12 Steps to Where?
Chapter from The Guru Papers
...The prevalent 12-Step groups work only if there is total capitulation to their precepts—the 12 Steps. The disease model furthers this along by locking in the belief in one’s helplessness that is necessary for such submission.
The 12 Steps are authoritarian insofar as they are unchallengeable rules to live by. The demands can be summarized as: admission of ultimate powerlessness; total surrender to a higher power (God); working to eliminate character defects with the help of this higher power; doing a mea culpa and making amends; helping others through spreading this message (the Word).
Although eventually Alcoholics Anonymous embraced the physiological disease model, originally it looked at drunkenness as a character defect and thus focused on traditional moral betterment. So, it is not surprising that the values underlying the 12 Steps come straight from religion’s moral division between good and evil.
Whatever “higher power” one surrenders to, however personal, eclectic, or seemingly modern, the morality that is assumed to flow from it is traditional, devaluing both carnality (the animal) and self-centeredness. Power is the key word in “higher power,” as the good self gains strength by drawing on the idea of an omniscient power that defines virtue. The way the higher power is envisioned doesn’t matter because it is still the source, support, and moral foundation of "the good self." Like most authoritarians, "the good self" seeks power under the presumption that “It knows best.”
Since A.A. is the original 12-Step organization and model for numerous others, we focus mainly on it. Although overtly leaderless (actually, old-time members assume leadership roles), A.A. shares many features of authoritarian cults: an unchallengeable written authority (“The Word”); commandments or rules to live by; a conversion experience achieved through inducing surrender to a super-human power; and dependency on the group, which often undermines relationships with those who do not accept the sanctity of the 12 Steps.
Disagreement with any of the Steps is labeled denial or resistance. Like other authoritarian groups that manipulate fear and desire, fear of leaving is instilled by the often-repeated warning: “You can’t make it without us.”
As is true of every authoritarian structure, surrender is the key to making it work. Part One of this book details how the act of surrender itself has potent psychological repercussions. Giving control to something envisioned as more powerful and worthy than oneself not only temporarily eliminates conflict, but often enables one to feel renewed and even reborn.
Feeling “reborn” is characteristic of all religious conversion experiences which, when combined with repentance and amends, gives an aura of wiping the moral slate clean. In A.A. what one is actually surrendering to are the 12 Steps and the unchallengeable assertion that if one “works the Steps” properly and long enough, they will perform the miracle of sobriety.
But this miracle still requires continual group support because the 12 Steps do not eliminate one’s inner split, but rather act to strengthen one side by suppressing the other. The good self cannot contain the bad self all on its own, no matter how lofty an ideology it assumes (or surrenders to). This is why it is important for such programs to have people acknowledge powerlessness for life, and thus be in continual need not only of the 12-Step ideology, but of group support.
The A.A. model not only programs people not to trust themselves—self-mistrust is essential for it to work. Its litany is “The 12 Steps work—don’t question them.” When someone does drop out, sure enough the addiction (the bad self) resurfaces—as warned. On returning to A.A., the “We told you so” smug reproof further locks in the belief of being powerless.
The group acts like a chorus of good selves whose refrain is “You’ll always lose control on your own.” A.A. interprets its ability to predict relapses as a verification of its ideology (rather than of its ineffectiveness), using this to tighten authoritarian control over its members. But the model of a divided self explains far better why even after years of sobriety the siren-song of excess lurks beneath the surface, leaving no choice but to “take it [sobriety] one day at a time.”
Any compulsion or addiction must contain a deep fear of a past state that in some fashion the addiction ameliorates. What is often feared is the dry, regimented life of being bottled up by the good self with no outlets. Thus the life the bad self creates has to become really bad, often life-threatening, before sobriety, which here means a return to the constraints of the good self, has any real appeal. This is why A.A. continually emphasizes that addicts need to hit bottom to change.
A.A. can serve as a stepping stone to major life changes. Some have successfully used it to gain stability long enough to shift priorities and find other sources of fulfillment. The strongest argument for such programs is that they work, or rather, work better on a mass scale, and cost less, than anything else available.
Although there are some, particularly proponents of responsibility models, who seriously challenge the long-term efficacy of A.A. and its success rate. How well A.A. actually works is not our focus. Authoritarian structures of all sorts do indeed work to the degree that those in them obey their precepts. Like most authoritarian belief systems, the 12 Steps provide a powerful, mechanical strategy with fairly predictable results for those who conform.
A key question is how is “work” defined? We do not doubt that abstinence through A.A. could be far better for some than their previous desperate, dysfunctional lives. These programs can enable divided people to function in a social order whose values promulgate their inner division.
Yet leading a manageable life only through believing one is unalterably sick is a very limited view of recovery. If stability is dependent on continually acknowledging one’s basic powerlessness, it is seriously flawed. What remains is the underlying fear that one is untrustworthy at the deepest level.
