Answer Addiction

Category: Aa

  • 5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    When I’m on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. But I’m not always on top of my game.

    What Does Recovery Feel Like to Me Right Now?

    Good question.

    It feels like making less mess, less often and…
    It feels like cleaning up the messes I still manage to make.

    When I’m really on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily throughout my day, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. Then at night, under the covers, I make sure to scribble in my journal for those few minutes before Mr. Sandman knocks me out cold. Surprisingly, I learn a lot about myself in those last illegible minutes of consciousness. I see the patterns within the actions, where someone (sometimes me) gets hurt.

    But I’m not always on top of my game.

    Here are five messes for the first five months of 2019 and how I’ve managed to mop them all up.

    1. My Kid’s Library Fines

    In January I tore open another notice from the collection agency looking for me to make good on my son’s library fines. It was at least the sixth notice, and it had been years since I’d declared the book lost. ‘Til that point, though, I’d refused to send payment, both for the late fees accrued while I waited for it to turn up under the bed or at school, and for its replacement charge (because it never did).

    I was waiting for amnesty. I’d heard the library does this from time to time, waive all late fees. I didn’t feel I should have to pay $41.10 on a fantasy book about cats. My kid’s read all of them: the series on cats, dogs, wolves, and bears—for free, but I couldn’t cough up $41.10 for accrued fines? That’s insanity!

    Finally I saw it. I could screw up my kid’s credit before he gets the chance to do it himself. Everyone should have the right to ruin their own credit. No one should be robbed of that privilege by say, a spendthrift spouse, or a stingy, stubborn parent.

    So last week I finally fed three twenties, one single and one dime into the fine box at the local library. It felt great: a clear account and a clear conscience. The cost of coughing up proved well worth the relief it bought. Lesson learned: going forward, I’ll suck it up, pay promptly, and stop getting those “important notices” in my mailbox which have a way of souring my serenity.

    2. My Speeding Ticket

    Contrary to what the bumper sticker reads, I want to believe my choices behind the wheel don’t really matter.

    Not long after the library’s collection agency stopped courting me, I tore open another “important notice,” this time a $50 citation for speeding in a school zone.

    My first response was to defend myself: Oh brother, I wasn’t speeding! According to the fine print, I was going “41 mph in a 30 mph zone.” My second response was to rationalize: Come on, I was only going 11 miles over the legal limit. And my third response, finally, was acceptance. Yes, I was unlawfully speeding.

    I don’t write out many checks anymore, which might be why I get all pouty when I have to actually do it. It’s so damn involved: the writing, folding, sealing and licking (do I have a stamp?) and then the envelope knocks around my backpack for a week before I remember to mail it. But the mailing of that check made payable to the NYC Department of Finance felt good — the act of popping it into the blue box on the corner, both a physical acknowledgement of my error and a conscious effort to rectify it. It was another Step 10 moment, making amends to my fellow drivers and pedestrians of central Brooklyn. And hey, I found myself feeling a fourth response rising, gratitude: Hey, it was a school zone after all. I could have hit a kid crossing Ocean Parkway on the way home.

    3. My Unhappy Downstairs Neighbor

    Who does jumping jacks at 10:30 at night? I do, and it’s a problem because I have a neighbor below me who doesn’t sleep well. Sometimes my teen doesn’t get around to practicing piano until 10:30 pm either, and if it’s Haydn, I’ll break out into pretty awful pirouettes on the living room rug. Born about when Stalin first came to power, my neighbor always smiles kindly at my kids on the elevator. This babushka’s done nothing to deserve my thoughtlessness. It’s taken her banging the broom handle against her ceiling — more than once — to make me realize her reality and stop. This last time she knocked on my door in her housecoat.

