Powerless Over Alcohol
by A. Orange
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
The A.A. First Step, where people are supposed to "admit" that they are "powerless over alcohol", is a hoax.
People are not "powerless" over their desires to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or take drugs. Being sick, and having a messed-up life from too much drinking, is just that -- being sick. It isn't "powerlessness." Having difficulties quitting is not "powerlessness", it's having difficulties quitting. Saying that your drinking has really gotten out of control doesn't mean that you are powerless over it.
Quitting can be hard, extremely difficult and painful, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible, or that you can't do it. Remember: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
The "powerless" doctrine of Alcoholics Anonymous is one of their most central religious beliefs. It is one of those points where A.A. radically departs from Christianity or any other mainstream religion of the world, and enters the bizarre realm of cult religion. A.A. teaches that people are incapable of running their own lives and must surrender control of their lives to the A.A. group and a "Higher Power" who will control them, and do the quitting for them. Thus the real purpose of Step One is to prepare the new members for Steps Two and Three, where they will confess that they are insane, and then surrender their wills and their lives to "the care of God" and the Alcoholics Anonymous group.
One of the biggest problems with the Twelve-Step program is the learned helplessness caused by the First Step, where people are taught to confess that they are "powerless over alcohol." This leads many people to believe that once they have a drink, that a full-blown relapse and total loss of self-control is inevitable and unavoidable.4
The other half of Step One, which says that "our lives had become unmanageable", leads some people to believe that they shouldn't even try to manage their lives. Step Two is just as bad: it teaches people that they are insane, and that only a Supernatural Being can restore them to sanity -- which means that they are helpless, and cannot heal themselves. Then Step Three teaches a lifestyle of passive dependency, where A.A. members turn control of their wills and their lives over to "the care of God as we understood Him", and they expect God to run their lives and solve all their problems for them from then on...
The Big Book tells us that,
It helped me a lot to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue; that I had been drinking as a result of a compulsion, even though I had not been aware of the compulsion at the time; and that sobriety was not a matter of will power.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 448.
On the contrary, sobriety is most assuredly a matter of will power and self-control. Nobody else is going to do the quitting for you. Nobody else CAN do the quitting for you. Nobody else is going to hold your hand every Saturday night.
I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they had prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come -- I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was a crushing blow.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 41-42.
Those friends "prophesied" that alcoholics would suffer from "strange mental blank spots", where the alcoholism would seize control of their minds and "will power and self-knowledge would not help," and they would be drunk before they even realized what was happening. That is a great excuse for relapsing whenever someone craves a drink, but it is totally untrue. It is ridiculous pseudo-science.
THERE IS NO BLANK SPOT, NONE AT ALL.
People may rationalize their actions, or minimize the danger for a few minutes, or make up all kinds of excuses for why it's okay to take that first drink, why it's okay to have just one; they may sometimes even just refuse to think about the negative consequences because they really want that drink, but there is no blank spot where the alcoholic is unable to see that he is deliberately lifting a drink to his mouth, choosing to drink, and that he is voluntarily swallowing it. There is no blank spot where he doesn't have a choice, and can't control his hands or his mouth.
But Bill Wilson insisted that there was, and that he just couldn't help but take a drink whenever he got some cravings. Bill was nuts.
Bill Wilson taught that he was "powerless" over every urge or craving he ever had, no matter whether it was a thirst for alcohol, cravings for cigarettes, greed for money, the desire for self-aggrandizement, the temptation to lie, or the urge to cheat on his wife Lois by having sex with all of the pretty young women who came to the A.A. meetings seeking help. That's an interesting excuse for cheating on your wife, one of the more novel ones, but it doesn't wash.
Bill Wilson was habitually unfaithful to the wife who was working to support him, both before and after sobriety. He invented the A.A. tradition of "thirteenth stepping" the attractive young women who came to A.A. looking for help.
