eihwaz
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Again as I understand it, after going through the 12 Steps, one ends up with a realisation that one has a choice over one's substance of choice...
To me one of the core points of this discussion is whether the choice available post-12 Steps is also available at Step 1 or not. If it is - then the disease model is, it seems to me, somewhat compromised. If it isn't, then where does the choice post 12-Steps come from?
According to Twelve Step philosophy, the alcoholic does not have such a choice at Step One:
quote:
ORIGINAL: Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, page 24
The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
In Twelve Step recovery, one acquires choice via a "spiritual transformation" or "spiritual awakening" as a result of practicing the Steps. AA adopted the idea of a "spiritual transformation" as a cure for alcoholism from Carl Jung:
quote:
ORIGINAL: Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, pages 26-27
[Dr. Jung said to his alcoholic patient]: "You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you." Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
He said to the doctor, "Is there no exception?"
"Yes," replied the doctor, "there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, one in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me, these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional deplacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes where were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begins to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you..."
Correspondence between Bill W. and Jung at Sacred Connections: The History of Alcoholics Anonymous, C.G. Jung/Bill W. Letters -- Spiritus contra Spiritum
The nature of the AA "spiritual experience" was also informed, directly and indirectly, by the ideas of William James.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Alcholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, Appendix II
[M]any alcoholics have ... concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming "God-consciousness" followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.
[Sudden] transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the "educational variety" because they develop slowly over a period of time.
As far as what AA considers a "spiritual transformation" to be:
quote:
ORIGINAL: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, "Step Twelve," pages 106-107
Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. And these things which they have in common are not too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honest, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, he has made himself ready to receive it.
AA's manner of making ready to receive this gifts lies in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program.
For AA sources, see Cyber Recovery Forums: AA Big Book and 12 Step Sources
quote:
ORIGINAL tweakabelle
I suppose it could be said that it's a little unfair to hold AA responsible for the activities of adherents such as Watters. My feeling is that if AA accepted its low success rate, it could no longer maintain its insistence on being the only way, and people like Watters would have to move aside...
I'm not aware that AA insists on being the only way. As I suggested in an earlier post, the implicit endorsement of AA as such by government, in addition to raising church-state issues, is problematic for AA as well. For example, AA states that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking; conversely, it's not the desire to avoid prison time.
ETA: AA's description of "spiritual awakening"
< Message edited by eihwaz -- 6/12/2011 9:54:45 AM >
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RE: Does religion belong at AA? Fight over God splits T... - 
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