Alcoholics Anonymous - A Critique
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ July 25, 2007
By the Grace of God I have been sober for a long time. Forty-four years ago in March, 1963, I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. It was my second attempt to squelch a longstanding problem. My first had been unsuccessful in 1957.
The cork had gone into the bottle following a series of events that resulted in God’s direct intervention. A Christian man, sober in AA, was one of the speakers at a meeting at our neighborhood church. He convinced my wife that she had no control over my behavior and should “get off my back”. His partner at the meeting was from a group called Faith at Work, an offshoot from the Oxford Groups (PDF format). I agreed to talk with the partner and he sat at the dining room table and asked if I wanted to commit my life to Christ. At the time it seemed like an intrusive question and I declined.
A short time later my wife booked us into a retreat in northeastern Connecticut. No one in the churches I attended had ever confronted me with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and though I had declined, the decision was highly significant. The retreat provided time for soul searching and the day following I entered a church, knelt in a pew and prayed the prayer of an agnostic, “God, if you are there, help me.” That day in that church God chose me (At the time, I thought I had chosen Him.).
I was thirty-three years old, married, college educated, and the father of two young daughters. Drunken driving and disorderly conduct had resulted in spending several nights in jail cells, I was a womanizer, an inveterate liar, a thief, and a slave to alcohol, tobacco, and sex. The job I still had was on shaky ground. Nevertheless, there was a stigma attached to AA and I was not eager to associate. For several months I became active in church. The minister booked me for testimonial talks around the state. However, I did not stop drinking and while talking in churches I remained a slave to sin. Even at this early stage I understood that my behavior would not stand up to scrutiny and this realization brought me back to AA with an earnest desire to stay sober.
Addicts who have fought the problem unsuccessfully for years and have sincerely pledged to quit hundreds of times, lose their self esteem and all trust in their ability to make a decision stick. Their dilemma seems hopeless. I was like that. The numerous testimonies given at meetings by sober alcoholics helped me to gain a sense of belonging and a faint hope that if I followed their advice I might be able to abstain.
Forty years ago AA was difficult to find and in some cities it was necessary to locate a minister or doctor who had personal knowledge of a member in order to connect. When found, the members were confrontational. They would make great sacrifices to help a member stay sober but there was great concern that the alcoholic had personally requested help and was not just responding to the urging of others. There was lots of talk about whether the perspective member had “hit bottom”. No effort was made to attract members and new members, “pigeons” as they were called, were encouraged (sometimes bluntly) to sit quietly and listen.
With two years of sobriety and a recent promotion on the job I went on a hunting trip to Canada with two Christian men. I told them God was keeping me sober in AA but that I was not a Christian. In a hunting cabin along the St. Lawrence River at a place called Montmagny one of the men asked me to read the New Testament book of First John before retiring. I did so and was converted to Christianity.
My life took a 180 degree turn. I went from a man who desired to live an evil life to a man who desired to live a righteous life.
The spiritual road that brought sobriety to AA co-founder Bill Wilson was somewhat similar to my own.
Ebby Thatcher and Bill Wilson had been schoolmates and drinking buddies and Bill thought Ebby was a hopeless alcoholic. Following one of Bill’s benders Ebby called at his house and said “I’ve got religion”. The source was the Oxford Groups. He did not go along with all their teachings, but he had learned to admit he was licked, to take stock of himself and confess his defects, to make restitution, to give of himself to others, and to pray to whatever god he understood.
Following another bender, Bill went to Ebby’s Oxford Group at Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Church. After a sobering meal he answered an alter call, accepted Jesus as his Savior and said a few words of confirmation. Following, he questioned the experience, drank again and ended in Towns Hospital where Ebby visited him and reiterated the formula for sobriety, “You admit you are licked; you get honest with yourself; you talk it out with someone else; you make restitution to the people you have harmed; you try to give of yourself without stint, with no demand for reward; and you pray to whatever god you think there is, even as an experiment.” Ebby left and Bill fell into a deeper depression. Finally in desperation he prayed “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!”
Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in my mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world on consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, ‘ So this is the God of the preachers!’.
To their credit, most laypeople in the Christian Church cannot identify with the aberrant life of the alcoholic. The severity of the deviations alcoholism often produces make honest discourse with normal people difficult and severely limit’s the Christian Church in its ability to redeem the addict. Honest fellowship with other sober alcoholics is of invaluable assistance in recovery.
AA becomes the predominate social order for most members. They substitute their previous lifestyle with meetings, coffee klatches, and a sober sponsor who becomes their friend and mentor. Addiction is a constant force for deterioration and properly confronting it requires a constant force for abstinence.
