Not-God (34 page)

The historical problem for Alcoholics Anonymous has been not so much the professionalization of its own endeavors, but how to harmonize these endeavors with those of the professions. Over the years, A.A.’s intuitive wariness of professional claims tended to burgeon under the impact of the ever increasing number of adherents who approached the fellowship from a new style of “bottom.” Having exhausted their financial and emotional resources in pursuit of a cure for their alcoholism from psychiatry and organized religion, these came to Alcoholics Anonymous in the desperation of “proven” hopelessness only to find relatively easy and comparatively cheap sobriety. Often, they then tended to denigrate all those who had “failed” them in the past. Because such resentful criticism posed both a political threat to the fellowship and a psychological danger to its program, Bill Wilson felt obliged to meet it head-on. In countless letters and in a 1957-series of articles in the
A.A. Grapevine
, Wilson developed the theme, “Let’s Be Friendly With Our Friends.” He took pains to call attention to both the past contributions and the present usefulness to Alcoholics Anonymous of psychiatry, medicine, religion, and “workers on the alcoholism front.”
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Overt attention to the root problem remained scant, however, until Alcoholics Anonymous achieved some security in its sense of maturity. The revival of the concern, in the mid-1960s, revealed that the problem not only had continued but indeed had increased in both breadth and depth. Further, it remained extremely sensitive for A.A. members, for when the theme was again picked up, it was by two close friends of the fellowship who were not themselves members. Their comments were benign, and, with their official aura, were intended to quell controversy over “professional relations” and “problems of cooperation.” Yet from deep within the intuitively religious heart of Alcoholics Anonymous came a formally unofficial cry of profound lamentation that made several points vividly revealing of both the core anti-professionalism of Alcoholics Anonymous and the specifically Pietist root of that trait.
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A recovering alcoholic halfway-house counselor bemoaned “The Death of a Philosophy.” He noted that while “the symptoms of alcoholism … anxiety, hostility, depression, loneliness, fear … can be counter-acted with love, care, trust, and empathy,” they could also be alleviated by “chemical agents.” The problem was that “absolutely nothing in a doctor’s training” prepared him to deal with ‘“Soul Sickness.”’ Going on to attack the whole concept of “scientific credentials” as “unrealistic and stupid,” the pained para-professional struck an ancient theme. “Using government criteria — Jesus Christ, Peter and Paul would all be unemployed today (especially Jesus, inasmuch as there is some question as to his literacy.)” Psychology could offer only “tools and methods … a poor substitute for the A.A. philosophy.” The writer’s concluding point witnessed clearly to the deep source of his concern:

The root concern was clear. If professionals denied the competence of A.A. members for “12 Step work,” or — worse — if such work were abdicated by Alcoholics Anonymous to professionals, what happened to the program? What happened to the fellowship itself, to which “carrying the message” was so essential? What to do when ordinary people prefer the “cheap grace” offered by experts has been a constant and characteristic problem for expressions of Evangelically Pietist religion.
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Another constant trait of both the Evangelical tradition in America and all Pietism has been anti-intellectualism. Undergirding much of A.A.’s anti-professionalism lay an implicit, albeit not universally held, truism. The Alcoholics Anonymous restatement of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers (and
only
believers) ran, “Only an alcoholic can understand/help another alcoholic.”
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+

At the very heart of all the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous lay
experience
. To be shared, something first had to be possessed. “You can keep it only by giving it away,” but “You have to have it before you can give it.” What was being talked about was “new life” — the heart of the “born again” or “twice-born” understanding inherent in all Evangelical religion.
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“Getting the program” in Alcoholics Anonymous paralleled the Evangelical sense of “getting religion.” Experience, in this understanding, was in essence ineffable. Such experience could be only witnessed to, not put into words. Reasoning, on the contrary, was necessarily verbal — the logical progress of argument. A.A.’s own experience consistently testified that “rationalization” — defined as “this odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one” — was “our ancient enemy.” It led only to drinking again.
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For these and other reasons, there inhered in Alcoholics Anonymous a deep anti-intellectualism. A.A. experience taught that if sufferers from alcoholism not cured by “experts” were to have any chance at “getting the program,” the fellowship had to proclaim the simple truth learned from its experience: sobriety came through witness, not by reasoning. If the historically mediated Evangelical and Pietist intuitions concerning human limitation, the style of certitude, the loveliness-to-God of the lowly, the necessity of surrender, and the abdication of “control” were to be experienced more than understood, then this message proved pragmatically useful. It has never been the style of any expression of this ancient vision to be shy about what followed from its insight that “salvation” required
surrender
.
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+

The words
surrender, conversion, salvation; word
and
witness; anti-professionalism
and
anti-intellectualism
point out one contribution of Alcoholics Anonymous to modern America and the twentieth century. A.A. preserved and re-introduced concepts that had become lost or perverted through the accretions of history. Sad and at times tragic associations of some of these terms had led the terms and therefore also their concepts to be ignored, abandoned, or perhaps worst of all, twisted beyond recognition. But the loss of these concepts that for centuries had enabled men better to understand and make sense of their experience was itself a sad and tragic deprivation. By its mere rescuing of these concepts, Alcoholics Anonymous rendered a significant contribution to modernity itself.