    It shouldn’t have come to that. I apologized, again, but this time it felt different. I felt her frustration with me, and her chronic fatigue, bordering on despair. I prayed for the willingness to find a solution, and got one. My teen now practices by 9:30 pm, or not at all (mostly not at all). And instead of performing leaps and bounds to my reflection in the living room mirror, I’m using a folding chair from a funeral parlor as a ballet barre to do late-night low-impact leg lifts and silent swan arms. And I’m saving all jumping jacks for the laundry room.

    4. My Coffee Table Catastrophe

    Clumsiness isn’t a defect per se, but the carelessness that leads to avoidable accidents is. If you’re a good housekeeper, and sober, you don’t usually break shit. But when you’re willful, preoccupied, or impatient —whether drunk or dry — the odds are less in your favor. I was feeling all three when, to earn a few extra bucks, I was cleaning my neighbor’s home recently.

    It was an Ethan Allen bicentennial-era colonial table from the ‘70s, with a smoky glass insert. I could have just wiped down the glass. Or I could have taken a few moments to study the situation, then gingerly lift the glass to clean the crumbs along the maple-esque ledge upon which it rested. I did neither. In my haste to move onto activities more worthy of my talents coupled with my resolve to get at that damned dirt at all costs, I reached down underneath the glass and pushed it up with force. In slo-mo horror, I watched the six-foot tinted glass oval slip from my fingers, tilt up, then fall smack through the frame and shatter against the parquet floor.

    Oh f*&$%!

    Thankfully, after a little conscious breathing and a lot more profanity, I had the presence of mind to pray. I credit the serenity prayer for helping me come up with a sober 10th step strategy: apologize, clean it up, save a shard, identify a glass factory in the tri-state area that makes custom inserts for vintage coffee tables, place the order, pick it up and deliver the replacement glass to its rightful spot, nestled in that oval frame set between two plaid sofas in Mr. Donald’s living room. Good as new!

    The problem was, I didn’t want to do any of this. I wanted to cry and run home instead. I wanted to bail on this good neighbor, who’d been a true friend to me, my sons, even my ex, all these years, pre- and post-divorce. This neighbor who brought me fresh mint from the farmer’s market and cannolis from Bay Ridge, who got my latchkey kids off the doorstep and into their home when they’d forgotten their keys. I wanted to leave this true friend with a true mess. Fortunately, though, I didn’t. I sucked it up and swept it up, and followed through on all the rest. Today I’m even more grateful for the friendship of my forgiving neighbor. And I’m not ever allowed to touch his new coffee table.

    5. My $700 Face Cream

    And here’s a real dollop of sloppy spending. One recent morning I was trudging that road to happy destiny and stumbled. I fell, hard. Nose to pavement, that mindful breath knocked clean out of me, knees bleeding through the exposed portions of my distressed denim, I saw the cause: it was those stubborn roots of that ancient tree — my character defects. They’d buckled the pavement and tripped me up again.

    I’d just performed the single most obscene act of overspending in my not-short lifetime: I dropped down the Visa for a $765 face cream. My sober spending habits — and my sanity — snagged by those sinewy tendrils: vanity and fear. In that shockingly short-sighted moment when I confirmed the purchase, I sought false comfort in cosmetics instead of in the care of my creator.

    Pre-sobriety, I tried to self-soothe with a bubbly Bellini or a pitcher of sangria. Towards the end, it was bargain barrel red and Four Roses blended whiskey. Typical addict’s descent: desperately seeking substance for relief from self. So it was humbling now, five years into recovery, to admit to this irresponsible oopsie with the ol’ plastic. And no surprise, the high from spending on skincare lasted only as long as it took that confirmation email to hit my inbox. Almost instantaneously, I added panic and guilt to my shopping cart.

    That nagging itch of fear around aging, illness, and dying with a Siamese instead of a soulmate was now the sharp pain of fear and remorse that I might not make next month’s rent, and my kids’ summer holiday could be spent at the rundown neighborhood triplex — rumored to have bedbugs — instead of lobbing lemony tennis balls all day long at camp.

    I was stunned and embarrassed by my reckless misuse of purchasing power — certainly too embarrassed to admit to my sponsor that, in my quest for an eternally youthful jawline, I was galloping straight into the jaws of debt instead.

