Category Archives: spirituality

The Anthropomorphism of Addiction

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Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us.  (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1st. Edition,
How It Works, Page 58)(Emphasis added)

As we can see from the quote above, the anthropomorphism of alcoholism comes directly from The Big Book. For centuries man has debated the question of what alcoholism is or is not. Current American Medical Association dogma states that alcoholism is a disease.

The AMA

1. endorses the proposition that drug dependencies, including alcoholism, are diseases and that their treatment is a legitimate part of medical practice (http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/alcohol/alcoholism_treatable.pdf, retrieved 12/24/11)

However, AA itself has never directly endorsed the idea that Alcoholism is a disease. In fact, as late as 1960, Bill Wilson stated,

We have never called alcoholism a disease because, technically speaking, it is not a disease entity For example, there is no such thing as heart disease. Instead there are many separate heart ailments, or combinations of them. It is something like that with alcoholism. Therefore we did not wish to get in wrong with the medical profession by pronouncing alcoholism a disease entity. Therefore we always called it an illness, or a malady—a far safer term for us to use.(Emphasis added). (National  Clergy Conference on Alcoholism, Volume 12, P199, Retrieved from http://www.silkworth.net/religion_clergy/01052.html, 12/30/2011 at 7:55 AM) (Emphasis added)

Entity? Alcoholism is not a “disease entity”? What does that mean exactly? I understand that Bill W’s spoke these words an eternity ago in relation to current thinking on drug and alcohol addiction. By giving life to alcoholism, by referencing it as a cunning, baffling, powerful disease entity we give it an unnerving presence.

How many times have you heard an addict or alcoholic sharing their experience by mentioning that the disease had its claws into them or stole from them or wanted something from them, etc.? I am not sure it is healthy for us to refer to our disease in human or satanic terms.

By giving life to the disease, have we not disassociated our culpability for our actions and the resultant effects on our friends and loved ones? Is that wise? Is it morally or spiritually correct? I don’t pretend to know the answers to any of these questions. I have no clinical training and am trying to remember to take my inventory and leave you, dear reader, to your own.

I have never referred to my disease as being caused by anyone but me. No cunning, baffling disease entity made me do anything. Some of it is genetic (nature) and some of it environment (nurture). The nature vs. nurture argument has long been debated. I believe that we are products of both nature and nurture. But that’s it.

So, devil, get ye gone. I’ll have no part of you nor will you of me. I have faced the facts that I can’t use alcohol or drugs in safety and am man enough to know that it was me in every flawed aspect of myself that wanted and did what I did to me, my family and my friends. Now I have to live with it.

Peace out,
M
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Acceptance – That Was Easy!

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 And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. (The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 417)

These words are perhaps the most spoken in 12 step programs. To recognize and embrace the seemingly simple concept (that acceptance is the key to freedom from compulsion) is the seed from which many crops of recovery have germinated – it allows addicts to buy in to the idea that they are not in charge of the show. If acceptance were  simple, perhaps there wouldn’t be so many drunks and addicts in the world. Plainly put, if it were easy, even I would be able to do it. For me to do so, would be to give up much of the bedrock of my previous existence.

From early on, I have never believed much of what anyone told me. This started with the beginning of the end of my religious training. Back around the age of ten, a religious-school teacher taught the class the differences between theism, atheism, and agnosticism. I chose agnosticism immediately, which the teacher had defined as “a person who could believe in God if someone could prove to him that God existed.” Although not a textbook definition, it is close enough for me and, frankly, what I believe today.

Following fairly soon thereafter and coupled with this, were the words of a favorite middle-school English teacher who told us: “Question everything!” At a very simple level, she meant for us to take nothing at face value. This included what we heard on the news, read in books, or heard from our teachers. I embraced her ideology and clasped it to my bosom.

Since then, I have pretty much lived my life with the mantra in my head: “Prove it.”Better yet, I really felt that I would prefer to prove you wrong. I would not believe anything without already knowing to a certainty that it was factually correct or until after I had researched sufficiently to prove it to myself. This proclivity never endeared me to my fellows or to those in authority

There I was and here I am; not much has changed. However, through my readings, therapy, and conversations with my friends in the program, I am slowly learning to accept things at face value. I know that I cannot change people, places, and things. Through my therapist, a Eucharistic Minister, I once saw an unworldly aura that makes me hope that, perhaps, one day I may believe in God.

The AA program is about progress not perfection. I am making progress in my recovery and I will continue as long as I can remember that acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.

Peace out,
M

Can You Handle What God Gives You?

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My God would never give me more than I could handle.

Have you ever heard someone utter the sentiment above? Do you nod your head in agreement? If so, I am curious: what was it that made you drink and drug to the point that it took over your life? If you truly believe in a beneficent God, one who would never make your life too difficult, how can you explain the feelings that led you to self-medicate?

Was it compulsion that made you drink or drug? You would think your God was in charge of those; if so, why did he give them to you? If he was not in charge, who was? Could it be…Satan! Unlikely that it was anything more than your own self-if it wasn’t your God.

Perhaps your God wanted you to drink so that he could throw out a cure life-jacket when you decided your life had become unmanageable. You know, kind of like tossing you headlong into the bonfire, then pouring on water to douse the flames, and looking for a hero’s medal.

Maybe, just maybe, I should have picked your God because I’ve had more than I can handle from a long time ago moving forward to the present. What’s that you say? If it were more than you could handle, you wouldn’t have been able to handle it all or even be alive to write from on high for this mighty blog.

That could hardly be true; remember, I’m the guy with the drinking problem. I just haven’t chosen to pick up in a little over five-months (after a three-month relapse). What does this have to do with addiction anyway? Actually, it has plenty to do with addiction and it took me writing this to come to grips with what its essence vis-à-vis the idea that God would not give us more than we could handle. Let us look at this together.

AA is a twelve-step program. A bunch of drunks, many years ago, found a way to get sober and stay sober and they wrote out a program for us to follow. Those who follow their simple program, they claim, will always succeed in becoming and staying sober. Perhaps their claim is a bit over-reaching but the fact is that it has worked for thousands over the decades. They completed their book, probably the first self-help book ever written, long before it became so fashionable. Their program has worked for thousands of individuals and has spawned a laundry list of like-minded programs.

At the heart of the Step 3 is usually the phrase: “God, as we understood him.” From this phrase, I can extrapolate for myself the view that because the fellowship is representative of my Higher Power, and unless I am just parroting the words of the program, my God neither would nor could give me more than I can handle. After all, the program is laid out in the very clear terms of the first 164 pages of the Big Book of AA and, more especially in the Chapters, “How it Works,” and “Into Action.”

I am not big on spouting adages, and the one up top is a case in point of one I would never use (especially as most people mean to use it), it happens to be accurate. AA, my Higher Power, never gives me more than I could handle. It gives me what I need to live sober, one day at a time. Whoops…

Peace out,
M