The Big Book does not offer a plan of recovery from an illness

January 10, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?

We are told at the beginning of “Alcoholics Anonymous” (“The Big Book”) that alcoholism is an illness and, by implication, nothing to be ashamed of.  This idea is not supported with any evidence, only with a brief piece by Dr William D Silkworth, who treated AA’s co-founder Bill Wilson for alcoholism.  Silkworth speculates that alcoholism may have something in common with allergies,but offers no evidence, and the idea is not explored in any depth.
There is no further discussion of alcoholism as a medical problem. Instead, the discourse shifts abruptly to discussing alcoholism as a matter of alcoholics’ supposed lack of contact with God, and of their moral shortcomings. Thus it is, by definition, presented as a cause for shame after all.
There is then a blatant attempt to convince the alcoholic reader of the need to develop a spiritual orientation, with the odd proviso that the nature of the spiritual power believed in remains so undefined that it may take any form which appeals to the individual, from some personal conception of a supernatural “power greater than himself” to AA itself.
The thinking behind this idea may be summarised as follows:
because alcoholics are supposedly powerless to do anything about their problem themselves, they must develop a belief in, and reliance on, a “power greater than themselves, which can and will do for them what they cannot do for themselves.  What is implied, though not explicitly stated, is that this “higher power” must be amenable to entreaties to solve alcoholics’ drink problems, being somehow crucially interested in their welfare in this specific respect.
When the book goes into detail about how the “higher power” is to be approached by alcoholics, it becomes clear that what is really required of them is belief in a God who must intervene at their request to relieve them of their alcoholism, and who is bound to remove their “defects of character” on demand. Thus not only has the supposed need to believe in God been intruded into what was at first presented as the discussion of an illness, but the nature of the belief required, involving God having to perform miracles on demand, is seriously at variance with all mainstream religious faiths. It really constitutes a peculiar occult religion in its own right.
The subject of this book shifts far from its original ostensible theme, rendering it not only logically inconsistent and self-contradicory, but disingenuous.  The pretence that the “recovery” doctrine offered does not ultimately entail a very specific (albeit religiously heretical) conception of God is downright deceptive. Under the guise of offering a plan of recovery from a medical problem, this book introduces a superstitious form of religion by stealth.