September 16, 2005

• Why the 12 Steps Don’t Work: Some AA/NA Heresy

  
  

  I have been in and out of 12 Step groups since the seventies; spent time in the eighties as an AA whiz kid, doing numerous news articles and media  interviews on the glories of sobriety and rubbing elbows (NOT bending them) with some of the then biggest names in the field–Luceille Fleming, Claudia Black, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and Rick Esterly, to name a few.  The whole time, I continued to not only smoke dope, but also sell the stuff–after all, I was a good AA member–alcohol was the only drug that mattered.  Anyway, it has not been until fairly recently that I began a real recovery, a key part of which has been transcending the AA programming which had been holding me back.

  
  

  Take the 12 Steps–please.  They are parroted like gospel; many treatment centers require the inmates to “work” them;  AA true believers insist that “doing the steps” is essential to recovery.  Why then, do so many folks who faithfully work the steps, suit up and show up at meetings, get a sponsor, et cetera et cetera et cetera, ad infinitum ad nauseum–and still go out and get loaded.  For one thing, the 12 Steps are–like the book of Deutronomy–largely a pious hoax.  As written, most of them are either impossible to genuinely carry out, or so subject to misinterpretation or downright ambiguous as to be virtually meaningless and valueless.

  
  

  Here I intend to look at two of the most egregious, steps Eight and Nine.

  
  

  “Step 8.  We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”  Sounds good.  Also pretty grandiose–grandiosity seems to come naturally to addicts–and totally unrealistic–reality seems not to come naturally to addicts.  Now here is why it does not and can not work in the real world.

  
  

  The big reason–a thing called the black-out.  Many drugs–alcohol chief among them–causes a condition known as a black-out, in which the person may seem to be conscious and alert, may not even seem to be particularly impaired, but during which time he or she will have no recollection–no memory whatsoever–of what he or she had done.  For instance, I was at a Mensa convention in Connecticut once–Sunday started with a champagne brunch and continued to a wine and cheese cruise in the harbor–by the time I left (late afternoon), I was so loaded I couldn’t walk, and had to be helped into my car for the long drive home.  I vaguely remember stopping at a liquor store for a bottle of scotch, and stopping at a Howard Johnson’s on the Pennsylvanai Tunrpike for some sodas, but when I got home in Harrisburg, pulled up in front of my town house, I remember starting and thinking “Holy shit!  I’m home.” 

  
  

  To this day, I have no idea what I may have done during that drive–I may have run a vanload of nuns off the damn road, for all I know.  I do know that I have been in public in blackouts so many times, there is no way I could possibly know what I did and who I did it to.  I may have robbed and killed for all I know.  I do know that that one incident made it quite impossible for me to even come close to working an Eighth Step.  And any reasonably sane and honest recovering person will have to concede much the same thing.

  
  

  Another thing–many people get into AA rather late in life–at least the founders did.  I contend there is no way one could begin to remember “all persons” they had harmed, even if one’s memory had not been impaired.  Granted, many people do write down wehat they remember, and probably get some value, some shoring-up of their damaged self-esteem, at least.  But they are NOT working the Step as written.

  
  

  “Step 9.  We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”  Again, this sounds good.  Addicts are real good at sounding good.  But in reality, this can scarcely be done, except in a relatively trival way.  Say you stole $100 from someone and blew it on booze or some other drug.  Fine, you could track them down and return the $100, plus nterest.  But how do you repay them for the sense of violation and loss of trust that theft almost inevitably entails?  You don’t–because you can’t!

  
  

  Still another thing that sounds good but doesn’t work–that “injure them or others” clause. That is a fine way for a recovering person to get off the hook–anyone can decide–especially with the collusion of a sponsor–that attempting to make any given amends could somehow be injurious, and hence they are absolved. There are precious few recovering people who can read minds.  We have no idea, can have no idea, what may or may not “injure others.”  This is merely more divorcement from reality, more grandiosity.  On many occasions, when an earnest 12 Stepper approaches someone he or she has wronged, the “wronged” person has no recollection of the alleged wrong, and leaves  the encounter feeling puzzled, annoyed and distracted.  On other occasions, it is harmful for the “wronged” merely to have the old incident, the old injury dredged up and thrown into his or her face –  again.  But the recovering addict is now free to blithly go his or her way, serene in the knowledge that he or she at least tried to work another step–never mind that it may well have involved stepping on another person’s face!

  
  

  One final note–I have observed that addicts are way more prone to NPD–Narcissistic Personality Disorder–than are members of the general population.  Getting into a detailled description of NPD is not appropriate here–suffice it to say, one prime symptom is a pathological need for attention–another is the inappropriate disclosing of one’s personal life, usually to people who have zero interest in same; a third is being manipulative.  What could be better for the NPD case, then, than tracking down people they have screwed over, demanding their attention, bringing up old offenses, and then proclaiming their willingness to “make amends.” It is like giving a kleptomaniac a license to steal.
  

  
  

  
   

  • 8:00 pm
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