Infactorium

AA is a little bit different in different places. And a lot the same everywhere. I have been to AA meetings in four countries and seven states. Hardly a huge sample. And except for Missouri, California, and my current home state, I haven’t been to enough meetings anywhere to really judge what AA is like in those places. The meeting I went to in Bermuda was small and cozy, and felt just like home. The meetings in New Zealand and Norway were somewhat depressing. A lot of people who had fallen very far down on the scale, and very few who seemed to have made strides into the core bedrock of sobriety.

In St. Louis, there are meetings of both types. And the same is true here in ECC. Of all types. Meetings composed mostly of people with longer-term sobriety, living comfortable lives. Others composed mostly of recent drunks and felons, struggling to find a way forward. And meetings where these groups mix fluidly. My one-meeting-each experience in other countries isn’t enough to provide me with any evidence about the actual state of sobriety, from an epidemiological perspective, in any of them.

But I do wonder anyway. In both Norway and New Zealand, I was told that AA hasn’t really taken hold. Compare that with the UK, where, though I don’t know the meetings personally, many people (including the writer of the excellent “Guitars and Life” blog, Furtheron) tell me AA is said to be more universally accepted. Is it the language? Lots of ideas just don’t come across as well in translation. Is the program of AA one of them? I have no idea.

But one thing that was said to me in Norway was interesting. I no longer remember the phrasing, so file this under “things I think a drunk once told me…”. And that was that in Norway, drunks don’t think they need AA. They don’t think they need recovery at all. Because society protects them far, far better than America protects our drunks. In Norway, I was told, in the cities, anyway, being a drunk is really easy. There’s excellent and inexpensive public transportation (and the penalties for drunk driving are incredibly severe). So drunks tend to get in fewer traffic accidents. Health care is free, and emergency rooms will dry you out, perk you up, and send you home.

Suffice to say, the impression that was conveyed to me was that it’s harder to hit bottom in Norway. The social contract provides for addicts in ways that we do not here in the US. The result is that probably fewer people die from acute effects of addiction. But I was also told that it takes much longer for the average person to decide they need to find sobriety. This was supported (again, n=1), by the fact that there were no young people in the meeting I went to. I, 37 at the time, was the youngest in the room by a decade. In New Zealand there were younger people in the room. But they were largely heroin addicts. The strict alcoholics in the meeting were, again, mostly older and with only a few years of sobriety.

I’m forced to wonder if all this social investment in the addict actually helps us. The answer, surely, is complicated. I’ve written many times about the problem in addiction treatment with the chasm between statistical and clinical significance. A drug that increases mean relapse time from 3 days to 9, p<0.0001, is almost useless. Because 9 days of abstinence avails me nothing. Some will say, “It gives the addict time to ‘get it’!”. Maybe. But clearly, not many are ‘getting it’ if they’re relapsing so rapidly.

When I went to rehab, I took medicines. I think they helped me feel better through my withdrawal. We all know benzodiazepines save lives, when an alcoholic is in acute detoxification. I’m not anti-medicine. And I’m not anti-rehab. But these things are not necessarily required for recovery. Incredible efforts and funds are spent investigating and treating alcoholism. I fear often for the worse. For alcoholics like me, I think certain things are true:

– I think that a large proportion of alcoholics will always die of alcoholism. I think that that proportion is depressingly high. And short of sequestering the alcoholic away from drink, there is very little that can be done about this.

– I think that addressing alcoholism in one’s life requires a complete sea-change in how one approaches the world. It is not enough to try to avoid alcohol and use mnemonics and slogans. It is not enough to dry out and try really hard to stay clean. It can never be enough.

– I think the social contract that cares for and provides comfort for alcoholics prolongs a lot of lives, but it doesn’t save them. I think it makes our alcoholic deaths slower, sadder, and more perplexing. We had all the help in the world, and couldn’t stop drinking! I think some of us need less help. Until we’re ready for the kind of help that works.

– I think we make the choice as a society to try to help people with addictions through methods that don’t actually help us. They relieve us of the burden of recovery. They transfer the responsibility for our addictive behaviors from the addict to the physician. To the institution.

– I think that alcoholism is a terminal illness with a very poor remission rate. Frequently, our medical interventions seem designed to keep the alcoholic alive, drinking, and dying slowly and miserably.

