men come to their hospital, they would have been pronounced 100%
incurable. Without Divine help, they said.
So, in my own experience, a number of doctors I’ve met have
said: “Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing that works.”
The second approach is that which doubters often label “the
spiritual.” But—holding their noses-they may actually concede that this
approach means salvation and walking by the Spirit of God. Those who applied
such techniques had great success before and at the time of A.A.’s founding.
There are ample records of the successes of the Salvation Army, the Young Men’s
Christian Association, the Christian Rescue Missions, and evangelists like
Dwight L. Moody, Ira Sankey, and F. B. Meyer. In fact, at a gathering of
eminent clergymen, doctors, and scientists where Bill Wilson himself was a
speaker, one of the speakers (a clergyman) made this statement:
This illusory “spiritual” part that some of the academics,
professionals, and even physicians and clergy have sometimes refused to honor
is that thousands have been healed by the power of God. (Perish the thought
that they would call the approach “religious”). They’ll skirt the results with
excuses that the proofs—the facts—the written evidence—the testimonies--are
“anecdotal” and not “science based.” And, while such erudite judgments may
satisfy colleagues at a conference, they just don’t stand the test, for
example, of the complete cure of the first three AAs. These three believed in
God, were or became Christians, had studied the Bible, had been pronounced
medically incurable but turned to God for help, and were completely cured. At
that time, there was no A.A. program. No Twelve Steps. No Twelve Traditions. No
Alcoholics Anonymous basic text. No
drunkalogs. And no meetings of the type known today in the many “self-help” groups
that number in the hundreds.
The final approach is that found in what some scientific
detractors like to call “mutual help groups,” or “self-help groups” or “12 Step
Groups” or “anonymous fellowships.” And despite the extraordinary successes of
the early AAs between 1935 and 1942, A.A. has been violently attacked in
verbiage by at least three diverse groups.
(1) The first anti-A.A. detractors are composed of a few prolific
posters who hold themselves out as Christian and attempt to link A.A. to Free Masonry,
LSD, spiritualism, and “automatic writing.” They condemn the Steps as Twelve
Steps to destruction and A.A. as an entity which “real” Christians must eschew.
The lack of validity in such criticisms has been the subject of many of our
writings to this very date.
(2) The second anti-A.A. groups are composed of a polyglot
mix consisting of humanists, atheists, unbelievers, the irreligious, academics,
and professionals who essentially label today’s A.A. as a peculiar kind of
ineffective religion founded by a continually sinning Bill Wilson who yielded
to greed, drugs, adultery, spiritualism, mental illness, and other human
shortcomings and maladies. The lack of validity in these criticisms is based
largely on the bias of the critics against church, religion, the Bible,
Christianity, and God. They are strong in advocating that A.A. just doesn’t
work—despite ample evidence that it does work for those who go to any lengths
to follow its path and actually place their recovery in God’s hands.
(3) The third are a growing number of AAs who have their own
special difficulties. For one thing, a large number of them are not “attracted”
to A.A. but rather “forced” to A.A. by treatment programs, professionals,
courts, probation personnel, and even interventionists. For another, most have
no significant knowledge about the successful, early A.A. Christian Fellowship,
and its totally new Christian technique that worked so well in Akron and
Cleveland and has been
dumped by many A.A. leaders, servants, and employees. For
another, they work with literature that was altered and is being altered in
increasing amounts and ways to portray A.A. as a program that works for
atheists, agnostics, “meeting makers,” those who believe in nothing at all, and
those who subscribe to various religions such as Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, and
pantheism.
The answer is that the A.A. program has such a diverse
population today that it includes all of the above and might be likened to a
floating, desperate, group of shipwrecked individuals who can’t agree on a
lifeboat let alone locate it. And this troubled group should not be likened to
the tens of thousands of fervent AAs who follow their program, trust in God,
and help others.
The International Christian Recovery Coalition Approach
In a general way, I present two sets of facts about myself
with great regularity: (1) I am a writer, historian, retired attorney, Bible
student, CDAAC, and an active recovered A.A. member with more than 25 years of
continuous sobriety. And I have published 43 titles and over 850 articles on
Alcoholics Anonymous History and the Christian Recovery Movement. (2) I am
Executive Director of an informal, growing, world-wide fellowship of Christian
leaders, workers, newcomers, and others who publicize and disseminate the role
that God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible have played in the origins,
history, founding, original A.A. Christian Fellowship, and its astonishing
successes. And can play today.
After two and a half years since its founding in Orange
County, California, the International Christian Recovery Coalition has been
joined by hundreds of participants in every state of the United States and in
many countries outside of the United States. It has held a number of nationwide
conferences and summits. It has mounted a website, a blog, a forum, a Facebook,
and a Twitter presence and regularly publishes ongoing research and news about
Christian recovery. It has established a number of Christian Recovery Resource
Centers, enlisted a number of participants in its Speakers Bureau, maintained a
main office in partnership with the County of Maui Salvation Army, and a
Southern California office in Huntington Beach, California. It has established
a ChristianRecoveryRadio.com site with films, audios, and radio programs.
And, in a serious, but jocular way, the Coalition folks have
often called themselves Recovery friendly, History friendly, Bible friendly, 12
Step and A.A. friendly, Newcomer friendly, and Friendly friendly. They have a
desire now to encourage collaboration among 12 Step groups and fellowships,
treatment programs, counseling programs, hospital and detox programs, sober
living programs, clergy, churches, recovery leaders and pastors, sober clubs,
chaplains, social agencies, prison and institution outreach groups, and
individual leaders and workers who subscribe to our mission statement.
The Three Approaches—“Medical,” “Religious,” and “12-Step”--Can Combine
Together Cooperating and Affirming Their Reliance on God for Recovery and Living
a New Life
Most in the recovery field have lost site of the breadth and
faith involved in the old school Akron A.A. Christian Fellowship program. This
really was a three-fold approach bringing together:
(1) Hospitalization, medical attention, and detox as musts.
As Bill Wilson put it, the doctors are the experts, “we are their assistants.”
(2) Heavy insistence on helping the suffering alcoholic to
recover. This involved a host of important ideas—7 summarized as the Original
Program and the 16 practices that typified the daily recovery efforts of the old
school AAs. A newcomer was required to profess belief in God and accept Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior. He was required to renounce liquor permanently. He
was required to bend every effort to obey God’s will. He was required to grow
spiritually through prayer, Bible study, Quiet Time, and reading religious
literature. He was urged to keep religious and social comradeship with other
members. And he was urged to attend a religious service once a week. But, at
every turn, he was urged to “work with others;” to carry the recovery message
to those alcoholics who still suffered; and to provide an exemplary life of
principles and practices that conformed to those laid out in the Bible. Helping
others, then, was a must.
(3) So was reliance on God. And, despite whatever changes,
amendments, deletions, and shifts have occurred in A.A. meetings, groups,
conferences, speaker presentations, and literature, reliance on God is today as
much a part of the basic text and pronounced program of Alcoholics Anonymous as
it was in the days of the Christian Fellowship in Akron. To be sure, the door
has been opened to those who invent higher powers, pseudo spirituality,
nonsense gods; eliminate prayers to our Heavenly Father; and denounce mention
of the Bible. But the International Christian Recovery Coalition is peopled
today with strong world-wide support for a program that rests on the power of
God, practice of the principles in the Bible, and help for others to get
straightened out by turning to God for help if they want that help and will go
to any lengths to get it.
Gloria Deo
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