“Cures” that do not bring an integration are disabling in their own way. People who fear being taken over at any instant by an element within themselves are crippled, though often less overtly so than before the good self (with outside help) gained the upper hand.
Any framework that does not take the division within people into account can never truly implement a cure, if by cure one means an integrated being who has self-trust, and thus is not susceptible to authoritarian manipulation. To live in fear of oneself is to be psychologically crippled.
A way of taking issue with our perspective takes this form: “Being critical without offering something better is questionable at best and arrogant at worst.” We are in no way saying that people and the world (as it is now) would be better off without such programs. People do what they must to function and survive.
This chapter does not offer a simple cure nor a specific therapy for addiction. Rather, it places the kind of addiction that involves conflict over control within the basic framework of authoritarianism. Our purpose is not only to show why such addictions belong there, but to offer a different frame for viewing it that does not foster adaptation to a dysfunctional social context that is itself increasingly out of control.
Any “help” that contains unwanted behaviors through generating self-mistrust is just the old authoritarian machinery in disguise. And although this may bring some relief, it does so at the high cost of further crippling self-trust.
If addiction is an illness, the disease is authoritarianism. As in so many other areas, the cure society offers for the ills it creates and exacerbates through coercion is more coercion. Not only are 12-Step programs authoritarian, people (teens, employees, drunk drivers, wife-beaters) are being coerced to enter them as an alternative to more severe punishment.
The 12 Steps work to the extent they do because they mirror the division within the social and moral order, helping divided people fit into a society that helped divide them. Authoritarian structures have been in operation for millennia because they “work”—i.e., they are good at accomplishing certain ends. But, by defining the rules, limits, and framework of change in advance, they are incompatible with a truly evolutionary model.
It is not surprising that a society with a polarized morality and a deep fundamentalist strain frames addiction as either bad or sick—“sick” becomes an ambiguous category that is at least not bad.
The somber truth is that addicts are neither ill nor evil, but caught up in a social context, as we all are, that makes sanity and wholeness difficult to achieve. Whenever the root of the problem is the context, which exists not only in social structures but also in people’s minds, there is a different way to implement change other than through therapies, cures, and behavioral controls.
Trying to shift a deeply ingrained, even though outmoded, social and moral context can seem hopeless. But once it begins to lose its power to define and thus control, personal and eventually social change begin to accelerate. The remainder of this chapter speaks to this, with broader concerns than just addiction.
Chapter from The Guru Papers
...The prevalent 12-Step groups work only if there is total capitulation to their precepts—the 12 Steps. The disease model furthers this along by locking in the belief in one’s helplessness that is necessary for such submission.
The 12 Steps are authoritarian insofar as they are unchallengeable rules to live by. The demands can be summarized as: admission of ultimate powerlessness; total surrender to a higher power (God); working to eliminate character defects with the help of this higher power; doing a mea culpa and making amends; helping others through spreading this message (the Word).
Although eventually Alcoholics Anonymous embraced the physiological disease model, originally it looked at drunkenness as a character defect and thus focused on traditional moral betterment. So, it is not surprising that the values underlying the 12 Steps come straight from religion’s moral division between good and evil.
Whatever “higher power” one surrenders to, however personal, eclectic, or seemingly modern, the morality that is assumed to flow from it is traditional, devaluing both carnality (the animal) and self-centeredness. Power is the key word in “higher power,” as the good self gains strength by drawing on the idea of an omniscient power that defines virtue. The way the higher power is envisioned doesn’t matter because it is still the source, support, and moral foundation of "the good self." Like most authoritarians, "the good self" seeks power under the presumption that “It knows best.”
Since A.A. is the original 12-Step organization and model for numerous others, we focus mainly on it. Although overtly leaderless (actually, old-time members assume leadership roles), A.A. shares many features of authoritarian cults: an unchallengeable written authority (“The Word”); commandments or rules to live by; a conversion experience achieved through inducing surrender to a super-human power; and dependency on the group, which often undermines relationships with those who do not accept the sanctity of the 12 Steps.
Disagreement with any of the Steps is labeled denial or resistance. Like other authoritarian groups that manipulate fear and desire, fear of leaving is instilled by the often-repeated warning: “You can’t make it without us.”
As is true of every authoritarian structure, surrender is the key to making it work. Part One of this book details how the act of surrender itself has potent psychological repercussions. Giving control to something envisioned as more powerful and worthy than oneself not only temporarily eliminates conflict, but often enables one to feel renewed and even reborn.
Feeling “reborn” is characteristic of all religious conversion experiences which, when combined with repentance and amends, gives an aura of wiping the moral slate clean. In A.A. what one is actually surrendering to are the 12 Steps and the unchallengeable assertion that if one “works the Steps” properly and long enough, they will perform the miracle of sobriety.