We say in AA that we recover when faced with jails, institutions, or deaths. But there are no institutions, really, that do what they did when those words were written. That lock up the alcoholic permanently for alcoholic insanity. And so today, the choice is really between jail, death, and recovery. But we have a medical apparatus that makes the “death” option much slower, and perversely attractive. We can keep drinking. And in places where the medical system is more robust, my own experience is that it does not usher alcoholics into recovery. But my experience is far from evidence.

What is the solution? I think more alcoholics would probably recover if more alcoholics are dying in the snow. But of course, I don’t and can’t advocate that. I think more alcoholics would recover if HIPAA didn’t prevent AA members from working with hospitals. But I don’t think I can advocate that either.

I don’t know that I have a solution. Except to say, there is no bleaker image for me than the one in which alcoholics are repeatedly brought back from the brink of desolation only to drag themselves back to the edge. To die slowly, surrounded by exasperated and impersonal medics, vacillating from withdrawal to indulgence. In my experience, alcoholics like me recover when we reach a point where, emotionally, even if not in actuality, we have no more options. And when the social structure provides endless options, we just find a way to use them to ever more lugubrious ends.

In AA, we’re taught to talk about our own experience. We find that when people go to active alcoholics, and talk to them about their drinking, the defensiveness immediately erupts and chances at honest and effective communication are rare. I’m not a big fan of interventions, as a concept. I’ve known lots of people who had them done. I don’t recall an alcoholic in recovery telling me that that had an impact on them except to harden them. I’m not saying they can’t work; I’ve just never heard of it.

Instead of approaching an active alcoholic and telling them what they need to do, we’re taught in AA to talk about our own experience. We tell them about how we drank. Why we drank. How we felt and then how we changed. What it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. What we’re like now. But telling our own stories, we don’t lay judgement on the alcoholic. In fact, we relieve it. Our own stories are usually as full of crime and bad acts and shame and humiliation and disease and degradation as the life they’re living today. In this way, we connect. Then, sometimes, the active alcoholic decides that they want what we have, and seeks change in their own life. And embarks upon the journey.

I’ve found this approach to be useful in communicating with people on all sorts of topics. I try not to tell people what to do, or how they feel, or how I think things should be done. I generally try to listen to them, and then think of an experience in my own life that is somewhat similar, or applicable, so that I can relate to what they’re sharing. Now, for a lot of topics, I don’t have anything. But most of the time, I think the human experience is broad and generalizable. I think that when we try, we can find things in our own lives that apply to another person’s experience.

But I’ve also found a problem with this approach. I take the approach so that I don’t step on a person’s experience or agency by telling them how they need to behave or feel. But when I try to relate by sharing my own experience, it risks them feeling that I am making the topic of conversation me instead of them. This is especially problematical in discussions where there are different levels of privilege.

Since I have about the highest level of privilege there is, sharing my own experience can be seen as entitled assumption. But the other way, talking about the other person’s perspective can be seen as dictating their experience. The simple answer is this: sometimes, I just have to shut up. Whether I’m talking about you or talking about me, I’m talking. Sometimes – and this is hard to fathom – a person isn’t interested in what I have to say on a topic, whether I frame it about me or about them. And that is their inviolable right.

However, I’m also allowed to have thoughts and opinions and motivations of my own. Once I’ve listened to someone, and accepted their perspective and their experience, it’s usually reasonable to offer my own experience as a way to connect to their understanding. After all, shared (or similar) experiences are one of the basic foundations of human connection. Then, if they ask for it, it might even be reasonable for me to offer advice or thoughts about how they can proceed, if I have anything relevant.

But many people have no interest in that. For many reasons. Sometimes, a person wants to share with no input at all, solely for their own sake. Sometimes, people are hostile, and will not accept any possibility of shared or similar experience. All of that’s fine. Everyone has the right to choose how they interact, or don’t interact, with other people. Active alcoholics especially tend to be very hostile towards advice. They are more receptive to shared experiences, usually, but not always. “You can’t understand me!” is a common and depressing phrase I’ve heard from a lot of people who have no desire to change their drinking.

But it’s generally none of my business who drinks and who doesn’t. My goal is not to drink. To understand the principles of sobriety. To apply them to my life. I hope to be understood. Most of us do. So when I listen, and then share about myself, I’m doing it as an attempt to find common ground so that I can understand the other party’s position and perspective, their life, better. Because I know it’s not about me; but finding connection matters to me. And a connection has two people in it.

