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  • Facts & Fables: William Schaberg Explores the Big Book's True Origins

    Facts & Fables: William Schaberg Explores the Big Book's True Origins

    Both Big Book zealots and AA’s harshest critics will have a problem with this book—you’re either blasphemous for criticizing a saint or not going far enough to expose a fraud.

    It’s been 40 years since Earnest Kurtz’s Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was the last substantial scholarly research into AA’s early years. This week, William Schaberg’s three pound, 800-page Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A. was released, and it’s already cracked the top 20 in both Amazon’s Twelve-Step Programs and Alcoholism Recovery categories. People are ready for something new.

    “The first chapter is called, ‘Challenging the Creation Myths,’” Schaberg explains. “The chapters that follow in Writing the Big Book do just that, again and again.”

    The “We” Myth

    The Fix: “I’ve heard the stories about the Big Book being a collective effort of AA pioneers recording their shared experiences. Bill W has said he was less the author and more the umpire, with members arguing, deliberating, and carving out Alcoholics Anonymous together, chapter by chapter, line by line. Is this story of an authorial ‘We’ a mischaracterization of how the Big Book was written?

    WS: “Bill is writing back and forth to Dr. Bob and sending him draft chapters. By the time of the third letter, Wilson writes, ‘I’m having a hard time getting input here in New York, Bob. I’m glad you like the chapters but I need some critical feedback, here.’ Bill gets zero from Ohio. 

    I think one of the reasons that Bill was having a hard time getting feedback was, despite his protestations, Wilson didn’t do very well with input. Bill said proudly that despite adding ‘as we understood Him,’ and taking ‘on our knees’ out of Step Seven, the Steps remained exactly as he wrote them. Bill was fighting a rearguard action all the time because people did want him to change it. A Dr. Howard famously reviewed The Big Book with many criticisms, saying, ‘You’ve got to take all the You out and replace it with We. You can’t tell an alcoholic what to do; tell them what you did; explain how it worked for you.’ Wilson did not want to make these changes. 

    Late in my research I stumbled across a letter Hank Parkhurst wrote 17 days before the book came out saying, ‘Bill you’ve got to make these changes. If you don’t, I’ll form a committee and we’ll make them for you.’ It was a huge powerplay by Hank to get what he thought had to be done in the book. Bill finally conceded but he didn’t want to do it. This is one example of how resistant Wilson was with anyone messing with anything he’d written.”

    The Fix: “So, Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t the work of a collective?” 

    WS: “The hundred men, who argued about the book in AA meetings, blood on the floor. It didn’t happen. It did in fact happen out at Hank Parkhurst’s Honor Dealers office between Hank, Fitz Mayo and Bill arguing about what should and shouldn’t be in the book. It didn’t happen in meetings; it did happen in a New Jersey office. 

    It’s amazing how recalcitrant and negative Akron and Cleveland was about this whole book. Dr. Bob got an old newspaper man sober—Jim Scott—and we are told a story that these Akron guys weren’t writers; they wanted to write their story, but they needed Jim to help polish it up. The truth was, aside from a couple of members, they didn’t want to do them. Jim was sent by Dr. Bob to go have coffee with them one at a time, he gets them to tell him their story, Jim goes home and writes their stories. Is that the same as this sainted story about how Jim just helped these guys? No. Bill was putting heat on Bob for stories. Bob was desperate and he found a way to get it done; Jim wrote the stories.”

    The Twelve Steps Origin Myth

    The Fix: “AA’s Pass It On describes The Big Book chapters as being written in the order they appear. How did the book come together chronologically?”

    WS: “‘Bill’s Story’ and ‘There is a Solution’ were written in late May of 1938. Hank Parkhurst and Wilson were shopping the sample chapters around in the hopes of raising money; June, July, August—nothing. Parkhurst comes up with a new idea. There’s a writer for This Week Magazine, Silas Bent, that they’re trying to sober up – he’s slipping and sliding – Hank convinces Silas to submit a story about Alcoholics Anonymous. Hank’s idea was that, at the end of the story, they’d ask readers to send $1 and for that dollar they’d get five chapters, Hank thought five chapters would make the buck worthwhile. So, he goes back to Wilson and says, ‘Two chapters isn’t going to cut it—we need more.’

    Wilson started writing on September 15th, 1938 and wrote ‘More About Alcoholism’ and ‘We Agnostics,’ Chapters Three and Four.” 

    The Fix: “Chapters Five and Six in the Book are “How It Works” and “Into Action,” all about the Steps. That’s not what Bill Wilson started writing next?” 

    WS: “Right, he didn’t have Twelve Steps yet. ‘Working With Others’ was written next, ‘To Wives,’ ‘The Family Afterwards’ and then ‘A Vision For You.’ Somewhere in there, Hank Parkhurst wrote ‘To Employers.’ So, these Chapters were basically done by December 1938.”