    Luckily I had just enough recovery to rein it in, and turn towards Step 2. I asked HP for guidance and got it:

    The solution was obvious:

    Return it.

    And still more lucky, dermstore.com, with more than 10K visitors monthly, takes all returns, no questions asked. What’s even better is that when those unsaleable items in my character — fear and vanity — trip me up, I can pick myself up today, blot my bloody shins, and choose a different path. In my drinking days, I was down for the count on all my defects….

    So, thanks, Second Step, you stopped the runaway horse of spree spending, and you too, Step 10, because I was able to reverse the financial harm done to self. My face, while not slathered in luxe cream tonight, feels radiant and clean, because I can face the Visa bill in the morning.

    My Sober Strategy for the Second Half of 2019: Steps 6 and 7

    But the habit of relying on Steps 2 and 10 to bail me out of scrapes is wearing on me. It feels un-sober. I’m starting to think that lasting emotional sobriety depends on my willingness to keep plugging away at 6 and 7, to really yank at those defective roots of self-centered fear and vanity.

    Soon after that life-affirming afternoon five and a half years ago, reading my 5th step aloud in a garden gazebo as mosquitoes ate me alive, my sponsor suggested I follow up by reading Drop the Rock: Steps 6 and 7: Removing Character Defects. Four years after that, I finally Primed the paperback to my doorstep and began reading. One story is resonating right now. A gal beset by sloth, who struggled with clutter for years, finally struck on a solution that pretty much sums up my strategy today:

    “I now know that if I don’t want to live in a mess,” she realized, “I need to pray to God for the willingness, courage and motivation to clean up my own mess.”

    Isn’t that what I tell my own teen 20 times a day anyway?

    I may never completely stop this habit of compulsively punching 16 digits into devices for ill-conceived purchases (did I mention I want to lease an Audi Q5?) but this week my impulse purchase was three Wham-O Frisbees. Progress.

    Half-measures avail me nothing. I gotta push myself to make those 10th step amends, to others and to myself, as promptly as possible, but better late than never! And I can use the steps (and the slogans, and my sponsor, and my sober sisters) to help me break each amends down into baby steps, steps that will take me further from, rather than closer to, that first drink. This feels like recovery, and a better set up for long-term sobriety and my happy life.

    Final Takeaway: Do the right thing, even when I don’t want to, even when it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Or, even when it is actually sort of a big deal; in fact, it feels so big, it’s kinda overwhelming:

    Still do the right thing.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How AA Hijacked Addiction Science and Came to Dominate Treatment: An Interview with Joe Miller

    How AA Hijacked Addiction Science and Came to Dominate Treatment: An Interview with Joe Miller

    The scientists at Yale liked what AA did, but they did not by any stretch think that AA was a cure-all for alcoholism. Neither, by the way, did Bill Wilson.

    Back when he was struggling to control his drinking, Joe Miller failed on a nightly basis. He would get stumbling drunk every evening, and suffer through every day. His treatment providers all delivered the same message:

    “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

    That was hardly surprising advice — AA has long dominated alcoholism treatment in the United States. But Miller, an English professor at Columbus State University in Georgia, eventually learned that numerous other options were available to him at the time, such as Naltrexone, SMART Recovery, and Moderation Management. Why hadn’t anybody mentioned them?

    That is the question that Miller sets out to answer in The Us of AA, a slender, provocative book that tells the story of how Alcoholics Anonymous grew into the gargantuan organization that we know today, even though some evidence suggests that other treatments may be more effective.

    Miller is not “anti-AA.” He believes that there is little to be lost — and perhaps much to be gained — by trying 12-step solutions. But he adds that alcoholism is more complex than the AA model suggests. Miller holds that problem drinkers should explore an array of potential strategies, not just one. Though he writes with powerful indignation, The US of AA is not a tendentious or overly polemical book; it is based on careful analysis of a huge and diverse range of sources.