I’m embarrassed. Yesterday I did something stupid and foolish. I have a Picassa-album-type-thing for photos from my various travels that I share with my meatspace family and friends. I don’t share it here or on twitter because, well, I dunno exactly. I just don’t. Let’s call it non-overlapping magisteria, or something. But I shared my Bermuda pictures with my colleagues at work. Including my boss, who is a friendly, affable, pleasant man and an effective leader. And that album included this picture:

Well. that pretty clearly identifies that I went to an AA meeting while in Bermuda. If anyone took more than a second to look at the picture, they’ll know I’m an alcoholic. What they won’t know is how long I’ve been in recovery, or what my history with alcohol is. Or why. People have their own biases and impressions of AA. I’ve had people tell me that it’s a cult, that it’s a Christian Church, that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to addiction, that it’s the worst. I’ve had people tell me that it works/doesn’t work/should work/shouldn’t work/can’t work. I’ve had people tell me I’m lying to myself because I think AA works. I’ve had people tell me that if I have stopped drinking it means I was never an alcoholic in the first place.

Unless you’re a member, chances are, you don’t know what AA is or how it works. And that’s fine. If you don’t have a desire to stop drinking, AA isn’t for you. You don’t need to know. Feel free to go on about your business. We’ll handle ourselves. I’ll keep my side of the street clean, and your side is your side, and not my business.

But now I’m suddenly worried that any time I’m not perfect at work, my boss (who looked at the pictures and commented on them, though not on that one specifically) will be suspicious that it means that I’m drinking. I don’t know how to address that. So I did what every alcoholic-in-recovery should do when they feel panicked and confused and upset. I called my sponsor. He told me that I should drop it. Just don’t say anything, and if people ask, address it honestly and straightforwardly. And essentially to say, “I’m in recovery. What’s your point? How does that affect my job in any way?” But not as aggressively as that seems in print.

Because here’s the deal: I’m not ashamed. I’m an alcoholic. I’m an alcoholic for many reasons. Mental illness, probably genetic. I’m an alcoholic because I like to treat discomfiture with alcohol. I like to anesthetize myself against things that make me unhappy. I like to drink, because I like the effects produced by alcohol. Left to my own devices I will drink, rather than do any other thing. And I’m not ashamed of any of that. It’s just who I am. It’s an irremediable defect of my brain and my genes.

I am not ashamed, because I don’t drink anymore. I have made, or offered, amends to everyone I’ve harmed in my life to my knowledge. And I continue to do so as I continue to harm. I have examined the faults that I have and take daily steps to ameliorate them. I go to bed each night sober, and I wake up the same way. I have done this without fail for 2,118 days in a row. I am not ashamed, because I tend to my responsibilities and I care for the people who matter to me. I acknowledge the contributions that others make to my life, and I endeavor to repay those efforts.

Sometimes I am fearful. Sometimes I am stupid. Sometimes I am thoughtless. Sometimes I am regretful. Sometimes I am resentful. I have done many things in my life I am not proud of, and some people have been hurt in ways that I cannot repair. I have harmed people – even in sobriety – through bad decision-making, selfishness, and anger. I have attempted to amend those harms. I have not always succeeded. Sometimes I am lazy, and slipshod. Sometimes I am dishonest. But I work daily to say what I mean, and do what I say.

I am a work in progress. I have never claimed, nor will I ever claim, perfection. I do not do these things alone. I am not sober by my own strength or efforts. I am sober because I follow a program of moral accountability and spiritual seeking, guided by the wisdom of the many millions before me who succeeded at this task. My best efforts lead me to despair, desolation, inebriation, and moral destitution. The efforts of something much larger than me, this massive network of sober people who form the net into which I fell, which caught me, are responsible for my sobriety. I have done only what I was told by those who went before. I cannot claim authorship of my recovery.

I cannot control what others think, or do, or say. I have only the power to manage my own reaction, and my own feelings, and my own behavior. Because of AA, I have dignity and personhood. Because of AA, I understand my place as a man in the world. I am not ashamed of my alcoholism. But alcoholism has consequences. Part of my recovery means accepting all of the consequences associated with my disease, fair or not. Because it does me no good to rail against the world. I am no crusader. I have stopped fighting.

