Daily Beast article offers incorrect assumptions about AA
I feel called to respond to Gabrielle Glaser’s recent article, “Elizabeth Pena and the Truth about Alcoholic Women.” (Note: The article can be read in its entirety here, and I encourage you to comment or respond with your thoughts or input.) My response is centered on the references and implications the author makes around the 12 Step movement and the confusion among the 12 Step fellowships, formalized therapy, and treatment centers that are licensed/accredited, which are biased and incorrect.
In this article, Glaser combines treatment and the 12 Step movement as if they are interchangeable but they are not. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is not a program. It is a fellowship. AA makes no demands, however; it does have a Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and a preamble.
In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it states that, “It invites and suggests a way of living for its members if they voluntarily choose to participate.” In Glaser’s article she stated that, “the program, developed in the 1930s, demands that its members abstain from drinking, cede their egos, and accept their ‘powerlessness’ over alcohol.” As I stated previously, this sentiment is false, as AA makes no demands. In the preamble of Alcoholics Anonymous it says that AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others recover from alcoholism. In truth, the only requirement that AA has for membership is the desire to stop drinking. So for one to become a member of AA does not demand anything. If we look further into the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the 5th chapter of “How it Works,” it states: “Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that one is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
This tells us that Alcoholics Anonymous is totally a program of suggestion. There are absolutely no demands in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
There are many licensed and accredited treatment facilities that encourage and support their patients in attending 12 Step meetings outside of their facility. Sometimes there are institutional commitments where fellow 12 Step travelers come and host (voluntarily) a meeting inside a facility so that patients can begin to participate, become familiar, and understand the 12 Step fellowship.
The next point that Glaser brings up in her article is that “Anonymity rules help obscure people with criminal records, and many new members, especially women, report being the targets of unwanted sexual advances.” She goes on to further indicate two situations in which female AA members were attacked or killed. Glaser mentions that women are groped and even sometimes raped in AA meetings. She clearly states an incident where a woman was strangled to death by a man whom she met in a 12 Step meeting who was a known felon protected by the anonymity of AA. She demonstrates that Alcoholics Anonymous protects the anonymity of potentially harmful individuals.
To the AA fellowship, anonymity is something that protects the organization as a whole. Individuals who choose to maintain their anonymity help ensure that when they are in a 12 Step meeting they are in a safe place. In the 11th tradition of AA it states, “we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” The 12th tradition states that anonymity is the spiritual foundation of the fellowship. Unfortunately, here in America and throughout the world, there is still a stigma attached to this chronic, incurable disease. It is true that some unhealthy people attend 12 Step meetings, as Glaser points out. That is why members of Alcoholics Anonymous are reminded by their sponsors or other fellow 12 Step travelers to stick with the winners and choose people that they perceive as being healthy to be in their lives. When one is a member of any other type of fellowship or organization, there are some unsavory people who may attend. It could be at a church, a temple, a mosque, a weight management meeting, or an MS support group. We don’t know everyone’s history that attends every type of organization. Yes, it is unfortunate that unfavorable incidents occur but it certainly is not the fault of those fellowships, programs, or services. It is very, very sad that sometimes good people are harmed anywhere or at any time in this life. Many of our own children are harmed here in the United States at the hands of their own parents or other loved ones who neglect and abuse them. Society has animals that are not treated well in the shelters that employ those that are there to protect them. In situations and circumstances like these, unfortunate things happen almost every minute of every day in every state, county, and city across our nation. So yes, there are adverse circumstances that occur in the rooms of churches, in the rooms of AA, in the rooms of schools, but sadly, that is life for all.
The other concern that I have in reference to this article is that Glaser highlights various types of treatment that are available to women who suffer from the disease of addiction. Glaser indicates that, “A growing number of US practitioners are using what therapists and doctors in Europe have been using to treat alcohol use disorder for decades: evidence-based practice.” In the United States we have been producing evidence-based practices for decades long before Europe. It was in the early 1960s that Suzanne and Robert Fletcher, both trained at Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins University, were pioneers in the movement of evidence-based best practices.
Glaser’s indications that harm reduction is a form of treatment for alcohol use disorder in women is untrue. Although harm reduction is an evidence-based practice, it is not a treatment. It helps to decrease the criminality that some people find associated with the disease but it is not a treatment. Harm reduction is a tool that is used to protect the general public against the ills of a person’s alcoholism or drug addiction. It reduces the harm to the public but not necessarily the individual who is suffering. I do believe, though, that Glaser is correct in stating that programs are embracing anti-craving medications that are used frequently.
Finally, in Glaser’s article she references a treatment professional who stated that “AA’s message of powerlessness is not helpful to most women—and is likely harmful.” Stephanie Covington, who has authored many books on women’s recovery, is an expert in the treatment of women who suffer from alcoholism and other addictive disorders. In her book A Woman’s Way Through the 12 Steps, she addresses very succinctly what powerlessness is. In her book she quotes one recovering woman and her feelings about powerlessness: “women have always been powerless… so admitting I’m powerless over alcohol is a really a way to keep the power I do have. I’m admitting that there’s something I can’t control and that by trying to control it, I am going to lose even more power than I’d already lost by virtue of my being female.” Stephanie indicates that, “Oddly enough, acknowledging our lack of power over things we can’t control frees us to act in areas where we do have some power.” Stephanie advises that, “Step one is about awareness and unmanageability. That’s what it’s about.” So sometimes when authors like Glaser choose to pick an individual word out, they should understand the context of the word before they start making judgments about the word. Powerlessness is a word in the 1st Step of Alcoholics Anonymous; however, it is a paradoxical powerlessness. Only until a member truly gives up something do they find how much power they really do have. It’s kind of like losing a battle to win a war; it’s like a parent knowing what arguments to have and not to have with their children. It’s like giving up one thing in order to achieve something much greater.
Unlike the treatment options that Glaser lists, there are women’s facilities and programs that specialize in the treatment of women that have been around for almost 50 years, and pioneered the way. Several of these facilities were available in the area in which actress Elizabeth Pena lived. One of the oldest women’s-only facilities, Friendly House, is located in Los Angeles. So it’s not as though there were not services in Pena’s backyard. It is unfortunate and sad that at this day and age, with as much help and hope that is available, this life may have been prematurely ended as a result of the disease. Alcoholism is a disease that today is very treatable and whose stigma is not what it was 50 years ago. I am hopeful that the life and death of Elizabeth Pena helps another suffering alcoholic “trudge the road to happy destiny.”
Resource
Daly J. Evidence Based Medicine and the Search for a Science of Clinical Care. Los Angeles: UC Press; 2005.
