Tag: 12 steps

stuck v. free

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

The journey from being stuck to being free is perhaps one of the most basic of all trajectories for human development.

Perhaps one of the most ancient and foundational narratives that give colour to this trajectory is the Exodus. The Israelites go from being brutally enslaved in Egypt to being free in the promised land. The complex and protracted nature of their arrival in the promised land only adds further colour to the trajectory. As the preachers say, it took a single night to get Israel out of Egypt, but an entire generation to get Egypt out of Israel.

Depending on where you live and what your relationship is with various ideas or traditions, you may put different labels to what you find enslaving and what you have found freeing. Some examples could be:

  • feeling enslaved by moral failures and finding freedom in forgiveness and grace
  • feeling enslaved by guilt and shame and finding freedom in people who have felt the same as you
  • feeling enslaved by rules and finding freedom in autonomy
  • feeling enslaved by chaos and finding freedom in order
  • feeling enslaved by religion and finding freedom in secularism
  • feeling enslaved by meaninglessness and finding freedom in tradition
  • feeling enslaved by others and finding freedom in self
  • feeling enslaved by isolation and finding freedom in community

As the list shows, sometimes the very same thing that one person associates with slavery can be associated by another with freedom. As is sometimes said, freedom ‘from’ is not necessarily freedom ‘for’.

12-step spirituality is about a the trajectory away from the slavery of addiction and the freedom of recovery.

You might say that 12-step spirituality is designed to take an addict down to the deepest level of their slavery and take them to the deepest kind of freedom.

  • The physical level is the surface level
    • there is the slavery of using the drug (or engaging in the behaviour) again and again, and the freedom of not using
      • This level does not touch the real nature of addiction. Unless the deeper levels are addressed, addicts can abstain for varying lengths of time before they use again.
  • The mental level is near the surface
    • there is a kind of slavery to ‘addict thinking’ which is obsessive, disordered, and ‘insane’, and the promise of the freedom of being restored to sanity.
      • This too still falls short of the heart of addiction and recovery. There are very helpful insights (“You know, addiction thrives in isolation, I was watching this great TED talk…”), slogans (“stinking thinking”; “one day at a time” or “remember to reach out”), or acronyms (“When you want to drink, remember H.A.L.T. and ask yourself if you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired…”). But one of the prime features of addiction is forgetting all the good reasons or the pain that addictive behaviour brings. Relying on memory isn’t enough for a real addict.
  • The spiritual level is where the steps focus.
    • The ultimate need is to overcome a focus on (and defense of) self that is warped by resentment, fear, and the inability to clearly see when I have harmed others (even if they may have harmed me). This excessive focus on the self is the real slavery. The real freedom promised by the steps is a life of humble service to others. An addict working the steps is liberated from the resentful blindness to any harms they have done, and into the capacity to humbly see and make amends for how they have hurt others.

To put it as succinctly as possible: a) the journey from being stuck in addiction to being free in recovery is tethered via an unbreakable spiritual cord to b) the journey from being stuck in self-justifying resentment to being free in humble amends and service to others.

To finish, here is a paragraph from the AA Big Book which summarises the need for a spiritual overcoming of selfish resentment in order to find deep recovery.

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again.

potential & real sinners

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

I’m not an alcoholic.
But… I’m a real fan of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The forward to The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (a.k.a. the 12×12) acknowledges that the contents of that book (and AA wisdom more generally) “might arouse interest and find application outside of A.A. itself.” Non-alcoholics who practice the 12 steps report that “they have been able to meet other difficulties of life.” The steps can be “a way to happy and effective living”, regardless of whether one is an alcoholic or not.

drinkers and ‘real alcoholics’

As I look through the AA Big Book and the 12×12 I’m fascinated by a particular distinction made between the “moderate drinker”, the “hard drinker” and the “real alcoholic”. It’s worth quoting directly from the Big Book:

Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone.

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.

AA Big Book, 20-21

Note the role of reason in restricting the moderate and hard drinker. Merely “good” reason can regulate the moderate drinker, while it takes “sufficiently strong reason” to stop the hard drinker. Both of them can be stopped with reason. Not so with the real alcoholic. The real alcoholic is immune to all reasons to not drink. Sooner or later, regardless of intermittent and temporary experiences of imagined control, it becomes clear even to them that they cannot stop once they start.

What does this have to do with the interest that people like me, who (as far as they know) are not alcoholics, but who find the Steps and the wisdom of AA useful for living? More specifically still, what does it have to do with a Christian focus on kingdom living?

The connection lies in properly understanding the relationship between addiction and sin.

addiction and sin

There are differences between the two. AA suggests not all people are ‘real alcoholics’ as referred to above. Meanwhile, Christianity contends that all are sinners.

But there are similarities.

The sharp distinction AA makes between alcoholics and non-alcoholics does not mean that no common patterns exist when it comes to the human consumption of alcohol. You don’t have to be a ‘real alcoholic’ to really get into real trouble with alcohol. In fact, Part II of the AA Big Book entirely contains stories of “actual or potential alcoholics” who became convinced that “compulsive alcoholism already had them”. They didn’t want alcoholism to progress like cancer to the state of being “malignant… before seeking help.” They “didn’t want to hit bottom because, thank God, we could see the bottom. Actually, the bottom came up and hit us”

Meanwhile, with sin, the fact that Christianity places all of humanity in one sinful boat does not mean that everyone experiences sinfulness in exactly the same way all the time. Some people can see their sin and then repent almost immediately. (This is certainly the recommended strategy for life!) Others struggle with it for a while, experience some mild consequences, and then turn around. Others still, like the lost son in Luke 15, waste their whole inheritance and find their entire lives ruined. In the Christian understanding, sin can grow and develop to the point where it becomes addiction. Repeated behaviour (for good or for ill) becomes habitual, ritualistic, automatic and second nature. The wisest path is to “see the bottom” before you hit it. See the destruction that sin can cause and turn around. Seek God’s love and spirit and kingdom.

So then… the parallels are clear.

I am not any kind of alcoholic (that I know of? yet!?), but I know I am not only a potential sinner, but a real one. Just like an alcoholic needs to work a program or die, so also I need to pursue a live of prayer and service or I’ll wreck my life. I need to pursue the grace and spirit and strength of God, just like a “real alcoholic” must seek escape from alcoholism “with all the desperation of drowning men.”