    Schaberg describes this stage in a section in his book called, A Vision for How to Get and Stay Sober:

    Wilson knew that sooner or later, he would have to face the challenge of creating a chapter that outlined, in the clearest possible terms the actions needed to get and then stay sober. It was, he later commented, a problem that “had secretly worried the life out of him for months before he finally got around to writing it.” But so long as there was at least one single chapter that still needed to be written, Bill would elect to write that instead of facing the intimidating task of putting down on paper the exact details of the program of recovery.

    WS: “’Writing the Twelve Steps’—Chapter 23—it was the hardest for me to write. It took months and months. I was trying to make sense of the contradictory stories I was hearing. We’ve all heard the story that Bill laid in bed with a yellow pad and a pencil, he realizes that he has to write something concrete, you know, that ‘drunks couldn’t wiggle out of.’ he gets inspired, he wrote them out, there were twelve, he thinks that’s the coolest thing in the world; he goes downstairs; two guys are there having coffee with Lois. They gave him all kinds of grief, ‘God use to be at the bottom; now he’s at the top. You have drunks getting down on their knees,’ in the original version of Step Seven. That’s how Bill tells it. And when I started looking at it, it just didn’t make any sense. Other times, Bill said that The Twelve Steps were based on the word-of-mouth six steps.”

    The Fix: “Pass It On gets referenced in AA meetings, it talks about a variety of six step programs being practiced. From your findings, when did the story of six steps first start getting told?”

    WS: “1950; that’s the first evidence I could find of him telling that story. The [six steps] story morphs from 1950 to 1951. First there was the ‘Ebby brought Bill the six steps’ story. Then, a story he often repeated later was that the six steps came out of the group’s collective experience. This was the pragmatic answer, in six steps to how you stop drinking. But here’s the problem: there’s no six steps before 1939. There are 28 stories of alcoholics in the back of the First Edition Big Book written by people from Ohio and New York. Now you would think that if there was a six-step program, people would be talking about it, somebody would be talking, most of them would be talking about working this step or that one. but read the original stories.”

    The Fix: “Zero for 28, right?” 

    WS: “Exactly, O for 28. The common theme is they were powerless, they turned their lives over to God and they stop drinking; no six-step program written about before 1939.”

    The Fix: “You write about Frank Amos, sent by the Rockefellers following the infamous December 1937 New York meeting to report on what Dr. Bob and the others did to get and stay sober.”

    WS: “He travelled to Ohio to check up on what Dr. Bob and the other members were doing. He writes a report highlighting seven things they were doing to stay sober; those seven things don’t correspond to the six steps that Bill Wilson was later talking about. So, I’m up against a wall, none of this is making any sense to me. 

    One of the great reveals was when I was given a copy of Bill’s first draft of his story. Written late May of 1938, the first version, if you will—there were a couple of versions before that were really, really terrible but this was the one—that, over time, morphed into what appeared in the book. And as we’re taken through Bill’s experience in Towns Hospital, you can number about ten of those Twelve Steps.”

    The Fix: “So, the Steps are Bill’s experience, not a universal experience?”

    WS: “Things did come together in a way that made sense to me and is a credible story about the genesis of the Twelve Steps, right there in that May 1938 version of his story. You put numbers on them and there’s (at least) ten of them, right there. So, what we’re doing here, we’re not using six steps that Ebby brought to Bill or any collective experience of early members, this is ‘What I did; how did I get sober?’ Bingo, there it is.

    In the archives there is a copy of a letter, before 1950; a lawyer, Paul Kirby Hennessy wrote to Bill to confirm a discussion they had on a train ride to Washington. Paul had asked him, ‘Hey, how’d you come up with the Twelve Steps. There is a lot more detail about this encounter in my book, but Bill wrote back to Paul confirming his story that the Steps came from his personal experience. That October 19, 1948 letter is in the archives, ‘Bill’s Story of the Evolution of the Twelve Steps.’

    Bill Wilson could have written ‘Do what I did and you could get sober, but isn’t it a better story to say here is what we did—one hundred of us did—we did this, we got sober, and you can, too?’ ‘We did this,’ is a powerful message.”

    Co-Founder Mythology

    WS: “The whole co-founder thing is another example of how Wilson wasn’t inclined towards historical accuracy. He was and still is a guy who is worshipped as a guy who walks on water. Bill knew he had an ego problem. One of the things he did to cope with that was to take the spotlight off himself as much as possible. The co-founder idea is one way that Bill could do this. 

    I’m almost offended when the co-founder thing comes up. Bill Wilson is the founder of AA. 

