[Futurework] The sociology and religion of addiction recovery

[Karen Watters Cole]

Found this in the OpEd pages of the Washington Post.  Challenges a few myths. - KWC Quote: “In his comprehensive book "Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous," Ernest Kurtz notes that two conflicting impulses have been internalized in Western cultures -- Enlightenment secularism and its reaction, Romanticism, which places a premium on feelings at the expense of reason and science. "Thus," Kurtz writes, "in yet another paradox, moderns readily accept 'feeling' even as they resolutely reject belief." Recovery. It Can Be So Addicting By Mark Gauvreau Judge, OpEd, Sunday, November 23, 2003 Now that he's out of rehab and back on the job, there's no shortage of people offering Rush Limbaugh advice on his new life as a recovering drug addict. But I think I can offer the pugnacious radio talk show host some advice he's probably not getting. Listen, Rush. Whatever people tell you, recovery is not endless -- and it should not remain the center of your life. In 12-step circles, this is heresy. Once you get bounced into what alcoholics call "the rooms" of Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups -- those church basements where the recovering meet -- it's hammered into you that recovery must be the center of your life, every day, for the rest of your life. This is a self-defeating proposition. Admitting powerlessness and asking for help are signs of honesty and maturity. But making a fetish out of a long-ago disorder and engaging in groupthink are not. As someone once addicted to alcohol, I've logged many hours in the rooms. I've heard lots of self-aggrandizing stories of debauchery, which are common in the recovery culture. In most of these stories, individuals battle addiction to arrive at the truth that the world doesn't revolve around them -- yet often they still manage to make themselves the center of the universe. They spend years of their lives in a stupor of addiction; then, once sober, they spend years of their lives talking about it. A 12-step meeting is like a perverse Mass; there's a format, a ritualistic structure in which certain phrases are constantly repeated and a deity invoked -- except that in the 12-step group, the drug becomes the god. It's the focal point. Members offer personal testimonials about the power of the drug god, tell stories about their encounters with the drug god, joke about the drug god, and then recite collective prayers to appease the drug god. I can certainly understand how this kind of thing is helpful to those who have recently given up a drug and are dealing with withdrawal from an addiction. I don't think there is any better way to stop drinking than by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. As Limbaugh said, you can't overcome addiction on your own. But the very founders of A.A. themselves frequently emphasized that the point was to get alcoholics back into circulation with the rest of humanity -- and to lead them to a spiritual awakening not centered around the self as a godhead. I can't help thinking that Bill Wilson, the co-founder of A.A., would be disturbed if he saw how the concept of recovery that he pioneered has evolved. A New York stockbroker, Wilson formed A.A. in 1935 after having a religious experience in a hospital while trying to dry out. The movement he started was based on a pastiche of influences that included Jungian psychology; Christian tenets borrowed from the Oxford Group, an early 20th-century evangelical group; and the then-progressive medical theory that alcoholism is a disease. The foundation of A.A. was, and is, the "Twelve Step" program, which encourages followers to admit they are alcoholics, list their faults and share them with another person, pray and meditate, come to a spiritual awakening and "carry the message" to other alcoholics. Wilson saw recovery as a starting block. As he put it: "Sobriety is just the beginning." After he got sober, Wilson, who had formulated his Twelve Steps largely on the model of the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola, explored Catholicism and even experimented with LSD -- at the time thought to be a harmless drug. The man never stopped living. I believe he would understand why I left the recovery culture after I returned to the Catholic Church a few years ago. He would have recognized that A.A.'s Christian roots have been supplanted by the therapeutic Oprah culture and dour talk of life as a long, tough slog. This was brought home to me powerfully at one of the last meetings I went to. It was a beautiful day, I had just published a book, and I was feeling fine. I shared with the group how great things were going and joked that I was ready to win my Pulitzer Prize. The words were barely out of my mouth when a hand shot up behind me. "We are not here to win prizes," the man hissed. "We are here to get sober one day at a time." I felt humiliated, and at the next meeting I dutifully stuck to the topic -- the drinking that isn't part of my life anymore. Actually, it is possible to avoid talk of addiction in a meeting -- as long as the substitute is a laundry list of petty complaints. Some people have serious issues that they must uncork because their sobriety is threatened; seeing those people decompress, you can understand the magic of recovery, how it smooths the bumps of life. Yet others use meetings as therapy, and their narcissism can be oppressive. Many A.A. members can see absolutely no good in their old lives. In their zeal to repudiate those days, they tell a lie -- that absolutely no part of life when you're drinking has any value. I grew up among Irish Catholics who enjoy drinking -- folks who may find it difficult to walk past a bar but also have no trouble leaving one. A lot of them have more enthusiasm for life and the wonder of God's creation than many non-imbibing religious people I have known. They are also very funny. In the 1980s, before I stopped drinking, a trip to my favorite Washington pub (in a 200-year-old Georgetown townhouse with a giant rhinoceros head over the bar) meant camaraderie, laughs, conversation spanning every conceivable topic, great music and the possibility of love. In their own way, these are all expressions of the joy of existence. Of course, without temperance all of this can turn ugly, as I discovered. The lies, waste and destruction that are part of the alcoholic life are sins to be regretted. I escaped that hell, thanks largely to A.A. After a few years, however, I got tired of telling my story. It seemed -- it was -- years ago, something I had put behind me. I stopped craving alcohol. I could meet friends in bars and it didn't bother me. Part of the reason for my success was that I had taken to heart Wilson's lessons: I had found a higher power. It turned out to be the Catholic Church, which did not go over too well in A.A. Recovery culture is against organized religion -- and, in my experience, virulently anti-Catholic. Every meeting had what I call "the Catholic moment." Someone would reveal that they were raised a Catholic but never knew God until they got into A.A. Not that they have anything against Catholics, mind you, it's just that, there are all those rules, or the nuns who hit them with rulers or, well, as one older gentleman bluntly put it in one meeting, "Organized religion sucks." This is indicative of the narrow, often tyrannical nature of recovery culture -- you must submit to the idea that your addiction is the chi that centers and propels your life, and that forgetting that in a second of joy or even pain is a dangerous form of denial. God becomes not, as Pope John Paul II said of Christ, "a shattering mystery" that we approach with awe and great caution, but the portable ghost therapist you talk to to stay sober when "earth people" -- the term for the non-12-steppers -- muck up your sober mojo. Like so many other things, recovery has been defanged by the egocentrism and moral pliancy of modernism. In his comprehensive book "Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous," Ernest Kurtz notes that two conflicting impulses have been internalized in Western cultures -- Enlightenment secularism and its reaction, Romanticism, which places a premium on feelings at the expense of reason and science. "Thus," Kurtz writes, "in yet another paradox, moderns readily accept 'feeling' even as they resolutely reject belief." Bill Wilson wrote that the point of recovery is to get back on the "broad highway of life" with our fellow men. Addiction is without a doubt a diabolical cul-de-sac. But recovery has become a benign one. Mark Judge, a freelance writer who lives in Potomac, is the author of "Damn Senators" and "Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk."  Url for this article is http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5270-2003Nov21.html