    I had the pleasure of speaking to Joe by phone on May 11, 2019. This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.

    Many people know a bit about how Bill Wilson helped start Alcoholics Anonymous, but you argue that Marty Mann may have played a more pivotal role in building AA. What do we need to know about her?

    Absolutely, I think she is largely responsible for our nationwide concept of alcoholism as a disease, and our idea that AA is the go-to cure for alcoholism. She ran one of the most brilliant PR campaigns of the 20th century. She helped build a huge network with local chapters across the country, which distributed information at the individual level and the community level, [then progressed] to lobbying in state houses, and eventually, the federal government.

    Alcoholics Anonymous has the 11th Tradition, which states, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.” But Mann started out being a spokesperson for AA in the New York area — she was an excellent public speaker — and during that process, she developed a vision for a national campaign that would bring about a new understanding of alcoholism.

    You say in the book Marty Mann, and others in AA, were adamant that alcoholism should be understood as a disease.

    Yes. From the beginning, that was part of AA’s cure mechanism. AA said that alcoholism is not a moral failing. Rather, it’s an indication that something is wrong with you physiologically or psychologically (or some combination of the two). It’s beyond your control. You need to believe this is a disease.

    One thing Marty Mann did was reach out to a scientist at Yale, named Bunky Jellinek, who was kind of an odd character. (There’s some mystery about whether he had even earned a college degree.) But, by all accounts, he was an extremely energetic person, really passionate about the problem of alcoholism, and he seized upon Mann’s idea. He says, “Okay, we can have this PR campaign and it will help shore up our scientific research. We’ll sell the public on alcoholism as a medical problem and not a moral failing, and this will help us.”

    To boil this whole story down, the scientists got the cart before the horse. They didn’t have the money to research their theory that alcoholism was a physiological disease, but they got behind that idea, so the money would come. Then, when the money came, they learned that alcoholism was far more complex than the model they were using. The scientists at Yale liked what AA did, but they did not by any stretch think that AA was a cure-all for alcoholism. Neither, by the way, did Bill Wilson.

    That was something I learned in your book. I was surprised by Bill Wilson’s intellectual humility.

    All throughout his career, he could see that AA was not working for everybody. He worried about AA beliefs hardening into dogma, and he said “Just because something works for us, that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.” Some of his later work was devoted to trying to find ways to get people other types of help.

    All along, the folks who were not beholden to AA’s story — i.e., the scientists who weren’t — had the sense that alcoholism is this really complex problem, which could be approached in numerous ways. At Yale, when Marty Mann was doing her campaign, researchers were developing treatment programs in Connecticut — some pilot programs. And AA was just one small part of them. It was very much like what science nowadays says is the way to go: You’ve got to use an array of different approaches to tackle alcoholism. It’s different for everybody.

    Today, many treatment programs are rooted in AA doctrine. And you say in the book that some forces in the treatment industry actively tried to suppress other approaches to helping people.

    It actually goes back to the 1960s. This psychiatrist in England, named D. L. Davies, found that a significant number of patients who went through alcoholic treatment programs later resumed drinking at levels he described as “normal.” He wrote a paper on his findings, and a number of big players in the AA movement disputed the study. One of them was Marvin Block, a doctor from Buffalo who had spearheaded the AMA’s (American Medical Association) campaign to recognize alcohol as an illness. Block said, “Well, the [people who learned to drink normally] must not be real alcoholics,” even though these men had been hospitalized for severe drinking problems.

    Another example is Mark and Linda Sobell. They did a study where they trained people in moderate drinking, and they found that a significantly higher number of them fared better [after practicing controlled drinking] than those in AA. Afterward, there was a fierce attack against them, which was publicized on 60 Minutes. It almost cost them their jobs, and it really set back any work in the area.