Bill was such an outrageous philanderer that the other elder A.A. members had to form a "Founder's Watch Committee", whose job it was to follow Bill Wilson around, and watch him, and break up budding sexual relationships with the pretty young things before he publicly embarrassed A.A. yet again.3
So just how was Bill's behavior an example of a life "lived on a spiritual basis"? Besides the fact that he hypocritically yammered the words "God" and "working selflessly" all of the time, and held seánces and played with Ouija boards, just what was "spiritual" about William G. Wilson?
In addition, Bill was just echoing the religious doctrine of Frank Buchman, who preached that everyone in the world had been defeated by sin, and was powerless over it, and could only be saved by surrendering his will and life to God and coming under "God-control" (which really meant, under "Frank-control").
Bill Wilson just substituted the word "alcohol" for the word "sin". Bill wanted all of the alcoholics to feel hopeless and powerless over alcohol so that they would despair and surrender to "the care of God as we understood Him", which really meant, "Surrender to the control of your sponsor and the Alcoholics Anonymous group."
Bill continued:
Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.
The Big Book, Chapter 3, William G. Wilson, More About Alcoholism, page 43.
No effective mental defense? You have to just hope that some Spirit or Higher Power will keep you from drinking? And this is the program whose members claim is the best alcoholism recovery program in the world?
Well, Bill Wilson thought so:
We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. And besides, we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, the Foreword to the First Edition, page xiii of the 3rd edition.
Aha! There it is:
And besides, the real goal of our program is to get everyone in the world living according to the Buchman-and-Bill religious program, "our way of living."
Bill Wilson also wrote that A.A. members will all testify:
"I simply couldn't stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me. But when I became willing to clean house and then asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted right out of me..."
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, pages 63-64.
Notice the really bizarre complaint:
"I simply couldn't stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me."
Bill Wilson didn't seem to understand that when you quit drinking, smoking, or drugging, you do it yourself.
No other human being can do the quitting for you.
It's really ridiculous to think that someone else could do the quitting for you. It's insane. But that's what Bill Wilson wanted: an easier, softer way where Somebody Else, like God, did all of the hard work for him, where somebody else did the quitting for him:
We will seldom be interested in liquor.
...
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.
...
We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, pages 84-85.
Now that is really a delusional cure for alcoholism. Without any thought or effort on our part, God just makes the problem disappear. Poof!
In his next book, Bill Wilson wrote:
We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 22.
Self-confidence is a total liability?
No amount of human willpower can break the grip of alcoholism on a person?
There is no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will?
That is ridiculous and pathetic. Everyone who successfully quits drinking uses his or her own will power. Everyone who stays quit uses his or her own will power every day and every night.
The Harvard Mental Health Letter, from The Harvard Medical School, stated quite plainly:
On their own
There is a high rate of recovery among alcoholics and addicts, treated and untreated. According to one estimate, heroin addicts break the habit in an average of 11 years. Another estimate is that at least 50% of alcoholics eventually free themselves although only 10% are ever treated. One recent study found that 80% of all alcoholics who recover for a year or more do so on their own, some after being unsuccessfully treated. When a group of these self-treated alcoholics was interviewed, 57% said they simply decided that alcohol was bad for them. Twenty-nine percent said health problems, frightening experiences, accidents, or blackouts persuaded them to quit. Others used such phrases as "Things were building up" or "I was sick and tired of it." Support from a husband or wife was important in sustaining the resolution.
Treatment of Drug Abuse and Addiction -- Part III, The Harvard Mental Health Letter, Volume 12, Number 4, October 1995, page 3.
(See Aug. (Part I), Sept. (Part II), Oct. 1995 (Part III).)
So much for the sayings that
"Everybody needs a support group."
and
"Nobody can do it alone."
Most people do.
And note that the Harvard Medical School says that the support of a good spouse is more important than that of a 12-step group. But A.A. says just the opposite:
"Dump your spouse and marry the A.A. group, because A.A. is The Only Way."
Other stories in the Big Book say:
I saw that it was my life that was unmanageable -- not just my drinking.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 471.