But this miracle still requires continual group support because the 12 Steps do not eliminate one’s inner split, but rather act to strengthen one side by suppressing the other. The good self cannot contain the bad self all on its own, no matter how lofty an ideology it assumes (or surrenders to). This is why it is important for such programs to have people acknowledge powerlessness for life, and thus be in continual need not only of the 12-Step ideology, but of group support.
The A.A. model not only programs people not to trust themselves—self-mistrust is essential for it to work. Its litany is “The 12 Steps work—don’t question them.” When someone does drop out, sure enough the addiction (the bad self) resurfaces—as warned. On returning to A.A., the “We told you so” smug reproof further locks in the belief of being powerless.
The group acts like a chorus of good selves whose refrain is “You’ll always lose control on your own.” A.A. interprets its ability to predict relapses as a verification of its ideology (rather than of its ineffectiveness), using this to tighten authoritarian control over its members. But the model of a divided self explains far better why even after years of sobriety the siren-song of excess lurks beneath the surface, leaving no choice but to “take it [sobriety] one day at a time.”
Any compulsion or addiction must contain a deep fear of a past state that in some fashion the addiction ameliorates. What is often feared is the dry, regimented life of being bottled up by the good self with no outlets. Thus the life the bad self creates has to become really bad, often life-threatening, before sobriety, which here means a return to the constraints of the good self, has any real appeal. This is why A.A. continually emphasizes that addicts need to hit bottom to change.
A.A. can serve as a stepping stone to major life changes. Some have successfully used it to gain stability long enough to shift priorities and find other sources of fulfillment. The strongest argument for such programs is that they work, or rather, work better on a mass scale, and cost less, than anything else available.
Although there are some, particularly proponents of responsibility models, who seriously challenge the long-term efficacy of A.A. and its success rate. How well A.A. actually works is not our focus. Authoritarian structures of all sorts do indeed work to the degree that those in them obey their precepts. Like most authoritarian belief systems, the 12 Steps provide a powerful, mechanical strategy with fairly predictable results for those who conform.
A key question is how is “work” defined? We do not doubt that abstinence through A.A. could be far better for some than their previous desperate, dysfunctional lives. These programs can enable divided people to function in a social order whose values promulgate their inner division.
Yet leading a manageable life only through believing one is unalterably sick is a very limited view of recovery. If stability is dependent on continually acknowledging one’s basic powerlessness, it is seriously flawed. What remains is the underlying fear that one is untrustworthy at the deepest level.
“Cures” that do not bring an integration are disabling in their own way. People who fear being taken over at any instant by an element within themselves are crippled, though often less overtly so than before the good self (with outside help) gained the upper hand.
Any framework that does not take the division within people into account can never truly implement a cure, if by cure one means an integrated being who has self-trust, and thus is not susceptible to authoritarian manipulation. To live in fear of oneself is to be psychologically crippled.
A way of taking issue with our perspective takes this form: “Being critical without offering something better is questionable at best and arrogant at worst.” We are in no way saying that people and the world (as it is now) would be better off without such programs. People do what they must to function and survive.
This chapter does not offer a simple cure nor a specific therapy for addiction. Rather, it places the kind of addiction that involves conflict over control within the basic framework of authoritarianism. Our purpose is not only to show why such addictions belong there, but to offer a different frame for viewing it that does not foster adaptation to a dysfunctional social context that is itself increasingly out of control.
Any “help” that contains unwanted behaviors through generating self-mistrust is just the old authoritarian machinery in disguise. And although this may bring some relief, it does so at the high cost of further crippling self-trust.
If addiction is an illness, the disease is authoritarianism. As in so many other areas, the cure society offers for the ills it creates and exacerbates through coercion is more coercion. Not only are 12-Step programs authoritarian, people (teens, employees, drunk drivers, wife-beaters) are being coerced to enter them as an alternative to more severe punishment.
The 12 Steps work to the extent they do because they mirror the division within the social and moral order, helping divided people fit into a society that helped divide them. Authoritarian structures have been in operation for millennia because they “work”—i.e., they are good at accomplishing certain ends. But, by defining the rules, limits, and framework of change in advance, they are incompatible with a truly evolutionary model.
It is not surprising that a society with a polarized morality and a deep fundamentalist strain frames addiction as either bad or sick—“sick” becomes an ambiguous category that is at least not bad.
The somber truth is that addicts are neither ill nor evil, but caught up in a social context, as we all are, that makes sanity and wholeness difficult to achieve. Whenever the root of the problem is the context, which exists not only in social structures but also in people’s minds, there is a different way to implement change other than through therapies, cures, and behavioral controls.
Trying to shift a deeply ingrained, even though outmoded, social and moral context can seem hopeless. But once it begins to lose its power to define and thus control, personal and eventually social change begin to accelerate. The remainder of this chapter speaks to this, with broader concerns than just addiction.