    Mel B, a really good AA historian, came into AA in the early 1950s. I heard a really great interview with David L whereby Mel B said that back then, ‘Bill W is referred to as the founder; Dr. Bob is the co-founder,’ giving primacy to Bill Wilson.’ Bill would call himself a co-founder and Dr. Bob is a co-founder, and somewhere along the line, William James or Sam Shoemaker, Sister Ignatius or Henrietta Seiberling is a co-founder, Frank Amos claimed he was a cofounder. Bob Smith isn’t mentioned as co-founder until 1946.

    Ebby Thatcher, who brought the message of recovery to Bill—the seminal moment in AA history—if Ebby isn’t a co-founder then who is? 

    I’m almost famous for saying this by this point: ‘No Hank; no book.’ That’s absolutely the truth. The book Alcoholics Anonymous just wouldn’t have happened without Hank Parkhurst. So, if Hank isn’t a co-founder then who is? Bob Smith was the last man standing who stayed sober, that’s why we call him co-founder today.” 

    Conclusion

    The Fix: “AA’s first official accounting of historical events was A.A. Comes of Age which the 1956 General Service delegates unanimously voted to approve, relying on Bill’s recollection of early AA—nearly twenty years after writing The Big Book. Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers didn’t appear until 1980 and Mel B’s Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world wasn’t green-lit until 1984; relying on many of these AA folktales recounted by sources, many of which are secondhand.”

    WS: “The people in Ohio told stories after the fact that never happened, how deeply they delved into the chapters that were sent to them. What happened was this project that they were in open rebellion against became very successful. Five, ten, twenty years later they aren’t telling stories about how they opposed the writing of the book, they’re telling the story as if they were on board from the very start. It’s just people tell stories of the past in a way that reflects the current reality—say a 1950 reality, a 1960 reality or further out—contrary to what actually happened. It’s a perfectly understandable human tendency.” 

    The Fix: “There’s a difference between investigative inquiry and looking for fault like there’s a reward for it. It’s hard not to have an agenda when researching history. I’m not surprised that Writing the Big Book, maintains a fact-driven discipline. What did surprise me, as an academic text, it read like a detective novel. I’m surprised that it is such a page-turner.”

    WS: “The historian’s everlasting quest is to answer, ‘What really happened?’ I don’t know what really happened, but I have a better idea of what happened, having done all that research. When you start finding out the stories Bill told just aren’t true in some sense, you ask, ‘Was the guy a liar? What am I doing being involved with this project, with this guy who’s a liar?’ And I actually had a couple of people who came at me from that direction. 

    But it wasn’t too long before I came to see Bill Wilson as a man of vision. Wilson wasn’t a historian; he wasn’t trying to be. Bill Wilson wasn’t a liar. He was a salesman, with a solution to alcoholism, a problem that had ravaged the nation for centuries. He thought he could save hundreds-of-thousands of lives and that is what he was trying to do. Wilson was the ultimate pragmatist; he wasn’t a dogma guy; he wasn’t a this-is-the-way-it-is guy. If it worked, he was all for it. He was telling stories that left out messy details, closer to parables than a historical account. Frequently he slips into mythmaking. The stories were supposed to be powerful, incisive, impressionable stories for people who were trying to get sober or who weren’t quite convinced yet to get sober. A myth captures the essence—not the details—of truth.”

    The Fix: “It’s fair to expect that this book will put a target on your back by both the Big Book zealots and AA’s harshest critics—you will be perceived as either blasphemous for criticizing a saint or not going far enough to expose a fraud. To skeptics, what would you say?” 

    WS: “There are 1570 citations at the back of the book along with 416 footnotes throughout the text – if you don’t believe what I’ve said in the book, or the facts I’m quoting in the book, go down to archives and find another document; I’m on board with that. 

    We need to get back to primary document research; we have to get off of this quoting Bill Wilson thing because that’s not always what happened. It makes a good story. If you’re trying to tell an inspirational story, tell that story, but if you’re trying to tell a historically accurate story, go back to the archives and read the pieces of paper that are there.”

    Fix readers wanting to learn more about Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A., visit http://www.writingthebigbook.com/ and read a sample chapter for free. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Is AA Too Religious for Generation Z?

    Is AA Too Religious for Generation Z?

    “What I try to teach is: if you don’t buy into any kind of a supernatural higher power, navigate the 12-step world, filtering the god-stuff out, working the program in your own way; there is lots that really works.”

    Are today’s mutual-aid recovery groups ready to satisfy Generation-next?

    “More than any other generation before them, Gen Z does not assert a religious identity. They might be drawn to things spiritual, but with a vastly different starting point from previous generations, many of whom received a basic education on the Bible and Christianity. And it shows: The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population.”

    Released early this year, Barna Group’s Generation-Z Report (Americans born between 1999 and 2015) surveyed over 2,000 13 to 18-year-olds. The oldest of this generation turn 20 in 2019.

