Dependence on Man -- The Source of Anxiety

This sense of dependence flows from the notion that as an alcoholic, I cannot make decisions for myself, that I must look to someone else to lead me, to guide me through things.

Here are passages which emphasize the helplessness of alcoholics, just because an individual has difficulty with drinking, or with quitting drinking.

"We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals - usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

 

"We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition.

 

"Though there is no way of proving it, we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking. But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time. We have heard of a few instances where people, who showed definite signs of alcoholism, were able to stop for a long period because of an overpowering desire to do so. 

 

Numerous falsehoods pervade these staments. The argument that alcoholism is a disease, for example, when many people have broken free of alcohol addiction without resorting to AA or other curatives. This "progressive illness" in fact stems from the attempts of men and women to curb something which causes them great shame. Deal with the condemnation, and then the desire to drink will fall away.

 

"We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. . ."

 

Lost the control, lost our legs, lost, lost, lost -- man needs more than the power to overcome drinking. He needs life, and that more abundantly. The sense of shame within a person poses all the problems, and the solution to this problem is more than Twelve Steps, and yet the answer is much simpler than those Twelve Steps.

 

Yet a man who is lost, who cannot control his drinking, this is a man who needs someone else to explain things to him.

 

Some will protest that the AA book makes dependence on God the most important thing:

 

It is not the matter of giving that is in question, but when and how to give. That often makes the difference between failure and success. The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God. He clamors for this or that, claiming he cannot master alcohol until his material needs are cared for. Nonsense. Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth: Job or no job - wife or no wife - we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.

 

Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trust in God and clean house. (AA, pg 98)

 

Trust in God, yes, but clean house? The tenth step and on give the impression that the house will never be clean, that a person working the program will never stop working it. The house never gets clean, in effect, and a man becomes broken and frustrated, never able to find a sense of satisfaction that everything has been taken care of in his life.