I have limited knowledge of AA, so please someone correct me if/where I'm wrong, but have a friend who attends, and from what I gather it's more that their official position is that alcoholism is a permanent condition, and that life from then on consists of how you handle it.
Recognizing this is central, hence the "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm an alcoholic."
You're never cured and return to drinking socially... (ideally) you don't ever drink. Ever. Whether publicly or not, you refer to yourself as an alcoholic so it's always clear to you what the deal is, and you don't fool yourself.
The permanence of it feels harsh to me, but it does seem to work, perhaps because "admitting the problem" is so important.
Well, within your few sentences lies the method through which AA is able to remain a meme (in the original Dawkins sense). The core tenant is that alcoholism is a permanent 'spiritual' disease, that cannot be cured, and can only be treated through perpetual use of the 12-step program for the rest of their lives.
None of this, in reality, is based on science or facts. It is something that the original progenitors made up.
Because most people in their normal lives will not develop an addiction firsthand, and because most people are honest and basically believe what they are told (expecting other people to tell them the truth), this continues to propagate.
One way to tell if something propagates mostly as a meme rather than by functional merit is to cross cultural boundaries and look for it elsewhere. If it were something that had merit, there is a better chance for it to have grown within other cultures independently. AA's own self-published census shows that it is overwhelmingly an American and Canadian phenomenon, with some small sprinkling in the UK. It basically exists nowhere else in the world, except for expatriates from the US.
There is also a correlation between alcohol addiction and AA penetration. Places with more problems with alcohol addiction have more AA meetings. At first this seems to make sense -- more alcoholics, more AA members and meetings to help them. But if you go to places where AA does not exist at all, you'll find the same numbers you'd expect from America if there was no correlation with AA. In other words, places without AA have the same numbers you would get in America if you took the AA slider widget and turned it back down to 0.
My own conclusion is that AA and alcoholism is mostly a cultural artifact, not a physical (or 'spiritual') disease manifesting itself in people's bodies. I encourage you to dig up numbers (which AA openly provides from their own surveys, and are not flattering to themselves) and draw your own conclusions.
" The core tenant is that alcoholism is a permanent 'spiritual' disease"
Well, what you hear may vary from one AA group to the next, but I don't think the core point is that it is spiritual, only that it is permanent. (Assorted official books from AA may say otherwise, but actual AA groups very in the application of the key principles.)
The idea is that some people keep chasing the idea that they can drink just a little then stop, yet fail again and again. If you can get them to just give up on that idea they'll be better off.
"AA's own self-published census shows that it is overwhelmingly an American and Canadian phenomenon, with some small sprinkling in the UK. It basically exists nowhere else in the world, except for expatriates from the US."
Do you have a link for this? These sites suggests otherwise:
It makes sense that their international presence is played up heavily on their sites and other material, so as to make it seem as if they are expounding some universal truth, rather than a localized phenomenon.
The idea is that some people keep chasing the idea that they can drink just a little then stop, yet fail again and again. If you can get them to just give up on that idea they'll be better off.
Yes, that is one of AA's core ideas, and not backed up by scientific research or studies. Just because a lot of people (where you live) say it very loudly and frequently does not make it true. This is exactly what I just talked about in my previous post -- people accept these statements as if they are inherently true, without examining them critically.
>> The core tenant is that alcoholism is a permanent 'spiritual' disease
I'm unfamiliar with the program enough that I can't refute the word "spiritual", though another viewpoint might be that alcoholism might rewire your brain permanently, which is conceivable imho.
Couldn't the AA focus on permanence be simply based on the observation that alcoholism has a high rate of relapse, even years after an apparent cure, and the theory that constant vigilance is the best method to prevent this?
Honestly, I think it is something of an excuse to live with the problem (I'm not judging on that, fair enough). A coping mechanism, if you will, to live with relapses and so forth.
I know at least one Alcoholic who is totally dry now (and will not touch a drink because he is scared of slipping back) and yet another who is a normal drinker again. In the first case the guy is pretty like those in the AA - but his coping mechanism is to have scared himself from drinking (again, no issue there - if it works...). The final example, though, suggests that alcoholism is entirely fixable in at least some cases.
(note: I've had problems with slightly excessive/impulsive/habitual drinking in the fairly recent past, so some of this is from experience)
Recognizing this is central, hence the "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm an alcoholic."
You're never cured and return to drinking socially... (ideally) you don't ever drink. Ever. Whether publicly or not, you refer to yourself as an alcoholic so it's always clear to you what the deal is, and you don't fool yourself.
The permanence of it feels harsh to me, but it does seem to work, perhaps because "admitting the problem" is so important.