    According to AA’s most recent triennial membership survey, 1% of AA is under 21—that’s about 20,000 sober teenagers in AA rooms right now. What’s my personal affinity with this demographic? It’s two-fold: I have two millennial children and one 18-year-old stepson; secondly, while I am a grey-haired Baby Boomer, I was a teen at my first 12-step meeting. My 20th birthday was 1980, three months shy of my fourth anniversary clean and sober.

    I was a second-generation AA member and—like Barna’s youth focus group—my worldview seemed incompatible with the old fogies of 12-step rooms. My mother mused about finding god’s will for her from meditation or her daily horoscope. She was such a Virgo, you know. Horoscopes, higher powers, legends of Sasquatch, these were all fictional symbols as far as I was concerned. Reasonable people didn’t take such constructs literally, did they?

    Bob K, like me, is a second-generation AA. He’s currently between historical book projects; Key Players in AA History will soon have a prequel. Bob’s follow-up research will produce a book about pre-AA addiction and treatment. At age 40, Bob made it into AA as a result of his dad 12-stepping him. He also was uncomfortable with the emphasis on “God.” 

    “When I was a month sober, it was ‘God-this, God saved me’ and I was going to put my resignation in. I didn’t think I could stand it in AA any longer. I went to the internet of the day—which back then was the library—and I looked for non-religious alternatives to AA. They had them in California but nothing in Ontario Canada. So it was AA or nothing. If I tried to brave it alone, I’d be drunk; I knew it.”

    Today, Bob enjoys the likeminded company at his Secular AA home group, Whitby Freethinkers, which meets in the local suburban library just East of Toronto. 

    If I were confronting addiction/recovery as a teen today, I wonder if I would go to AA or NA? If AA was once “the last house on the block,” today it’s one house in a subdivision of mutual-aid choices. Today, newcomers have access to Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), or Medically Assisted Treatment, none of which existed in the 1970s.

    On Practically Sane, therapist Jeffrey Munn states: “I like to take a practical approach … I’m not a fan of the ‘fluff’ and flowery language that is often associated with the world of psychology and self-help.” Jeffrey came into the rooms at 20, stayed sober for 2 ½ years, relapsed, came back and is now 13 years clean and sober.

    “I was mandated to three 12-step meetings per week to stay in the program I was in. Since I was young I have been agnostic. I wanted to find a higher power that was common sense-based, but in the rooms I felt pulled towards a more dogmatic spiritual idea of higher power. Back then, I needed to come up with my own conception of what was happening on a psychological level.” Recently, Jeffrey wrote and published Staying Sober Without God: the Practical 12 Steps to Long Term Recovery from Alcoholism and Addiction.

    “I looked at SMART Recovery,” Jeffrey tells The Fix. “I looked at Moderation Management, too—that one struck me as being an organized resentment against AA—I wasn’t feeling it. When it comes down to social support and a practical plan of action, it’s hard to beat 12-step programs. What I try to teach is: if you don’t buy into any kind of a supernatural higher power, navigate the 12-step world, filtering the god-stuff out, working the program in your own way; there is lots that really works.”

    Barna reports, “Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say, ‘I need factual evidence to support my beliefs.’” Jeffrey hopes Staying Sober Without God—which joins a growing secular 12-step recovery offering—offers the rational narrative today’s youth crave. Barna calls today’s youth “the first truly post-Christian generation [in America].”

    Certified Master Addiction Counselor David B. Bohl of Milwaukee understands the value of other-oriented care. David tells The Fix: “As head of a 20-bed coed dual-diagnosis treatment center, emerging adults, 18 to 25 years old, came into our care. I wouldn’t say that they universally shrugged off the 12-step approach but almost universally, in reaction to our volunteers, alumni, and traditional AA community, younger clients didn’t want what the volunteers and alumni had. And I wouldn’t say it was the religiosity always. Sometimes it was an age-thing or life approach. So, our recovery management function became that much more important in terms of building individualized treatment that suits everyone.

    “In the USA, 75% of all residential treatment centers identify as 12-step facilitators,” David tells us. “In the simplest form, our job is to introduce people to the language and the concept of the 12 steps and then to introduce the clients to support groups or people in support groups when they are discharged from acute care.

    Where trauma is involved—religious trauma in particular—traditional AA language and rituals trigger that shame they feel from negative formal religion experiences.”

    Let’s put this overbearing religion caution to a real-life test: Suwaida F was the second oldest of 11 children to Somalian refugee parents who fled to Canada in the 1980s.

    “In Kindergarten I didn’t have to wear a hijab; my parents weren’t super religious. I went to an Islamic school in grade one. It was normal for teachers to have belts with them, they would hit you; child abuse was normalized. They didn’t really teach us that much math, science, history. The Islamic teachers weren’t that educated. My parents took me out and put me in public school. Then, some of my mom’s Somalian-Canadian friends started moving their kids to Egypt. My friends would stay in Egypt two years, finish the Qur’an and the girls came back wearing burqas and head-scarves. Some Muslim friends would come to school in their hijab, take them off and put them back on when they went home. We called them The Transformers.