I did not know that I had no power over alcohol, that I, alone and unaided, could not stop; that I was on a downgrade, tearing along at full speed with all my brakes gone, and that the end would be a total smash-up, death or insanity.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 471.
Other A.A.-booster literature tells stories like:
I said to my sponsor, "I really can't do this."
He said, "Good."
I said, "No, I mean, I really can't do this, all of the quitting and staying quit, and total abstinence. I just don't have it in me to succeed in a program like that."
He said, "Now you've getting it! That's what the program is all about. You must admit that you are powerless over alcohol."
That is surrender to an attitude of helplessness.
All members who actively work the program readily admit that they are powerless over alcohol.
Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous, Danny M. Wilcox, page 88.
Why shouldn't I be able to handle this crisis? After all, I had willpower.
Some time later Dr. Anderson was to make me think about the later. "If alcoholism is a disease," he observed, "and I believe it is, what does willpower have to do with it? A cardiac victim can't say, 'I will not have another heart attack,' and will it so; the cancer patient can't say, 'I have willpower and I will rid myself of it, I won't let it get worse.' There is something about alcoholism that is organic -- physical and psychological in the the mind -- and willpower doesn't matter. When the alcoholic, after much suffering, vows he'll never take another drink, he really means it at the time. When he winds up drunk a month later, he wonders what happened; he doesn't realize that willpower has nothing to do with it."
Where Did Everybody Go?, Paul Molloy, page 88.
Notice how the doctor said, "If alcoholism is a disease..." But since alcoholism is not a disease, will power has everything to do with quitting and staying quit.
Obviously, alcoholism is not a disease like cancer or cardiac disease. Alcoholism is not a disease at all. It is habitual, compulsive behavior. They don't build bars and pubs to dispense heart attacks, but they do for alcoholism. You cannot just stop having cancer just by changing your diet, and perhaps abstaining from eating something like white sugar, but you can stop suffering from alcoholism just by abstaining from drinking ethyl alcohol. That is not a disease; that is behavior.
People relapse because they think that they can just nibble a little and get away with it. They imagine that they can do just a few without getting hooked again. They are wrong. See The Lizard-Brain Addiction Monster for more on that.
When alcoholics wake up sick and hung over the next morning, and ask, "What happened?", the answer is simple. They took a drink and rationalized that it would be okay. It was so okay that they then had a second one, and that was okay too, and so was a third one, etc... And then after 4 or 5 drinks they stopped counting... And then they wake up the next morning, feeling sick, finding that they drank far more than they had originally intended. But that's just how getting drunk works.
Now there is a genetic factor that changes how alcoholics feel, and how they react to alcohol, but those genes do not force people to drink to excess, and those genes do not make people powerless over alcohol.
While the A.A. preachers are busy making you feel guilty about everything, they will tell you that you were extremely selfish because you chose the bottle over family, friends, career, or anything else. If that is true, then you had the power to choose, which means that you weren't powerless over alcohol at all, which means that the First Step is wrong.
For that matter, the whole blame game is a bait-and-switch stunt. They will start off by telling you that it isn't your fault, alcoholism is not a moral stigma because it's a disease and you are powerless over it. But after you have joined A.A. and become a committed member, then they will tell you that you are guilty and personally responsible for everything.
A.A. evangelists and talking heads like Jillian Sandell (U. of California at Berkeley) actually teach that personal control and personal accomplishment are myths.1 She says that the Abraham Lincoln "log cabin to the White House" story is just another "popular American myth" and that such myths "allow individuals to believe that certain goals can be realized through hard work, merit, or just being a nice person..." Ms. Sandell says that such beliefs are all wrong, and that change is only possible by "turning our lives over to god as we understand him/her", and by working the Twelve Steps, of course:
A central premise of Twelve step programs (and the first 'Step') is to acknowledge the futility of the illusion of individual control. This is a key difference from self-help books and therapy, both of which rest upon the belief in individual power to change situations. Indeed, it is worth just briefly elaborating here some of the premises upon which individual therapeutic practices are based since Twelve Step programs are so different. Self-help books and individual therapy both aim to give the individual a feeling of personal control. They tap into the popular American myth that if we just try hard enough we can be or do anything. This myth has taken on many forms, Cinderella's 'rags to riches' version is one, Abraham Lincoln's 'log cabin to White House' is another, and Marty McFly's 'if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything' (in Spielberg's Back to the Future) is another; but all have the same aim. They allow individuals to believe that certain goals can be realized though hard work, merit or just being a nice person, thereby ignoring the larger societal structures. Issues around class, race, sex, etc. become irrelevant and transcendable. Both self-help books and therapy place all the responsibility of change in the hands of individuals.