Both the style of this rescue and the pragmatic use to which the retrieved concepts were put also merit attention as considerable contributions. Largely because the primary and only direct concern of Alcoholics Anonymous was with the suffering alcoholic, A.A. as a phenomenon of a psychological age reached for psychological terms and understandings in its effort to communicate clearly. Psychological terminology is notoriously slippery, not least because the very popularity of the psychological approach leads to careless use — and so to abuse — of its categories. The mistaking of labeling for diagnosis is a special pitfall of any popular science. It threatens more and damages most when popular understanding too casually appropriates, then extends precise, technical terminology.
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In its role as bridge-builder between ancient religious insight and modern psychological understanding, Alcoholics Anonymous avoided this snare by its insistent reliance on the simplest possible language as the most effective way of grasping its essentially simple program. The fellowship’s literature, most notably the “Big Book” and
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
, accepted and used ordinary words in their common meaning. Over the years some have felt it psychologically unfashionable to speak in terms of “instincts” and “moods” rather than of “drives” and “complexes;” yet by this freezing of vocabulary — no matter how time-bound or imprecise later critics may find it — all members of Alcoholics Anonymous were enabled to communicate with each other across lines of time, social class, and educational background.
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Denial
, after all, had been earmarked by Alcoholics Anonymous to be the characteristic symptom and deep core of alcoholism. The clever use of language in service to denial has throughout history subverted true communication and so fostered alienation and the separations of mistrust. The true communication of experience by “the language of the heart” was essential to Alcoholics Anonymous. By “keeping it simple” in an area all too often marked by terminological obfuscation, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous offered assistance in confronting denials to its adherents — and even, to modern culture, an invitation to examine its own not dissimilar problem.
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Most members of Alcoholics Anonymous remained unconscious of any larger significance in their style of keeping it simple. They were even less aware of the possible grander utility to a culture struggling with limitations of such maxims as “One Day at a Time” or “First Things First” — ancient concepts rescued and restored to experience by the A.A. program. This was appropriate, for an essential component of sobriety as the wholeness of accepted limitation was careful vigilance against any tendency to think in terms of “larger” or “grander.” Yet the utility was there — implicitly inherent in their program even if explicitly ignored in their practice. The rescued insights, precisely because they were ancient, afforded a perspective on modern society. They furnished a set of tools apt for offering constructive criticism of modernity’s very understanding of
modern
.
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The problem of critical perspective is itself an ancient one. Here, narrowly, the problem of any criticism and a problem of all religion fuse. How are criticism and religion to relate to their culture? On the one hand, in order to be heard and still more to be heeded, any expression of criticism or religion must give evidence of its participation in its culture. It must bear witness that it is truly
in
its time. On the other hand, in order to fulfill the critical responsibility of offering perspective on, and the religious function of passing judgment upon, any criticism or religion must also in some way stand apart from its culture — or at least seem to do so. It must be seen as not totally
of
its time.

In restoring concepts such as “surrender,” “conversion,” “salvation,” and “limitation” without insistence on these terms, Alcoholics Anonymous achieved the critical stance necessary to any expression of religion. A.A. stood both immersed within and anchored outside of its immediate cultural context. The critique it was thus enabled to give is the topic of the
next chapter
, but its understanding may be facilitated by careful consideration of the two most obvious term-concept anomalies in the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first — “spiritual rather than religious” — has been the topic of this chapter; the second is contained in the very name of the fellowship — “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

For its own members at least, Alcoholics Anonymous rendered acceptable and even embraceable two terms that modernity had laden with pejorative meaning as well as implication — “spiritual” and “alcoholic.” Yet at the same time, by counterpoising the term “spiritual” to “religious” and by insisting upon and promising anonymity as a necessary condition qualifying “alcoholic,” A.A. itself accepted and embraced key assumptions of the modernity which it even thus transcended.

It is significant and noteworthy that even within Alcoholics Anonymous, given its origins and the nature of its insights, the modern prejudice against “religion” remains. At times, indeed, this bias against religion seems more intense than it does in more fashionably “modern” settings. But the related concept and its simple term “spiritual” have been rescued, inviting at least thoughtful listeners to engage in that careful distinguishing that is the hallmark of intelligence. By opposing “spiritual” to “religious,” Alcoholics Anonymous achieved a contemporary
coup:
in accepting the modern derogatory connotation of the word “religious,” A.A. clothed the word “spiritual” with acceptability. To render the spiritual acceptable in modern times is no small achievement.

The more subtle associations as well as the direct meanings of the word
alcoholic
posed a similar problem — and one of which early A.A.s were explicitly conscious, as the shifting of terms in succeeding editions of the book
Alcoholics Anonymous
testifies. Only slowly did A.A. members achieve any degree of comfort in calling themselves “alcoholic.” In time, the term even took on a positive connotation for some of them, especially as distinguished from
drunk
or
problem drinker
. Yet culturally the stigma remained. For many in the larger society, the implications of the label
alcoholic
did shift; but it was at best dubious whether those changes were for the better, at least from the point of view of that society’s self-defined alcoholics.
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Under the impact of A.A. publicity and National Council For Education on Alcoholism propaganda in the mid-1940s, many Americans found it increasingly difficult to retain the classic stereotype of the alcoholic as skid-row bum, unkempt eyesore, and unemployable social tragedy. The stereotype shifted, especially as applied to those who proclaimed their alcoholism publicly. The new image, not completely undeserved, was of the alcoholic as non-drinking zealous bore, determined to detail over and over again, to those unable to escape, the story of his salvation from “booze.” In the 1950s, after A.A.’s understanding of anonymity had expanded sufficiently to inhibit such displays, at least among its own members, the stereotype shifted again. And again, the change was hardly favorable to the alcoholic, as popularization of a vast body of less than careful research into “the alcoholic personality” issued in the understanding that the term
alcoholic
labeled its now even more pathetically pitiable subject as an “immaturely dependent deficient personality.”
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