    My parents really wanted us to learn the Qur’an; I don’t speak Arabic, so it was difficult. And I never believed it. I asked my mom and dad, ‘How do you know that this stuff is real?’ They got frustrated and mad and said, ‘Don’t ever ask that question again.’ I knew it wasn’t real. Mom got more and more religious. Pictures of her at age 19 — she wore no head-scarf when she was my age. My mom expected me to be religious and I rebelled. I had to leave home.”

    Suwaida misses her sisters. She feels unwelcome in the family home unless she is dressed in the Islamic custom and that wouldn’t be true to herself. Away from home, Suwaida found the welcoming community she craved in the booze and cocaine culture.

    “It wasn’t a matter of having no money; I had no sense of hope. People at work didn’t know I was hopped from shelter to shelter at night. One winter I was told, ‘Suwaida, you’ve been restricted from every youth shelter in the city of Toronto.’” As addiction progressed, Suwaida recalls an ever-descending patterns of compromises, bad relationships and regrets.

    “Today, it’s like I still never unpack my suitcase; I’m always ready to go.” During a stay at St. Joe’s detox, Suwaida went to her first NA meeting.

    “At 7 PM, a woman spoke. I made it clear that I thought it was stupid; I wouldn’t share. At the end, everyone was holding hands to pray and I said, ‘I’m not holding any of your hands.’ I didn’t go back. When I was discharged, I went drinking at the bar with my suitcase, not knowing where I was going to stay that night.

    My second meeting I consider my first, because I chose it. I thought I should go to AA. I googled atheist or freethinker AA to avoid a repeat of my NA experience. I found Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers Group on the University of Toronto campus. I went there last February. For a while, I had wine in my travel-mug, and I didn’t say anything. In August I felt like the woman beside me knew I was drinking, and I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’ So, my next meeting, I went sober. I’ve been clean and sober ever since.”

    Despite the child-violence of Islamic school and rejection from her family, Suwaida isn’t anti-theist. “I do believe in God or in something. I feel like I’m always looking for signs. I don’t believe in a god in the sky but to say there’s nothing beyond all this doesn’t make any sense to me. Sometimes the freakiest things happen. Maybe it’s because I’m a storyteller, I try to make a story out of everything; you think of someone, then they phone you, is that random?

    I feel a part-of in secular or mainstream AA meetings. My self-talk still sounds like, ‘Don’t share Suwaida, you have nothing to add.’ Maybe it comes from not being able to express myself when I was growing up. I have no sense of self. I guess I have something special to offer but I don’t know how to articulate it. It’s hard; I have limited self-confidence.”

    “Give them their voice; listen to them,” is Kevin Schaefer’s approach. He co-hosts the podcast Don’t Die Wisconsin. He’s also a recovery coach.

    “I’ve been in Recovery 29+ years. I’m a substance abuse counselor and I got into addiction treatment through sober living. When I started working in a Suboxone clinic, I came to realize that AA can’t solve everything. I always come from a harm reduction standpoint: meth, cocaine, benzos; I ask, ‘Can you just smoke pot?’ and we start building the trust there.

    Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is geared towards this generation. Most kids coming through my door know a lot about MAT, more so than people in AA with the biases and stigma that they bring. Kids sometimes know more than the front-line social workers. Their friends are on MAT, that’s how they gather their information (not to say their information is all correct). But a lot of therapists don’t understand medication. Medication can be a ticket to survival out on the streets.”

    The Fix asked Kevin his opinion on the best suited mutual-aid group for this generation.

    “Most of the generation you’re talking about walks in with anxiety and defiantly won’t do groups.” We talked about the role of online video/voice or text meetings for a tech-native generation. “Yes—where appropriate. Women especially, because from what I’ve seen, most females have suffered from trauma. I have heard women who prefer online recovery; that make sense to me. I’ve been to InTheRooms.com; as professionals we have a duty to know what’s out there. And there are some crazies online.

    If someone has an Eastern philosophy bent, I’ll send them to Refuge Recovery; I’ve been there. If I can, I’ll set them up with somebody that I know can help them. And let’s not forget that some youth, if Christianity is your thing, Celebrate Recovery is amazing — talk about a community that wraps themselves around the substance user. There are movie nights, food, all kinds of extracurricular activities. The SMART Recovery Movement? Excellent. SMART momentum is building in Milwaukee. They are goal-oriented and the person gets supported whether they’re on Suboxone or, in one case I know, micro-dosing with LSD for depression; they’ll be supported either way. My goal with youth is: ‘Try to get to one meeting this month; start slow.’ Don’t set the bar too high and if they enjoy it, then great.

