"Is AA changing?" Sure it is; it's alive. It changes because those of us who are in it change, once we surrender to the process of recovery and to our Higher Power. And we change in good ways we couldn't have asked for or imagined. I can't predict the course of AA any more than I can predict my own. I trust that our Higher Power is steering the Fellowship as long as we keep to our primary purpose - to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

AA changes because the world changes. Not to change is not to adapt; not to adapt is to become extinct. I don't want that to happen to AA. All of us have lives outside AA that put us in contact with new ideas and new pressures. We bring the stuff of our daily lives into meetings to share with the group, not only the bad stuff, but also the good, our triumphs and breakthroughs. Some of those good things are new insights, new ways to apply the principles of recovery, new techniques or new concepts that enhance the AA program. Some I welcome, some I feel hesitant about. But my recovery depends on the survival of the group. I want the group to work for you so that, when I need it, it will be there for me. I want it to be receptive and supportive of you so that, when I need it, it will be receptive and supportive of me.

One of the changes that stirs the pot is the presence of addicts in AA meetings. I myself am an antique, that rare and fabulous beast, a "pure" alcoholic. These days, that's a setup for terminal uniqueness. In my first year I announced to my sponsor that I didn't think I was a real alcoholic because I'd never used cocaine. He stared at me in stupefaction, then laughed, thank God, and asked some well-aimed questions: what was the First Step? The Third Tradition? Had I ever heard "identify, don't compare" as a guide to listening in meetings? In other words, the point he made was that I can use my alcoholism to isolate, to avoid hearing what my fellows in recovery have to say, and to excuse myself from the footwork of the program.

I used to think that my recovery was second-class, because my story didn't include the medicine cabinet and syringes. I used to compensate for my innocence of drugs by sharing not experience, strength, and hope, but theories, wishful thinking, and doubts as to what my story could offer hard-core folk. It helped neither them nor me. It took me a while to realize that, as the Big Book says, "no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others." As long as we tell our stories honestly, we can listen and learn and recover.

I do have a fear, however. It is summarized in another story. It's not mine; I heard a woman tell it on herself in a meeting. She (I'll call her Lucy) had finally gotten a friend she was concerned about (I'll call her Gilda) to go to meetings with her. They went to a meeting together, once a week, for a little over a month. Lucy would pick up Gilda before the meeting and drop her off afterward so they could talk on the way to and from the meeting and discuss their reactions to the meeting on the way home. Lucy had carefully chosen a lively intelligent group, prone to talk about issues such as stress and anger and nutrition, in touch with their feelings, taking ownership of their recovery, serious (but not grim!) about sobriety. This all seemed to be good sponsorship and a sensible arrangement.

One night the meeting's topic was "the first drink." It was a vibrant meeting: First Step, "back to basics," heartfelt, the hot core of it all. Lucy was charged up by it. On the way home, she realized Gilda was less talkative. She asked her how she liked the meeting. "Oh, it was fine," said Gilda. "I just don't understand why all those people are so worried about taking the first drink."

Lucy wondered if this were a pink cloud, but again, being the perfect sponsor, she decided to be supportive and draw Gilda out. She said, "Well I'm glad that's not a problem for you. What do you do when you feel like taking that first drink?"

Gilda shrugged. "I take it."

When she got to that part of the story, we laughed uneasily. Lucy went on to point out that, somehow, in all her eagerness to give the program a sophisticated veneer of psychological and therapeutic respectability, she had forgotten why it exists in the first place. She had not emphasized the physical reality of the disease we live with, its inexorable progression, the need for abstinence. "My public relations policy was promotion, not attraction; I was people-pleasing, not being honest. This is a program of surrender, not self-improvement."

I recently saw an interview in a magazine dedicated to "recovery." The substance-abuse counselor being interviewed, when asked about different kinds of therapy for people in recovery, said group therapy was not necessary if people were already in a "twelve-step program," because "you get the group effect from twelve-step meetings."

Now, I understand this is only that counselor's opinion, but it suddenly put me in touch with something that has troubled me for some time. Is AA "therapy"? Is that what all those people I felt uneasy about thought they were doing here?

The remainder of this article quotes some things I have heard in AA meetings recently. They are treated by some members as the equivalents of the older AA slogans, but the principles they encapsulate seem far from the fundamentals of recovery. Many of them come from therapists or New Age sources. I want to say very clearly that I have found therapy helpful myself, and that I believe each of us has a right to the spirituality that works for us, "as we understand" it. My quarrel is not with either of those.

The danger I perceive is that these slogans are treated as program absolutes. They are announced without qualification. They are used with little understanding of their role in the therapeutic process or their place in New Age theology. They are promoted with indifference to their possible misunderstanding by newcomers and with no apparent awareness of their possible conflict with AA principles. They may be true, but they are not radically true, like the heart of the AA program is. I do not trust them as I trust the Steps, for example, because these new slogans require careful reinterpretation, and I cannot trust what I feel I must qualify and modify.