Bill Wilson’s quest to help alcoholics became a purely pragmatic quest. He stopped relating his “white light” experience with Christianity because relating it to active alcoholics seemed to turn them away. Using the hopeless prognosis for alcoholism, the principles gleaned from the Oxford Groups, and a sharing of personal experiences Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith (Bill dubbed him co-founder) began to have some success in convincing other alcoholics to stop drinking and maintain their sobriety. The object is to hook the helpless alcoholic up to a “higher power” that will provide the impetus for sobriety.
My conversion had been helped by Faith at Work and contained some of the same Oxford Group flavoring that Bill W. experienced. However, following the Canadian hunting trip, my God had a name and I began attending AA meetings as a Christian. At this point I had not been privy to sound theological teachings and fell wholeheartedly into AA teachings - it was saving my life and that was enough.
Arminian Protestantism, the pragmatic evangelism of Charles Finney, and other rootless Christian doctrines that replaced the sound theology of the Pilgrims and the Puritans allowed a plethora of Christian cults to water down the conversion experience so the Stumbling Block was no longer prominent. That theology found its way via the Oxford Groups into the AA program where “believing in god as you understand him” itself become a god, creating a cultic religion for many members.
AA was not intended to be a religious program. However, that is often interpreted to mean that Christianity should not be mentioned but that the religion of “agnosticism” or “god as you understand him” is perfectly acceptable. This theological error contributes to the cultic nature of the program..
The idea that alcoholism is a disease has been fostered inside and outside of AA. This concept not only allows the alcoholic to evade responsibility for his behavior and makes the continuation of evil easier, but also fails to acknowledge that in most cases conventional medical practice is unable to detect alcoholism.
The “moral inventory” is an intricate part of four of the Twelve Steps yet the moral standard by which to accomplish the inventory is missing. Without the immutable moral compass given us by God a proper moral inventory is impossible. Human moral standards are only individual opinions and offer no sound basis for a just inventory.
Another interesting anomaly is the capitalization of the words God and Him when these terms are understood to be applicable to an assortment of gods and hims.
One of the characteristics of a cult is exclusivity. Cult members are often convinced that their way is the only way. AA is heavily flavored with that cultic sentiment.
Then, most egregious, is the claim made in the twelfth step that conversion is a product of the steps rather than the intervention of the Savior.
With proper gracious restraint the true story of the life of Bill Wilson was hidden from the public during his and his wife Lois’s lifetime. Now after almost seventy years the true story is available and it is not a pretty picture.
“A big part of the message that Bill Wilson is trying to sell us here is the idea that us good-old-boy A.A. members should be able to indulge in anything we want to, just as long as it isn't alcohol. Since we so nobly gave up drinking alcohol, we richly deserve life's other little pleasures. Both Bill W. and Doctor Bob were heavy smokers, so they said over and over again that smoking is an okay vice. According to Bill Wilson, dying of self-inflicted emphysema, lung cancer, and heart disease is perfectly okay, and completely compatible with a spiritual life, just as long as you do it sober. Bill just didn't want to quit smoking, so he rationalized his nicotine addiction, and said that he didn't really need to quit smoking.”
“Henrietta Seiberling really loved Bill Wilson in the summer of 1935, and considered him a "God-send" for his help in sobering up Doctor Bob. So what made her hate him so much later on? Well, Henrietta says it was Bill Wilson stealing the money, and trying to steal the book. That is, stealing the Big Book publishing fund, and the copyright of the Big Book. Henrietta Seiberling isn't alone in that opinion: Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows, also says that Bill Wilson took the money and set up his own company, outside of the fellowship, and fraudulently copyrighted the Big Book in his own name, as the sole author, without the knowledge or permission of Doctor Bob or any of the other Akron members, and without the permission of the book's co-authors.”
In what might seem the coup de grace Wilson, an inveterate 13th Step womanizer, cut his mistress, Helen Wynn, into his Will for 10% of royalties that should have gone to his wife, Lois. See the Will here.
If you have a strong stomach, read the entire article here.
Alcoholics seem to react to reality differently than normal people. In them is a pervasive discomfort that sometimes screams for satisfaction. In an almost medicinal way alcohol helped assuage this malaise.
