AA and the "Guided" Ethos

by Jim Kopetz

Alcoholics Anonymous equates addiction with faith, not science. Is addiction a spiritual crisis, a biological condition, or as Doug Stanhope describes it, "simply liking things more than life"?

 

 There are few things in this life I despise more than irrational thinking. Scientific discovery is the future of the human race and anyone who stands in the way of it I consider a mortal foe. Anyone who takes the bible as scientific fact, when modern science hadn't begun until a thousand+ years later, is an impediment to our evolution as a species, pun intended.

Even the religious should be offended by Alcoholics Anonymous. Create your own god? Really? Chapter 4 of the AA handbook is entitled "We Agnostics":

"We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.

Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously."

I can't help but chuckle at the ubiquitous final word. "Obviously". It's all so obvious. We must give up, as our own feeble weaknesses prevent us from accomplishing anything on our own. We are foul children, bound by our vices. But what about choice? Isn't that what so many faiths are based on? Man has the choice to accept god. Man can also deny god. Man has the choice to drink. Man can also not drink. Man has the choice to fatten themselves up until they can no longer get out of bed. Man can also eat healthy.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is what does god have to do with science, which I believe addiction falls under. Why must that be a tenet of an otherwise somewhat respectable ethos. Remove god from AA and add a dose of science and you've got something. The community is what keeps groups like this going. Sober people meeting sober people. This can be a good thing. Just don't bring your fucked up notions of acceptance to the party.

This is the prelude to the end of the world.