    My pet theory is that sobriety spreads in AA through “social contagion.” If a person who is discouraged about their drinking walks into an AA meeting, they’re likely to find a large group of people who have enjoyed substantial periods of sobriety, and who are willing to help them. I think people in AA are mimicking each other’s behaviors and attitudes – just like we do in other phases of life.

    I’ve had two quite long stretches of sobriety in AA, one when I was in college, in Boulder, Colorado, and another for about seven years in the 2000s, in Kansas City. In both cases, it was because I had strong social connections, and healthy routines. In Boulder, the meetings were almost a pretext for us to go out and socialize afterward. For the most part, I found the AA meetings in Kansas City to be insufferable. But there was a meditation house nearby, and after meditating, we’d go out for Mexican food afterwards. And that was enough to help me stay sober.

    But AA itself did not work for me. Especially after going through the steps, and really working them hard — and I really freaking worked them hard! — and hearing people say, “After you do that fourth, boy, it really changes your life.” And hearing them say that, over and over again. I just thought, “No. I do not believe this. It’s fine for you, but I just don’t believe in it.”

    In a recent New York Post article, you talked a bit about your drinking habits now. You practice moderation, but you say it takes some effort. Can you explain?

    It’s going well. I don’t take Naltrexone anymore, but that drug really helped disrupt my drinking patterns. I would take it and almost magically, I would drink about 50 percent less in a night.

    I combined that with that an app called CheckUp & Choices, which was developed by a psychologist, Reid Hester. That’s a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy app, where you do a very extensive questionnaire that gets you thinking about the situations in which you get triggered, and when you drink, and how much you drink. It helps you keep track of your frame of mind about drinking. Exercise is also a key part of my program. Having my spouse on board with this is also huge — evidence suggests this can make a difference, if you have spousal support.

    If you were to find out down the road that this approach does not work for you — if, heaven forbid, you fall back into full-blown alcoholism — are you confident you’ll be willing to revisit your approach?

    Yes. But I don’t see that happening. I see the opposite. I see, down the road, no drinking at all. That’s the direction we’re going. The direction is continually toward drinking less.

    I share many of your thoughts about AA. Sometimes I even have doubts about its strict emphasis on total abstinence and continuous sobriety. I heard a segment on NPR last week suggesting that AA’s chip system may even be counterproductive, because it can cause people who slip up in the program — or who drink very occasionally — to feel demoralized and ashamed. And as any treatment provider will tell you, those are precisely the feelings that may lead to even more drinking.

    That said, I think AA’s line about alcoholism being “cunning, baffling and powerful” is spot-on. People who struggle with addiction or alcoholism are prone to rationalization and self-deception. Everyone is a bit different, but it is obvious that some people should simply never drink under any circumstances whatsoever. If they do drink, the consequences can be devastating. This seems to me a difficult and tricky subject.

    I think the best answer to this is something one of the psychologists I interviewed said to me: if AA works for you, that’s the easiest and most effective solution. Similarly, with moderation, many people find in time that it’s much simpler to just stay away from that first drink than it is to try to control drinking.

    But if you look at large-scale statistics on drinking and recovery, most problem drinkers do not follow the traditional AA path of complete abstinence forever. Even those who are in AA for a while, working the steps and staying sober — statistics show that many will one day have another drink. What’s most dangerous in these cases, I think, is the belief that one drink will lead automatically to alcoholic behavior. That might be true for any given individual, but it’s not the truth for all, and studies have shown that believing it’s true tends to make it true.

    Purchase US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism on Amazon. For more about the book and its author, check out Joe Miller’s website.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Tales of a High-Bottom Alcoholic

    Tales of a High-Bottom Alcoholic

    Having a high bottom can be more dangerous because it can go undetected for life. You can end up just living a soulless life.

    When I first got sober someone referred to me as having a “high bottom.” A friend, trying to be funny, yelled out, “that’s just because she has long legs!”

    I was then told that a high bottom meant I had not caused too much damage to myself or others while I was drinking, but I feel like that’s subjective. A “low bottom” does not really leave much open to interpretation: jail, interventions, hospital, losing your family, your job, your home. You have to decide: get sober or suffer terrible consequences, one of which might be death.