It is not that Twelve Steppers think change is impossible, only that it can not be achieved alone. Steps Two and Three go on to say that we need to believe that a 'higher power' can restore us to health and that we need to commit to turning our lives over to god as we understand him/her. This last point is crucial since for many in the program 'god' is simply 'the program' itself.
Jillian Sandell, "Working the Program", Bad Subjects, Issue #10, December 1993.
That is passive dependency as a lifestyle and a religion.
It's a total cop-out. It's refusing to really live.
It's making excuses for failure before you even try.
It's refusing to try because you might fail.
"Trying is the first step towards failure."
-- Homer Simpson
It's a cowardly retreat from life that tries to cover its tracks by proclaiming that admitting powerlessness and dependency is really wonderful "rigorous honesty."
It is surrender to the cult, "turning our lives over to god as we understand him/her."
Note that this lower-case "god" isn't really "God"; it is whatever you make it; and "for many in the program 'god' is simply 'the program' itself."
So, your personal "G.O.D." is simply a "Group Of Drunks". Theologians can really have fun with that one. (Such a statement is totally heretical. It is a wonder that the Catholic Church has not banned Alcoholics Anonymous.)
So you "commit to turning your life over to" the cult. You surrender to the cult, which sounds a little bit like selling your soul to the Devil.
If I had to give a name to such a philosophy, I would call it "loser-ism". It's the church where you proudly brag about what a helpless loser you are. The Beatles' song I'm a Loser is the standard church music. Competence, strength, intelligence, self-reliance, and self-confidence are terrible vices and sins, immoral mistakes to be avoided at all costs, while incompetence, stupidity, ignorance, irrationalty, superstition, blind faith, dependency, weakness, powerlessness, and insanity are virtues to be proudly "admitted" at church get-togethers.
"You are powerless over everything,"
"You can't do it without your support group,"
and
"You can't handle life without having keepers to tell you what to do",
are the sacred teachings of the church.
"The more I feel my smallness and powerlessness, the more I grow in spirituality."
Having Had A Spiritual Awakening..., p. 159
quoted in Hope For Today, page 233, published by Al-Anon Family Groups.
Jillian Sandell's description of the A.A. version of recovery is inaccurate, and downright backwards in many ways:
It is Alcoholics Anonymous that ignores all "larger societal structures" like class, race, sex, environment, poverty, child abuse, and family life. A.A. says that those things are irrelevant. A.A. says that you drank too much because you have nasty personal defects ("defects of character"): you are sinful, willful, and selfish, you have numerous moral shortcomings, and you have a huge ego that thinks it is the center of the Universe and too big and too good to need God. And A.A.'s answer is to give you the one-size-fits-all Twelve Step cure. It doesn't matter what your personal history is, or what your race, creed, sex, religion, socio-economic status, or anything else is; it doesn't matter whether you were an abused child, or whether you have physical or mental illnesses, you will get prescribed the same "simple" 12-step fix as everybody else. That is really ignoring all of the "larger societal structures."
And Step Two most assuredly does not "say that we need to believe that a 'higher power' can restore us to health", like Ms. Sandell says. Step Two says that we "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Sanity, not health. We must confess that we are insane and incapable of thinking for ourselves, and incapable of managing our own lives.
Likewise, Step Three says that we must turn our will and our lives over to the care of God or Alcoholics Anonymous, not "that we need to commit to turning our lives over to god as we understand him/her." We must surrender our will to "god", our "Group Of Drunks", and let A.A. do our thinking for us, and let our sponsors boss us around and tell us what to do with our lives.