    The 12-step meeting I go to, it’s a men’s meeting. There are people there on medication and they don’t get blow-back. I wish more of AA was like this. When I came in, almost 30 years ago now, I saw all the God-stuff on the walls and I thought, ‘Nah, this isn’t going to work’ but thank G… (laughs), thank the Group of Drunks who said, ‘You don’t have to believe in that.’ The range in my meeting is broad—Eastern philosophy, Native American practices, Yoga, I was invited to Transcendental Meditation meetings at members’ houses. I was fortunate to fall into this group. You know, the first book my sponsor gave me was The Tao of Physics—not The Big Book—it was this 70’s book with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, correlated to physics and contemporary science.”

    So, as to the question that kicked this off, some mutual aid meetings are ready to meet the taste of a new generation; results may vary. Who’s heard: “If you haven’t met anyone you don’t like in AA, you haven’t gone to enough meetings”?

    The reverse is true, also. If the peer-to-peer meetings I’ve sampled seem too narrow or dogmatic, maybe my search for just the right fit isn’t over. And if I don’t want a face-to-face meeting, there’s always Kevin’s podcast, virtual communities like The Fix, or I can order one of Bob or David or Jeffrey’s books if that’s more to my taste.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Microaggressions: How Subconscious Biases Affect Recovery

    Microaggressions: How Subconscious Biases Affect Recovery

    An example of a microaggression in the recovery universe: someone from NA asks someone who’s considering Suboxone: “Are you in denial? A drug is a drug is a drug.” No malicious intent is involved, but the fellow member is left feeling disparaged.

    Politics and Religion: we’re encouraged to avoid these conversations, socially. Conviction can escalate to hostility, hurt feelings and polarization, turning a fun-loving conversation into… “Awkward.”

    Has anyone noticed polarization-creep migrating from political intercourse into our addiction/recovery discussion? A diversifying recovery community means different tribes and subcultures with differing views on recovery and addiction. Many Fix readers are members of a mutual-aid group that gives a sense of identity and belonging. Being tribal is human nature; so, what’s the problem? Maybe it’s a hangover from the current political climate but I’m feeling a little microaggression-fatigue. It’s great to cheer hard for the home-team; but does that mean diminishing the other(s)?

    “We tribal humans have a ‘dark side,’ ironically also related to our social relationships: We are as belligerent and brutal as any other animal species,” says author and UC San Diego Professor Emeritus Saul Levine, MD, in “Belonging Is Our Blessing, Tribalism Is Our Burden.” “Our species, homo sapiens, is indeed creative and loving, but it is also destructive and hostile.”

    Levine cautions that for all the psychological good that belonging offers us, “Dangers lurk when there is an absence of Benevolence. Excessive group cohesiveness and feelings of superiority breed mistrust and dislike of others and can prevent or destroy caring relationships. Estrangement can easily beget prejudice, nativism, and extremism. These are the very hallmarks of zealous tribalism which has fueled bloodshed and wars over the millennia.”

    How does “zealous tribalism” present in the recovery community? Abstinence-focused tribes have dearly held views that differ from our harm-reduction fellows. Inside the abstinence-model tribe, it’s not all Kum Ba Yah, either. Refuge Recovery clans, SMART Recovery, Women for Recovery and the 12-step advocates may feel a superiority/inferiority thing that comes out in how we talk about each other. SMART followers may look down on 12-stepping as stubbornly old-fashioned. 12-steppers might see Life Ring or other new tribes as acting overtly precious with their dismissal of tried-and-true methods. Focusing in even more, we see NAs, CAs and AAs each rolling their eyes at each other’s rituals or slogans. In AA, secular members and “our more religious members” finger point at each other about who’s being too rigid and who’s watering down the message. These are examples of what Levine calls “belonging without the benevolence.” Finding “our people” is great. Part of what makes us feel included might also over-emphasize the narcissism of small differences.

    “Meeting makers make it!”
    “That’s not sober; that’s dry. The solution is clearly laid out in the 12 steps—not meetings!”
    “AA’s a cult that harms more people than it helps!”

    These are tribal battle cries—sincerely held feeling based in part on our unique lived experience and in part on an ignorance we’re not conscious of.

    If you love the fight and you don’t care what others think of you, this article might not hold your attention. We’re going to talk about how to get along better. On the other hand, if you see yourself as empathetic and regret falling prey to us vs. them conflicts, let’s talk about cause and corrective measures.

    Recovery professionals curb their own biases through professional practices; we can borrow their best practices to avoid getting defensive or dismissive with people who hold divergent worldviews. If our goal is to connect with others, an increasingly diverse world of others presents challenges.