    A person experiencing a high bottom may not appear to be suffering outwardly, but inside life can be unbearable, unmanageable, or just not as good as it could be. My periodical heavy drinking was interfering with my quality of life and I had had enough. Surviving isn’t half as fun as thriving, not just financially but emotionally and physically.

    When I first got sober I was sort of mad I didn’t have a low bottom; I might have gotten sober sooner and I would know for sure I had a problem. I was also mad that my idea of fun had to change. I wore beer goggles to view my whole life. Anything was tolerable if there was a “reward” later—later that night, later that week, or later that month. If I could look forward to cutting loose at some point, the rest of life seemed more bearable.

    I co-wrote and co-starred in a film called The Foxy Merkins. It went to Sundance, sold out premieres, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. I drank on and off when I was writing, filming, and at all the premieres. In every situation, I felt like something was missing and I would drink more to get to the place of feeling complete…but it never came. Drinking had stopped being fun or gratifying because I wasn’t connected to myself. For me, that was a low bottom. I want and need to be fully connected to great moments in my life.

    Some of my friends/enablers still try to get me to drink and don’t see what the big deal is, while other friends say “if Jackie can quit drinking, anyone can do it.” It’s not black or white, and that gray area almost kept me drinking for life. I can always point to someone else who has a worse drinking problem. If you have cancer, you’re going to treat it no matter how minor it is. Your mind isn’t trying to tell you to look at how bad the other guy’s cancer is. No one’s saying “your cancer is nothing in comparison. Stop being a baby. You can moderate cancer. Forget about it.” That is what my brain did for years, and what my enablers told me: “That guy is falling down drunk. Have you ever fallen anywhere? NO. Then you are not an alcoholic.”

    When I first got sober I thought “why me?” Today I still wonder “why me,” but it’s more “why am I so lucky to get to live in the moment and to feel all of my feelings?” When I finally got to this place, I stopped being mad that I did not have a clear low bottom. It sounds ridiculous to me now but I had been really frustrated about it. I thought: “I am doing this program with all I got, I should be able to half-ass it because I have not caused as much wreckage as most people.” That is an example of my crazy alcoholic diseased thinking.

    Now I know everyone has a different bottom. Every day of my life, my head tells me I can drink and I have to remind it I don’t even want to drink. My mind wants to kill me: it only leaves me alive to have a vehicle to run around in. It is my job every day to remind myself that my life is so much more rewarding now. Cash and prizes are just extras, the real rewards are free and deeply fulfilling.

    Being honest and useful to the world is priceless. It’s easy to sleep at night when I am not lying to anyone, especially myself. Even if I’d never experienced any external repercussions from lying, it took a toll on me, because I knew. There is nothing like going to sleep at night with a clear conscience.

    When I heard that they might be putting high-bottom stories in the Big Book, I experienced a range of emotions. I was happy that other high bottoms will find stories they can relate to in the book. My ego, on the other hand, went nuts: WHAT?!! I would have killed to have heard high-bottom stories when I came in. I might have gotten sober sooner. Or maybe my dad might have been able to get sober. But for today, I am not waiting to blow off steam. I don’t feel that I deserve to drink because I have been wronged. That’s how I used to live. If something went “wrong” I had to have a drink.

    I never want to make blanket statements, these are my opinions and they change often. At no time do I want to claim that my opinions are set in stone. As my perception continues to grow, my opinions will change for the better.

    “Normal” drinkers are people who never or rarely suffer consequences from drinking. They rarely get drunk, nor do they ask themselves if they have a drinking problem. They never feel they must learn to moderate their use. High-bottom drinkers can hold down a job, they can have relationships, and no one gives them an intervention; but their souls deteriorate over time. They tell themselves they will learn to moderate. High-bottom drinkers are usually surrounded by other functioning alcoholics and enablers—people who do not want the person with alcoholism to get better because that means they will have to look at themselves, and they won’t look better in comparison anymore.

