Why People Get Stuck in AA - And the Way Out

I have spent more time exploring why individuals remain trapped in AA, or "keep coming back", even though the program clearly does not work, clearly does not help people become or stay sober, and the high incidence of failure and suicide is just unconscionable.

The whole program is based on creating a false identity for individuals, teaching them to value themselves according to a behavior that cannot change.

The mind-formation which takes people from defining themselves as "human beings" and then teaches them to see themselves as "alcoholics" who can never be cured leads men and women to think that that is who they are, and thus there is no escape.

Yet we individuals are far more than what we think we are, and who we are must be based on more than what we think of ourselves.

In Christ, we receive a new identity, and all we have to do is believe on Him:

"Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." (John 6: 29)

As you grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord (2 Peter 3: 18), you learn to be established in this gift of righteousness which we receive because of Jesus' death on the Cross (Romans 5: 17; 2 Corinthians 5: 21)

As you see that you are made righteousness, no matter what you do or think, you will grow to realize that this righteousness has taken you from dead in trespasses (including any addiction) to alive in Christ (Ephesians 2: 1-6)

You are a new creation in Christ, ladies and gentlemen, whether you drink or not, since whatever goes into you does not make a difference, but what comes out of the heart of man (Matthew15: 11)

When you see yourself as a child of God, it makes no sense to see yourself as an alcoholic, since God completed a perfect work through His Son at the Cross.

For those who attend Celebrate Recovery, I would counsel you to look hard at the Old and New Covenants in scripture.

Here is the New Covenant outlined in Jeremiah and repeated in Hebrews Chapter Eight and Ten:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

 

This New Covenant, just like the First Covenant cut by God with Himself on behalf of Abraham (Genesis 15) has nothing to do with you at all. Your part is to believe that you have no part, and that Jesus completed a perfect work on your behalf at the Cross!