    “In my early career, I was adamant about abstinence as the only viable solution to alcohol and other drug problems,” recalls William White, author of Recovery Rising: A Retrospective of Addiction Treatment and Recovery. As a historian and treatment mentor, White learned from lived-experience, clinical practice, study and research. His 2017 book advocates for treatment professionals to exercise “professional humility and holding all of our opinions on probation pending new discoveries in the field and new learning experiences. Many parties can be harmed when we mistake a part of the truth for the whole truth.”

    If 100% of my knowledge about harm reduction is from harm reduction failures who tell their story of decline in a 12-step meeting, I could “mistake a part of the truth for the whole truth.” What would I know about harm reduction success stories if I only go to 12-step rooms?

    Treatment professionals are adapting to cultural diversity in their practices. Bound by a Code of Ethics, NAADAC (the Association for Addiction Professionals) has embraced the concept of “cultural humility.” Cultural humility is a fiduciary duty for professionals to be sensitive to client race, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity and physical/mental characteristics when providing healthcare.

    “Cultural humility is other-oriented. Cultural humility is to maintain a willingness to suspend what you know or what you think you know based on generalizations about the client’s culture. Power imbalance between counselor and client have no place in cultural humility. There is an expectation that you understand the population you’re serving and that you take the time to understand them better,” explains Mita Johnson, the Ethics Chair for NAADAC, who teaches cultural humility to addiction/treatment professionals. Dr. Johnson says, “Addiction professionals and providers, bound by ethical practice standards, shall develop an understanding of their own personal, professional and cultural values and beliefs. Providers shall seek supervision and/or consultation to decrease bias, judgement and microaggressions. Microaggressions are often below our level of awareness. We don’t always know we are doing it.”

    Microaggression—today’s buzzword—google it. In The Atlantic’s “Microaggression Matters,” Simba Runyowa elaborates on the insidiousness of this behavior: “Microaggressions are behaviors or statements that do not necessarily reflect malicious intent, but which nevertheless can inflict insult or injury. … microaggressions point out cultural difference in ways that put the recipient’s non-conformity into sharp relief, often causing anxiety and crises of belonging on the part of minorities.”

    Here’s how that might look in our recovery universe: someone from NA, a complete abstinence-based fellowship, asks someone who’s thinking about medication-assisted treatment with Suboxone: “Are you in denial? A drug is a drug is a drug.” No malicious intent is involved but the fellow member is left feeling disparaged. Maybe the well-intended NA had a negative experience with medically assisted treatment (MAT) and has a visceral feeling about it, “Taking drugs to stop drugs isn’t clean.” But NA doesn’t work for everyone. Yours or my anecdotal experience will bias us. Maybe expressing my own personal experience, or just listening without commenting, would be more culturally humble.

    The same is true of the MAT fan who says, “12-steppers are deluded by a faith-healing 80-year-old modality; only five-percent of people get helped from the 12 steps.” These types of arguments are not other-oriented. This is tribalism. 

    A simplistic solution to avoiding lane-drift is to listen more and share in first person. Prescriptive communicating—as opposed to a descriptive narrative—will, inadvertently, engage us in microaggression.

    Just when “Why can’t we all just get along” seemed hard enough, there’s more than one subconscious microaggression we need to be aware of. Derald W. Sue, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Columbia University, describes three microaggressions: micro–assaults, micro–insults and micro–invalidations.

    Micro–assaults are most akin to conventional discrimination. They are explicit derogatory actions, intended to hurt. Here’s an AA example: disparaging a humanist AA in a meeting by quoting Dr. Bob’s 1930s view, “If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you.” No one feels “sorry for” their equal. Inferiority is implied.

    “A micro–insult is an unconscious communication that demeans a person from a minority group,” Dr. Sue reports. Using another 12-step creed-based example, “CA includes everyone; it’s ‘God as you understand Him.” Who is likely to feel demeaned by Judeo/Christian-normative language?

    We could rightfully credit 1930s middle-America Alcoholics Anonymous founders for their progressive—always inclusive, never exclusive—posture; “everybody” in 1939 America meant Protestants, Catholics and Jews. The AA of the 1930s was culturally humble. Today, inadvertently, this same language is less effective at gateway-widening. Today, just 33% of earthlings embrace this interventionist higher power of the early 12-step narrative. According to the Washington Times, globally, 16% of people have no religion and 51% have a non-theistic, polytheistic faith. Sikhs or Muslims may share monotheism, but they worship a genderless deity; no room for “Him” of any understanding. Cultural humility accommodates all worldviews, without asking others to speak in the language of the majority.

    “Minimizing or disregarding the thoughts, feelings or experiences of a person of color is referred to as micro–invalidation.” This is how the American Psychiatric Association rounds out Dr. Sue’s three types of microaggression. “A white person asserting to minorities that ‘They don’t see color’ or that ‘We are all human beings’ are examples.”