    Having a high bottom can be more dangerous because it can go undetected for life. You can end up just living a soulless life. Everything seems fine, but you never feel real gratification or get to know the real you or the greatness you are capable of.

    With a low bottom, people are forced to quit drinking: they have to or they will die. High bottoms aren’t necessarily facing death, but they have to quit to really live. At least I did. Things still don’t go perfectly, but how boring would that life be? I now do my best to welcome my life challenges. I now know how to deal with them head-on, and if I don’t I have a crew of new friends that can help me help myself. Now, fun is always being in the present moment, connected to all that is, and not trying to figure out the next drink.

    Life is not perfect, but at the same time, it kinda is.

    See Jackie in Wild Nights with Emily, now playing in selected theaters!

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • AA 2.0: Why the Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous Needs to Happen Now

    AA 2.0: Why the Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous Needs to Happen Now

    The founders purposely left the door open for science to come into the realm of recovery, and unlike modern AA, they did not discount its potential importance when it came to helping people.

    I am an alcoholic, or, as conventional wisdom goes, an alcoholic in recovery. I’ve had my share of rehabs, detoxes, and IOPs. I’ve dealt with numerous counselors, doctors, psychiatrists, and even a hypnotist. I have mastered “white-knuckling.” And I’d “given myself fully to the simple program” that is AA. Nothing worked. This is not to say I did not have my dry spells, as well as full-on productive years of zero consumption of anything that contained ethanol. Still, I relapsed, and went down a black spiraling abyss pretty confidently when my consumption quickly became prodigious in both amount and frequency of use.

    Sheer yet fully predictable insanity ensued. Binges went on for weeks and ER visits became routine. Doctors gave me a bleak prognosis, as coming out of the drinking spells had become nearly impossible. Maintenance drinkers had nothing on me — I drank to breathe, to sleep, to go to the bathroom. Beer and wine became juice, annoyingly un-intoxicating. Blended whisky — aka brown vodka — was the only thing that worked, before it didn’t. A rehab intake clocked me at .43 blood alcohol content, with the fatal spectrum usually starting around .35. I am not a large guy by any means; turns out it was the tolerance I’d developed that saved me from kicking the bucket from alcohol poisoning. I stayed drunk for two days just on what was in my bloodstream, and then the withdrawal hit like a train. Librium, Zofran, Librium. An in-house doctor woke me up; my pulse was barely there. But, as always, thankfully, in a week I started feeling better. 

    A Revolutionary Program… for 1939

    The role of AA in my recovery has been significant. The fellowship of men and women — a genius brainchild of Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson, and wholeheartedly endorsed by Dr. Carl Jung himself, has helped countless families. It is incredible in its selflessness and honesty and yet, today’s AA is rigid, too antiquated, and legacy-driven. It’s normal, though, for an organization of this stature and with this much history. After all, back in 1939 this was an absolutely revolutionary, even visionary, break-through. But we’re not in 1939 or even 2009, and so AA must adapt or it will lose its edge. 

    Both Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson were complex, highly educated, empathetic, and caring individuals. Their realization of a prominent role of Higher Power in recovery did not come easy. Skeptics, cynics as they were, they had to overcome an internal struggle before making peace with the fact that human nature was helpless in the face of the monstrous foe of addiction. The resulting text, which we all now know as the Big Book, was the product of a multi-year intellectual effort, which was by no means easy or straightforward. For example, one little-known fact about the book is that initially it used the 2nd person throughout its chapters, as in “you recover, you need to, you have a problem.” The authors decided to change it to the 1st person (we), which brought a completely new tone to the script. From preachy and authoritative it became welcoming and tolerant.