Ms. Sandell blithely glosses over all of those gory little details. (Perhaps she wishes to avoid arousing any prejudices that we may have against cult religions...)
Abraham Lincoln's life story is hardly a myth. Ms. Sandell would do well to actually read a good biography of Abraham Lincoln. He really did accomplish many things through his own efforts, perseverence, and hard work, like teaching himself to read and write, and becoming a lawyer just by studying three law books and then passing the bar examination (which, admittedly, must have been less complex in those days...) Lincoln ran for Congress and the Senate, and sometimes won and sometimes lost, but he persevered, and ended up becoming the President. That is real United States history, not a popular myth.
And Ms. Sandell actually tells us that Marty McFly's 'if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything' attitude is all wrong? Just out of wild curiosity, how did the Australian woman Jillian Sandell graduate from college and become a Berkeley university professor?2 By eschewing self-reliance and hard work? By having her support group take her exams for her? I don't think so... Does Ms. Sandell recommend the Church of Loserism for us recovering alcoholics, while reserving the Right to Excel for herself?
All of the world's great religions teach just the opposite of the A.A. doctrine of powerlessness. And I do mean ALL of them: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Original American religious teachings, Confucianism, Taoism, Bahai-ism, the I Ching, you name it. They teach that personal morality consists of controlling one's own actions, and actively doing good, and refraining from doing wrong. They teach self-discipline, self-control, individual responsibility, and personal accomplishment through perseverance and hard work.
Perseverance furthers:
The inferior man, fearful of failure, says that it cannot be done, and never starts the work.
The average man sets to work, but quits when he finds his way blocked by great difficulties.
The superior man perseveres in his work until he reaches his goal, even though difficulties and obstacles rise up and tower ten-thousand-fold before him.
-- Old Confucian and Zen saying
Personal morality does not consist of screaming that one is helpless and powerless, and despairing and throwing up one's hands and saying that one cannot ever do it right, so don't even bother trying.
Nobody is powerless over urges, cravings, or temptations. Just because you feel an urge or a craving doesn't mean that you have to give in to it, and feed it. The way to quit drinking is not to expect God to just magically remove all desire for drink. The way to quit is to just not give in to the cravings that will inevitably come. And that is just how the vast majority of people quit. Eighty percent of all of the alcoholics who successfully quit drinking do it alone, without A.A., the Twelve Steps, or "admitting" that they are powerless over alcohol.
You really can handle cravings and feelings of ecstatic recall.
You are not powerless over your feelings.
You are not the slave of your feelings.
You do not have to relapse just because you get some cravings or feelings of ecstatic recall.
Feelings are just feelings, after all.
You don't really need a sponsor to hold your hand every night for the rest of your life to keep you from drinking, smoking, or drugging, which is good, because you really aren't going to get such a free full-time baby-sitter, anyway. So you're still on your own.
In fact, if you are really going to quit, then you really have to quit. That is, you really have to do the quitting yourself, and you have to stay quit, by yourself. Nobody else is going to do the quitting for you, not God, not Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, not Santa Claus, not the Tooth Fairy, and not your "support group."
Also see Jeff Jay's declarations that alcoholics choose addiction over recovery, in his Hazelden book on interventions. Throughout his book, he repeats the standard A.A. party line about alcoholism being a disease, and the alcoholic not having any control over it, and then he faults the alcoholics who will not "voluntarily choose" to get sent to an expensive residential treatment center like Hazelden ($15,000 for 28 days).
Footnotes:
1) Jillian Sandell, Working the Program, Bad Subjects, Issue #10, December 1993.
http://eserver.org/bs/10/Sandell.html 2) Jillian Sandell is a member of the Bad Subjects Collective. She is a graduate of the Australian National University, and her degree is in Women's Studies and Philosophy. She can be reached at the following Internet address:
http://www.orange-papers.org/ Copyright © 2004, A. Orange