Some years into my sober life I became friends with the Christian man who years earlier had come to our church and counseled my wife to “get off my back”. His name was Harold H and he was an extraordinarily talented individual whose humorous demeanor made him popular in AA. He wrote several books and was personally involved in the conversion of numerous ministers and Christian leaders. His wife was a chain smoking shrew who was finally institutionalized. In his later years he traveled to Christian gatherings with an AA woman he referred to as “Sister” and explained that she was his assistant, responsible for selling his books. Soon neither he nor his books were in demand and in a few short years he passed away. Sometime later I met the “Sister” he traveled with and she told me he had purchased a gun and decided to commit suicide. It was her opinion that she saved his life.
My longtime friend and mentor in AA had lived for an entire winter in a cardboard box in the dump of a medium sized New England city. When he first became sober in AA, a member rented him a room, at bedtime he slept on the floor unable to immediately adjust to a bed. His wife had long since divorced him and he never remarried. Instead, he had a string of affairs with different women. These affairs ended in strife and were a source of continued upset in his life. I knew him well and sincerely believe he could not have adjusted to marriage.
Alcoholics who remain sober for many years often grapple with the deep seated character defects that were responsible for their aberrant behavior. Though their lives change dramatically from drunkenness to sobriety some of these defects often linger making their integration into normal society difficult. The suicide rate among sober alcoholics has not been definitively determined but it is certainly higher than the general population.
My battle with left over demons and a longtime association with sober alcoholics confirms the problems many have in making a proper adjustment to normal society. Sober alcoholics tend to be loners, they generally have family problems, and live with a larger than normal set of un-reconciled differences. Those that leave the fellowship tend to isolate and become loners; others continue an abnormal dependence on AA meetings.
It is far to easy for me to forgive their sinful ways and allow them and myself an inordinate amount of Grace.
Now this short discourse would not be complete without determining God’s perspective and the problem of drunkenness.
The God of the Bible views drunkenness as a sin. Rousas J. Rushdoony writes, “Paul in I Corinthians 5:11 orders a separation from church members who are drunkards, and he places them together with fornicators, the covetous, idoliters, railers, and extortioners.”
If God’s Laws were actively followed many AA members would not have lived into maturity. Rebellion, theft, adultery, blasphemy, and heresy are serious crimes in God’s Kingdom and repeated offenses would have resulted in death sentences allowing God’s system of eugenics to cleanse the social order. In my own case, rebellion against my parents authority would easily have been grounds for the supreme penalty.
One could make the argument that sobriety for some drunkards is a Devilish event. They may be sober but they go through life creating problems that would not have been there had they not existed. They marry and have children and often pass the same problems on the successive generations.
Our Christian God seeks perfection in His creation. The animals used for sacrifices were to be without blemish and those who offered sacrifices to God were to be without defect. “For no one who has a defect shall approach: a blind man, or a lame man, or he who has a disfigured face, or any deformed limb, or a man who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles.” Leviticus 21:18-21
God’s use of the death penalty was not only to provide a deterrent but to cleanse the social order of aberrant behavior so that succeeding generations would live in peace, prosperity, and righteousness. There is considerable evidence that many sober alcoholics live in opposition to this Godly intent.
During centuries of civilized society alcoholism has been a frustrating problem for the Christian Church. Many Christian leaders were and are delighted to turn it over to AA just to get rid of the persistent failure that has marked their efforts. This emotional frustration contributed to the success of the AA program and allowed many of its defects to be overlooked.
For every alcoholic that has achieved continuous sobriety the cessation of drinking is the defining event in his life.
Now, dear reader, this has gone on much too long but there is another subject that begs to be mentioned.
As I wrote earlier in this article, forty years ago AA was difficult to find and selective in those it helped. Little by little there has been an encroachment against the Tradition of attraction rather than promotion.
Discussion meetings have replaced speaker meetings because they allow everyone to participate. This seeker friendly change has allowed new members whose wisdom is limited to voice large amounts of nonsense while not being provided with the identification that comes from listening at speaker meetings to the life stories of sober members.
Some AA groups have paid for television advertising and most have listings in telephone directories. The internet has lots of information about AA. See the AA page here.
AA has become quite popular. It has been euphemistically said that AA membership is a prerequisite for acceptance in the Hollywood social order.
There is a firm analogy between the AA program and the Christian Church. The latter has been seeker friendly for a longer period than AA and has completely lost its ability to impact God’s creation. AA is following the same path, confrontation has waned and the tenets have been lost in an emotional quest to reach out rather than wait to attract.
In my own life, Reformed theology has overridden much of the theological structure of the AA program. It has, however, not replaced the fellowship.
Seven years into sobriety I separated from my wife and shortly thereafter she divorced me. We were more compatible when I drank than when I was sober. My second wife and I have been happily married for thirty two years. She has been a wonderful wife and by God’s Grace I, a good husband.