    In addition, when it comes to finding ways to recover from alcoholism (specifically becoming a “normal drinker” as opposed to an alcoholic), the Book mentions that “science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet.” In fact, multiple recovery groups and schools of thought have stepped in to fulfill this prediction. For instance, the Sinclair Method introduced its harm reduction model, based on the pre-emptive use of Naltrexone to reduce cravings and use. Like with everything else, if it works for you, great. It did not for me or any other alcoholic I know. 

    AA’s Founders Expected AA to Change

    The founders purposely left the door open for science to come into the realm of recovery, and unlike modern AA, they did not discount its potential importance when it came to helping people. Today’s AA, on the other hand, has forgotten that approach, adopting more of a “my way or the highway” when it comes to alternative recovery techniques.

    My respect and love for AA is beyond mere deference. I firmly believe that its overall purpose is remarkable. However, I also know that it could be more effective in reaching more people if it actively adopted — or at least discussed — modern-day scientific findings when it comes to addiction. Yes, rigorous honesty and humility are key, however, an inquisitive and questioning mind is not something that should be shunned; on the contrary, it should be celebrated. Ask Bill Wilson. 

    The Book should be akin to the concept of a “living, breathing” Constitution, which celebrates evidence-based evolvement of the original understanding of the Supreme Law of the Land (for example, ever-present discussions of the Fourth Amendment as applied to modern-age surveillance technology. Back when it was written, there was no phone or Internet surveillance, yet the maxim against unreasonable search and seizure is alive and well). Evolution of approaches, when it comes to addiction treatment, is a natural occurrence and fighting it is like trying to cross-breed humans and monkeys hoping we can get better, more advanced Homo sapiens, or even a new humanoid altogether.

    Let’s also take a look at the concept of singularity, as defined by famous futurist and (coincidence?) Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil. Essentially, he summarized it as an ever-developing concept of a progressively consequential role of technology in everyday life. One of the most striking illustrations of that concept is Kurzweil’s conclusion that today, an average child in Africa (or Russia, U.S., Cuba, China, etc.) with an off-the-shelf smartphone has more information at her fingertips than the president of the United States had 30 years ago. As any brilliant idea, singularity was successfully explained and encapsulated in simple terms by the above example.

    Science and Spirituality

    The same type of evolution awaits AA in particular, and the fight against addiction in general. Get with the program or get run over, as progress does not stop, and that is exactly what Bill Wilson understood so well in his pragmatic ingenuity. 

    From the reptilian middle brain and limbic system responsible for survival hijacking the thinking territory of the prefrontal cortex (in the AA lingo, home of the white-knuckling demon), to the brain’s neuroplasticity and ability to heal itself and learn new reward pathways after alcohol (or meth, heroin, porn, etc.) has done its scorched-earth number on its dopamine receptors, today’s science has explained it all. That is not to say that it has effectively pre-empted the field and left no room for miraculous recovery (doctors sometimes call it spontaneous remission) or any other spiritual component. To the contrary, following Dr. Carl Jung and his glorious pronouncement Spiritus Contra Spiritum, with which he famously concluded his 1961 letter to Bill Wilson discussing the viability of AA, science leaves ample room for spirituality when it comes to addiction. Now it’s time for AA to return the favor and welcome science in its rooms. 

    AA (or any other single-tier approach) cannot win this war on its own. And I am not even talking about the alleged (yet well-researched) 5-7 percent long-term success rate of AA (see Lance Dodes, MD, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry).

    What I am referring to instead is inclusiveness and intentional wariness of rigidity. Like Tolkien’s Balrog, addiction is a shape-shifter, a cunning, conniving, vindictive foe with an overpowering ability to maim and kill. Gandalf the Gray — arguably the strongest protagonist of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, simply could not dispatch the demon of all demons through his conventional, albeit awe-inspiring powers, and had to adjust and in a way shape-shift himself into Gandalf the White.

    So, who’s to say that what’s good for the U.S. Constitution, Kurzweil, and Gandalf is not good for Alcoholics Anonymous? More importantly, will AA even survive if it doesn’t embrace its own evolution?

    View the original article at thefix.com