"I'm here to get in touch with my feelings." I had a sponsee tell me once that he knew he wouldn't drink, as long as he was "in touch with his feelings." My feelings never kept me from drinking; more often they were the best excuses I had. I listened to a woman whose car had been broken into say, "I know I'm supposed to be in touch with my feelings, I ought to feel angry, but I just cleaned it up and called the police." She added that she hoped she wasn't setting herself up for a slip. I spent years in a smouldering rage while drinking; I'm grateful when I can meet a crisis with equanimity. One of the Promises is that we will know peace.

"This is a selfish program; I've got to take care of myself." No question about it: if I'm about to drink, selfishly avoiding that takes precedence over anything else. But how often am I really that close? How often are people thinking of the danger of a drink when they use this "slogan" to help them make a decision? I've heard people say this to justify calling in to work sick, in order to get a day off. What if the woman who first brought me to AA had felt that way? This cannot be a governing principle, because its unqualified application would mean the end of the Fellowship. In recovery, how can I make personal decisions based on a principle that radically eliminates others from consideration? One of the things I learned in these rooms is that my disease is characterized by isolation, by self-obsession, by the exclusion of others. I realize that even twelfth step work is done "for my recovery," but it simply doesn't work if I do it as a part of my "selfish program" and focus only on myself, on whether or not I'm getting quick relief.

"It is actually all one systemic disease; we are all addicts and co- dependents." From what I remember of drinking, I'm the one who, on the morning after, couldn't remember the night before. I'm the one who shook and puked. It is a subtle denial to agree that my real problem was how I fit into the system, not what happened when I drank. This is by no means to say that co-dependents don't have legitimate recovery, some of which I also participate in. But it does not look or feel like the same disease at all to me.

"I make amends by not drinking; the only person I really damaged was myself." I've been on the receiving end of this: I've seen that, as far as my alcoholic friend was concerned, I was only incidentally in the way of his suffering self-will. He was "confused and doing the best he could," and therefore felt he did not owe me an amends. (Part of my recovery is to practice some forgiveness of my own at this point, of course, which I need to do.) However, his form of self-deception is not the sanity to which I hope my Higher Power will restore me. I know I received some exquisite bruises, but I had an impact on others as well. The amount of reality I turn my back on is the amount I lose. In my case, making face-to-face honest amends restored me into my life, and the fuller my amends, the more of my life I received in return.

"The Fourth Step is realizing things are perfect as they are." My Fourth Step showed me to be a liar, cheat, and thief; I was totally ruled by fear and resentment. I thought of others only in light of my goals and cared about them only as they affected me. It may be that my life was perfect from a transcendent perspective, but the contingencies were hell - and it was the contingencies that had my back to the wall. Perhaps this is a compassionate maneuver for people overwhelmed by guilt, who can forgive themselves only when they see their actions as part of a perfect cosmic design. However, as an alcoholic, I prefer to avoid accountability. "Perfection" to me would have meant things were fine and I was off the hook.

"Your opinion of me is none of my business." When I was drunk, I practiced this principle fully: your opinions didn't matter to me at all. In fact, while I was drinking I believed your opinions of me were none of your business either. I suppose this saying means that the opinions of others should not dominate and define me; but is it true to say that they are "none of my business"? In recovery, I first thought this was profound. My boss, had he been asked, probably would not have agreed: he had increasingly strong opinions of me - and my perfectionism. I thought I was being honest and offering creative solutions to the problems of our organization. He thought I was being hostile and arrogant. His opinion of me ought to have been at least part of my business: that is the only job from which I have ever been fired, and that was in recovery.

The foundation of our program is, by one definition, honesty, openmindedness, and willingness. I am frightened that AA is changing dangerously with half-understood therapeutic concepts and unexamined New Age philosophy. I listen to people and no longer feel that relief-filled sense of "yes, I'm like that, too." I hear someone share and wonder if we are working the same program on any level, not just that our "footwork" is different, but that we do not even share the same basic principles of recovery.

When I came into AA, I was always always impressed, challenged, and frightened by the statement "if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length" - but my answer was still yes. Today my answer often is "no." I don't want what you have, because it is not grounded in any reality I recognize or appreciate. I'm not willing to go to any length for something which doesn't stretch me; I'm not willing to probe myself for something that has no depth. It all seems so blunt-edged and self-excusing; those are the values I lived by while drinking.

I do want what the people who wrote the Big Book have, however. I want recovery. But, I wonder, what is my problem with accepting these new formulations? Can't I see it as an opportunity to practice "Live and Let Live"? Have I become a "bleeding deacon" so soon, a boring Big Book thumper, to be endured and ignored?

Alcoholism is deadly, ugly, and tough. It is also cunning, baffling, and powerful. It wants me to consider perfection attainable. It wants me to regard only myself, others being merely what reflects my recovery back to me. It wants me to try to fix myself with the right therapist or the right religion. It wants me to believe that self-indulgence is fine, as long as I call it self-forgiveness. It wants me to think of drinking as an option that "I choose not to actualize at the present." It wants me to forget that it is a snake in the brain, hoping to catch my eye, watching, waiting.

The gritty pain of alcoholism is the traction of recovery. I cannot afford to sell off the principles for an easier, softer way.

M. W., Atlanta, Georgia

© Copyright, AA Grapevine, February, 1990