PeaceBang

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1. This isn’t exactly to the point, but if 12-step language does not work for you, I’d *highly* recommend Lance Dodes’s “The Heart of Addiction.” It is a brilliant book by a psychiatrist that offers an alternate model of addiction–and, by extension, dealing with addicts–and is very critical of AA (while acknowledging that it works for some). [Thanks, Robin. I am definitely collecting resources, and this looks like a good one. - PB]

   Comment by Miss Conduct — November 15, 2007 #

2. Hi, I’m Spring, and I’m an Al-Anon.

   While the steps themselves (written back in the 30s) use the word ‘God’, the program itself uses Higher Power, and the “Big Book” Alcoholics Anonymous does point out that any power greater than yourself will do. Use group psychology if you like. Use The Force. Use the sum of knowledge and conscience.

   I see 12-Step spirituality as a lot more UU and Humanist than Christian, but some of that could have to do with my home group, its particular culture, and the resources that we study. Some of the tenets seem to come over Buddhist to me, especially the business of detachment and surrender.

   My big problem is that I need to give up trying to control other people and situations, to make the most of my life and focus on how I can be a better human being. The steps and the slogans are very helpful for this. I arrived at Step Five about a month or so ago, although I’ve only just gotten a sponsor and am discovering many things I missed. I’m on pause with the Steps while we synch up and learn some stuff. Her study methods differ from mine but dovetail nicely, so there’s discovery everywhere!

   It does seem essential that a person have some kind of guide while doing the Steps, be it a sponsor or a workbook or some other aid, as there’s a world of nuance that’s too easy to miss otherwise. For instance, the Fourth Step is a wildly different thing to an Al-Anon or CoDA than it is to an AA. Assets become a whole lot more important. The brevity of the Steps doesn’t really do them justice. They’re more like notes on what was done before, so a deeper study of what they’ve meant to others and how they’ve been applied is helpful.

   As a non-Christian UU, I do find working the Al-Anon program to be something that I can do, something that I can use within the context of my own beliefs, to recover from the adaptations I developed to survive growing up with alcoholics. It’s useful.

   Comment by spring — November 15, 2007 #

3. Have you ever listened to *Thirteenth Step* by A Perfect Circle… Yeah, it figures that young guy like myself would bring rock music to a discussion concerning addiction. However, it does provide a completely different take on the twelve step program. Each song seems to be emotionally tuned to the twelve steps in order. My favorite of the twelve is “Gravity.” The Lyrics are as follows:

   Lost again
   Broken and weary
   Unable to find my way
   Tail in hand
   Dizzy and clearly unable to
   Just let this go

   I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
   Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
   I choose to live

   I fell again
   Like a baby unable to stand on my own
   Tail in hand
   Dizzy and clearly unable to just let this go
   High and surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
   Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
   I choose to live, I choose to live, I choose to live

   Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
   Help me survive the bottom

   Calm these hands before they
   Snare another pill and
   Drive another nail down another
   Needy hole please release me

   I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
   Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
   I choose to live, I choose to live.

   Comment by John 672 — November 15, 2007 #

4. Dear PB -

   The 12 step program (Overeaters Anonymous) is my sanity, my first connection to God. I didn’t have much connection to God before I came into the program - I found God because of the program. AND some people never make this shift and still recover. OA is the reason I’m not 400 pounds and numbed out on food. It is a spiritual discipline that is not OPTIONAL, which is my big complaint against so much that is dabbled at within Unitarian Universalism. “Bored? Frustrated? Threatened because something has hit too close to home? Don’t like this or that scriptural passage? Kids’ soccer games interfere with the meeting? On to the next. Or nothin’. Guess I’m just not spiritual.” Etc.

   People in “the rooms” are there to get well, and we have to “keep coming back” if we’re going to live in a way that is not ruled by the Inner Weirdness. We have desperation on our side, and desperation tends to make us willing to try things we normally consider quite nutso. Which is as good a spiritual gateway as any.

   The main thing in the program is that you find something that is greater than yourself, something that you respect and are willing to follow, to take instruction from. Even - and here’s the kicker - if you don’t like it, or don’t instantly agree with it. I know this is a huge thing for most UUs, and I can understand that it would stop most of us in our tracks. (My own personal stumbling block was more the slogans, the clicheed language. I was a writer, I was an artist, I was a poet - don’t throw “meeting makers make it” or “one day at a time” at me - puhleez. And I was going to be an obese, diabetic poet if I didn’t sheddep and listen. After I started trying to live this way, by the way, they became intensely meaningful.)

   You don’t have to say there is a God - but you do have to admit that YOU are not God. That you do not have control over the people and circumstances in your own life. You have to be able to say that when it comes to managing your addiction, your own way doesn’t work (as smart, attractive and special as you are) and you can’t do this on your own.

   Both Christianity and Buddhism have much to say on loosening the ego’s grip, the need to control. And the ego has a grip because we think if we’re smart and in charge enough, we won’t have to suffer in any way. AA talks about turning over your will and your life - loosening the ego’s grip - because in the case of addicts, the ego’s grip is gonna kill you. It’s hard at first to accept that you can’t just take this as a nice piece of advice that one day you’ll get around to, or that you can do piecemeal. AA demands that you take it on immediately and radically.

   The strictest of atheists have called the group their higher power, or AA as a whole. AA is older than you, and has a lot of collected wisdom that is greater than your dinky little individual wisdom, which has gotten you in this big ol’ mess to begin with. The “chapter to the agnostic” in the AA big book, as well as the descriptions for steps 1, 2, 3 and 11 in the smaller “12 Steps and Traditions” books for AA and OA - and I’m sure others.

   Hope this helps some.

   Comment by Rev. Gidget — November 15, 2007 #

5. Somewhere in my school files I’ve got either an article or a book excerpt that looks critically at the emphasis the 12 step programs place on admitting powerlessness and giving oneself over to a higher power. The author argued that the approach was aimed at white middle or upper class men who were accustomed to having and wielding social, economic and personal power. Then the author proposed an amended program for the context in which they worked - which was largely poor women of colour. In the amended program there was an emphasis on empowerment, rather than handing over power. I’ll admit - I don’t remember what the religious language was like.

   Let me know if you want me to dig around in the file boxes to find the source. [Sure, Michelle, that would be great. While I think I’d like to read it for context, it’s not something I would give to an active alcoholic at the beginning of his or her recovery. Great information to have, though, as I appreciate that kind of analysis. - PB]

   Comment by michelle — November 16, 2007 #

6. PeaceBang,

   For what it’s worth, Al-Anon helped me learn to recognize God’s voice. And it helped me back to church using the wisdom, “Take what you like and leave the rest.” Yes, the language is outdated and written for men - but so is most of Christianity and we work with it. For now anyway!

   I think the take what you like thing helped me the most because I could use what worked and let go of what didn’t at first. And I should add that a lot of what I didn’t like at first, sounded better and made much more sense after looking again.

   Oh yes, and what everyone else said above.

   Good luck
   Brenda

   Comment by Brenda — November 16, 2007 #

7. That 12-step theology sounds Arminian, not Calvinst, to me: You may not have power over sin, but you have power to choose salvation through a God who will not withhold His grace. [If you think that argument/information can help make AA more accessible to UUs, knock yourself out, baby! — PB]

   Comment by fausto — November 17, 2007 #

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