Clean and Sober – And Agnostic

Turned off by AA’s religious aspects, new groups are leaving God out of their battle with the bottle

On a recent Friday evening, a small God who would come down and stir their coffee group of recovering alcoholics filed into the for them.” Couth Buzzard Used Books store, in Seattle RR also shuns the religious element. Wash., to talk about their struggles with “the Founded in Lotus, Calif., five years ago by beast.” “Haul your beast out of the cellar,” group clinical social worker Jack Trimpey, the monitor Jim Petermann urged one woman. “Beat organization has grown to holding meetings in up on her, confront her. Then lock her back up. more than 150 cities from a high of just 30 last Beating up on your beast is a serious tool.” year. It traces its roots directly to the ideas of The beast battlers were members of Albert Ellis and his New York-based lnstitute for Rational Recovery, (RR), one of a growing Rational-Emotive Therapy. Ellis’s theories, number of self-help groups that have sprung up formulated in the 1950s, blame emotional in the past few years as alternatives to problems on the distorted perceptions rather Alcoholics Anonymous. Drawing heavily on A.A^ than inner conflict – a view also held by defectors, these groups are mounting a direct practitioners of cognitive therapy. Trimpey, challenge to the older organization’s cornerstone himself an A.A. dropout, says RR tries to help l2-step program which calls on members to kick members recognize the sort of “crooked” their addiction by trusting a “higher power.” thinking that sets up impulse behavior. “The The 56-year-old, million member A.A. beast” is what RR members are taught to call has come under increasing criticism for what the irrational inner voice that tells them it would some see as the directly religious tilt of its 12 be great to have a beer or a tumbler of vodka steps, four of which specifically invoke “God. ” with breakfast. To the RR way of thinking, A.A.’s Some reluctant members of A.A. or similar notion of “powerlessness” is another irrational groups ordered to attend meetings after being idea. “lt perpetuates the addictive cycle,” says convicted of drunk driving have sued on the Trimpey. “lt says, ‘l have no choice.”‘ But RR grounds of civil-rights violation. “They were insists that choice is the essence of the drinking praying and talking about God half the time at problem. “You can pick up a container of beer the meetings I went to,” says John Norfolk, a and drink it without somehow choosing to,” Maryland man who won a 1988 suit backed by Trimpy says. the American Civil Liberties Union. For some alcoholics, the appeal to forces within one’s own control simply works better. A disease. The newer groups, including “The whole higher-power concept just never did RR, Secular Organization for Sobriety (SOS) it for me,” says Paul, a 41-year-old Brockton, and Women for Sobriety (WFS), lean more on Mass., mechanic who bounced in and out of willpower than on any higher power. Where A.A. A.A. for a dozen years before hooking up with a calls drinking a disease and urges members to Boston-based RR chapter. “lt was like hocusacknowledge their own helplessness against it, pocus, like magic. When I put my hand on the the alternative groups emphasize taking door knob at the package store, I’d say, ‘O.K., personal responsibility for kicking the habit. “We higher power, where are you?”‘With RR he has credit ourselves for achieving sobriety,” says learned to think differently. “Now I don’t even get James Christopher, founder of SOS, the largest in my car to go to the package store. I think it out of the groups, with an international membership (and) say, “l’ve been there before. What’s going of 20,000. “Some people in SOS are quite to come of it?”‘ religious, but they don’t believe in an intervening A.A. of course doesn’t discourage that kind of reasoning. But it holds that alcoholics are

never really cured of the “disease” of drinking, most of the steps deal with what people and should attend meetings all their lives. Thus, themselves are going to do.” critics complain, A.A. simply substitutes one kind of dependency for another. Jean Kirkpatrick, a Enviable-record; Undoubtedly, part of sociologist and founder of the 5,000 member A.A.’s attraction is the release from Women for Sobriety, says that that presents a accountability implied to the appeal to higher particular problem for a woman, who is “already forces. Calling drinking a disease instead of a dependent on alcohol, on her husband, on personal failure also seems to help some everything but herself.” ln A.A., Kirkpatrick says, people. “acknowledging an addictive disorder as “she develops new dependencies, on a sponsor, a disease has some of the same element of on a higher power, on going to meetings for the psychological forgiveness as the confessional,” rest of her life.” says Bigelow. ” it says, ‘lt’s a disease, it’s not my Like RR, Women for Sobriety has other fault.”‘ A.A. supporters also see nothing wrong ideas. lts own 13 steps stress positive with fostering dependency on the group. “For perceptions (“1 am what I think”) and individual some people, it’s exactly what they need,” says responsibility. Kirkpatrick, who founded the Dr. Edward Khantzian, a psychiatrist at the group after A.A. failed to halt her own decades- Danvers State and Cambridge Hospitals in long bouts of alcoholism, says a Ralph Waldo Massachusetts. “They need an antidote for the Emerson essay on “Self-Reliance” finally helped terrible, progressive self-centeredness that her realize that by changing her thoughts she develops with this addictive illness.” could change herself. WFS literature tackles Even critics of A.A. acknowledge that it A.A. head-on, saying that the older group’s has worked for thousands over its more than “philosophy is to turn over our will and our lives” half a century of existence. Because its while WFS advocates “Taking Charge.” A.A. operations are anonymous by definition, there is puts “emphasis on alcoholism,” the literature no official count; but according to statistics, the continues; WFS emphasizes recovery. organization succeeds in keeping around 29 per The organization justifies its single-sex cent of its members sober for more than five approach on the ground that women alcoholics years, a record considered enviable in the field. have different psychological and emotional The alternative groups will have to prove their needs from males. “We try to give women self- own staying power, but meanwhile there is value, self-esteem and self-confidence, which surely room for more than one approach. most of them don’t have,” says Kirkpatrick. lndeed, one member of the Seattle RR chapter “Hopefully, this empowers women.” (ln A.A., she also belongs to A.A., attending RR’s Fridaynotes, members introduce themselves by evening meetings and A.A.’s sunrise meetings saying, “my name is X and I’m an alcoholic.” on Saturday and Sunday. “ln A.A. I’m an WFS members say, “My name is X and I’m a alcoholic,” he says. “ln RR I’m not. I have to competent woman.”‘) remember what day it is.” The double allegiance Shrugging off the criticisms, A.A. is fine with RR’s Peterman. “This is an defenders insist that it doesn’t compel members alternative,” he says. “We’re not trying to replace to believe, literally, in a deity. ln practice, they A.A” lf we help one more person that A.A. say, religion plays a relatively minor role. couldn’t help, then we’ve saved one more life.” “Realistically, 12-step people have never behaved as if they think the power is outside David Gelman with themselves,” says John Hopkins professor Elizabeth Ann Leonard in New York George Bigelow, a psychologist who runs the Binnie Fisher in Seattle schools substance-abuse program.” ln fact, Source: NEWSWEEK, July 8, 1991.

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