I doubt that there will be any consequences in this case. Hell, I doubt anyone noticed before I took the photo down. What happens will happen. I’m angry with myself. I’m fearful of becoming the subject of gossip. I am an alcoholic. But I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I am not ashamed.

AA has saved my life. And when I say that, I don’t just mean that people in AA threw me a life-preserver when I was drowning. They did. But that wasn’t all. AA took me, a 33-year-old man-child – incapable of operating in the world, utterly baffled and perplexed by the nature of society, by what it means to be a man, by employment and responsibility – and slapped me around, straightened me up, dusted me off, and set me right. Because of AA and the program that I work in sobriety, I am a capable and effective human being today. In the first place, the opportunity that AA gave me was to live, instead of not existing. As I matured in the program, it gave me the opportunity to live, instead of merely existing.

What do I owe to AA in return? What debt have I incurred to this organization that has saved my life, redeemed me, and put me back into a state of manageability? There is a plaque on the wall at many AA meetings that says:

Whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out, I want the hand of AA to be there for them. For that, I am responsible.

I believe that. And I believe that I live that. If you, out there, cannot control your drinking and cannot manage your life, reach out to me. If you can’t go on living like you’re living, but you don’t know how to stop, reach out to me. If you want to find some other way, some other path, anything but this blistering misery of alcoholism, reach out to me. I know how to help. Wherever you are, whatever your condition, there’s a path for you out of where you are. And I can either help you find it, or I can put you in contact with local resources who can.

But AA isn’t perfect. And any organization will drift from time to time. I oppose, for example, the signing of court slips and the sentencing of drug/alcohol offenders to AA. I think it violates the spirit of our laws (in the USA), and I think it violates the traditions of AA. And here’s what I intend to do about it:

Nothing.

Nothing about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous requires me to be involved in AA policy. Nothing obligates me to participate in organization. In management. As I’ve written many times, there’s precious little organization or management, and I generally think there’s too much as it is. A troll who happened across my blog recently took me to task, calling me “startlingly self-centered” for not being interested in guiding policy in AA.

In fact, I think it’s quite the opposite. Self-centered would be to believe that my ideas are so important that all of AA must be made beholden to them. Self-centered would be to insist that other people work the program of AA the way I believe they should. Self-centered would be to demand that everyone agree with my opinions about court-ordering alcohol offenders and signing court slips.

I have an opinion. It’s not particularly well-informed. I don’t have any data about whether signing court slips is good for people. I don’t understand constitutional law. I haven’t really studied the traditions of AA. I just have opinions. And the height of arrogance is to form an opinion based on precious little information and then assert it as if it is the best or only way to approach an issue. My gut reaction is that AA and the courts should not have any official relationship. And that’s where it’s going to stay.

My obligation to AA is to be there, and be available to other drunks. People who need help ascending from the cellar of misery we carve for ourselves in the midst of our addictions. My responsibility is to the AA members in the groups I attend. To my sponsor, to any sponsees I might have. I have no obligation to AA World Services. Nor to my local Intergroup. I think it’s probably a good thing that people volunteer for those things, and take up roles that sustain the minimal level of organization that we have. But even there, I’m not sure.

I don’t know that AA and alcoholics in general wouldn’t be better off if AA World Services went bankrupt. And I personally won’t give a shit if they do. Because that’s not where the program lives. My AA meetings would keep going right on if AA World Services vanished tomorrow. AA doesn’t need a structure. All it needs is the book, and people who intend to congregate to recover. And the rest of it could all burn to the ground, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We don’t recover because we have a carefully manicured institutional policy. We recover because one drunk talks to another. And leads them through the steps. Quit fighting. Acknowledge something bigger than you. Clean your house. Help others recover. If you let someone lead you through the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous – someone who’s done them themselves – with honesty, openness, and willingness, you can recover from alcoholism. I know because I did.

And in general: no one, anywhere, is morally obligated to adopt and promote anyone else’s political agenda. Vilifying or castigating anyone for failing to endorse a particular orthodoxy reveals a lamentable poverty of spirit. We cannot control how others think. We should not demand that others work toward our own goals. It is precisely that thought which offends, which dissents, that needs and deserves defense. There is no need to defend the right to inoffensive opinion. But each of us will find at some time that our own opinion offends someone with more power than ourselves.