    Disregarding or minimizing in our community might be telling someone: “You can participate in your online groups if you like but don’t treat InTheRooms.com like real meetings. Face-to-face is the only way to connect with real people.” If expressed in first person, instead of disregarding the other, the message could relate a personal experience and an informed belief. Have we learned everything about the person we’re talking to? Social anxiety disorder or a dependent partner, parent or child at home could be reasons why the online meeting is the superior option for them.

    To William White’s point, what do I really know about the comparative benefits of online community vs. traditional meetings? Maybe I could consider his informed advice of “holding all of our opinions on probation pending new discoveries in the field and new learning experiences.”

    Mita Johnson identifies a challenge with microaggression—it’s subconscious. How do we correct subconscious behaviors? Dr. Sue authored a couple of books to help combat microaggression at an individual, institutional and societal level: Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation and Microaggressions and Marginality. Sue offers five steps to help connect us with more varieties of addicts/alcoholics. “Microaggressions are unconscious manifestations of a worldview of inclusion, exclusion, superiority, inferiority; thus, our main task is to make the invisible, visible.” Here are Dr. Sue’s five practices:

    1. Learn from constant vigilance of your own biases and fears.
    2. Experiential reality is important in interacting with people who differ from you in terms of race, culture, ethnicity.
    3. Don’t be defensive.
    4. Be open to discussing your own attitudes and biases and how they might have hurt others or revealed bias on your part.
    5. Be an ally. Stand personally against all forms of bias and discrimination.

    I gave it a try. Taking inventory—in these five ways—of my prejudices and preconceived ideas helps identify my insensitivities. It helps thinking/acting more other-oriented. Secondly, more than ever, it’s a good time for more active listening and less instruction. Getting defensive, even to microaggression coming my way, escalates the divides. Admitting my assumptions and the faulty conclusions is a version of “promptly admit it” that is so familiar. Finally, how can I “Be an ally?” It’s not hard, today, to stand up for myself when I’m being disrespected. Now will I say something when someone else is being invalidated, insulted or dismissed? Yes, there’s a time to mind my own business but if I’m committed to “be an ally,” can I stay silent when another is being ganged up on by the tyranny of the majority?

    When I’m tempted to be tribal when confronted with other individuals or recovery groups, I try to remember that all people who suffer from process or substance use disorder have been subjected to microaggressions. William White identifies a few of the more cliché slights we all face:

    • “Portrayals of the cause of substance use disorders as personal culpability (bad character) rather than biological, psychological, or environmental vulnerability.
    • Imposed shame, e.g., being explicitly prohibited by one’s supervisor from disclosing one’s recovery status out of the fear it would harm the reputation of the company.
    • Misinterpretation of normal stress responses as signs of impending relapse.”

    In this regard there is no us vs. them. Just “us.”

    Not everyone believes that shining a light on microaggression will solve hostilities towards each other. “There are many problems with studies of microaggressions, technical and conceptual. To start, its advocates are informed by the academic tradition of critical theory,” Althea Nagai argues in “The Pseudo-Science of Microaggressions.” Nagai identifies confirmation bias found in almost all focus groups and the problem of unintended consequences when institutionalizing anti-microaggression policy.

    Nagai’s National Association of Scholars article continues, “There is nothing in the current research to show that such programs work. I suspect most fail to create greater feelings of inclusion. Research suggests they create more alienation and sense of apartness. The recent large-scale quantitative studies suggest that increased focus on ethnic/racial identity exacerbates the problems they are supposed to address. In other words, ‘social justice’ and diversity programs may actually backfire, creating less inclusion, more polarization.”

    Dr. Sue cautions us about weaponizing microaggression; other-oriented cultural humility is to take inventory of my microaggressions—not to fault-find other’s behaviors. Social psychologist Lee Jussim in Psychology Today says keep it personal—not global: “To understand how we can all unintentionally give offense through our own ignorance or insensitivity—thereby increasing our ability to make the same points without being hurtful.”

    “I’d rather step on your toes than walk on your grave,” is a rationalization we hear in the rooms. How do I neither pussy-foot around and avoid being a dick? Beyond intellectualizing, cultural humility is introspective. In “Cultural Humility versus Cultural Competence: A Critical Distinction in Defining Physician Training Outcomes,” cues from professionals show me how to re-frame how I interact with others: “Cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique to redressing the power imbalance in the patient-physician dynamic and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and the defined population.”

    For me, this nails how to stay other-focused: Professionals (or anyone who wants to relate to others better) should “relinquish the role of expert and become the student of the patient with a conviction and explicit expression of the patient’s potential to be a capable and full partner in the therapeutic alliance.”

    I don’t need a course or a degree to “become the student” of others. Instead of acting like I know what’s best for others, I can be a fellow traveler; think about other-focused approaches globally; but act locally.

    View the original article at thefix.com