I agree there is no spiritual fulfillment by introducing yourself as an alcoholic, none whatsover. I think AA does a huge injustice to all ex drinkers of the world by perpetuating the use of the word alcoholic for ex drinkers. The spiritual fulfillment comes from working the steps. The big one is step 11, which encourages people to use 2 way prayer with a higher power. Yoga, Buddhism, and other religious practices work as a great substitute.
I smoked anywhere from 5 to 10 cigarettes a day before I quit, sometimes none if I didn't drink that night. I was also swimming 1 to 2 miles every day, doing yoga everyday, and didn't want to commit to the smoking and drinking anymore. I just didn't have the energy to make the special place for my vices anymore. I would use my yoga practice to clear my body and mind so I could go swimming or biking later in the day.
Many of the ex drinkers in AA are serious smokers, going through 2 or 3 packs a day. They throw back 3 to 5 cups of coffee at every meeting too. They really need to get some nutritional advice, but they are content to just stay sober for the most part. I also agree that these people need some medication like a Xanax to smooth out their anxieties so they can stop smoking. However, that puts them right back on the same path of dependence they were just fighting. I was fortunate when I stopped drinking and smoking that I had several years of meditation under my belt from yoga. I just had to work the steps in reverse to say that I didn't want to drink or smoke again.
As for the fetization of the 12 steps, the destruction of the ego revolves around social dependence on vices like drugs, alcohol, sex, and gambling. These are only a small subset of the total ego driven control issues that make people sufer from obsessive compulsive disorders. There are just as many abusive ego problems from people that don't suffer from alcohol problems. In reality, the 12 steps is form of behavior modification to get people to replace their alcohol response with meditation or prayer. Everybody in AA that is trying to remain sober realizes that unconditional sobriety requires ego management to contain issues like sex. Going back to adolescence, one of the key motivations to getting loaded was to try to get laid. Nevermind the fact that it has the exact opposite effect of making people more attractive. Long before alcohol abuse is recognized as chronic alcoholism, men were boys that just wanted to go out and get drunk and screw.
Obviously, the universalism of recovery shows that addiction is not a unique problem. It is a very typical form of ocd response to intrusive thoughts that cause repetitive patterns of response. I have an obsession to go to the bar and drink and cannot control the compulsion to limit myself to one or two drinks.
It took me 6 months to completely overcome the obsession to drink. Overcoming the obsession to smoke only lasted about one month during the same period. Sometimes I think that I wnet through the 12 steps just to stop smoking. It's quite funny to sit back and watch people juggle the issue of smoking and drinking. |
