October 1974

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More about enablers

“The most basic change Family Affair needed to free the alcoholic is to stop – rewarding – him by Joseph Kellermann Executive director of the Charlotte (North Carolina) Council on Alcoholism for his drinking !” This is an excerpt from the article AA -A Family Affair in Addictions, Spring ’74, Vol. 21. No. 1

social disorder prevents AA from W E HAVE surrounded alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous with a mystique which we must alcoholism. Alcoholism in the U.S. and Canada is a messed-up situation involving and fifty percent have not been a member of such a unit for five or more years. reaching millions of persons who so desperately need to find a sober anbrush aside in order to know what excessive drinking which places prob- By contrast, most alcoholics are swer to life. they are all about. This statement is ably 50,000,000 persons in a state living with a spouse and children in Most alcoholics could recover made out of respect for AA -what of mental, emotional, social, eco- a situation severely injurious to all through the program of Alcoholics it is, what it has to offer, and what nomic, and family disorder. Doing members of the family. If they are Anonymous, but the nature of the it can teach those of us who are the least damage to society are the arrested for public intoxication, the illness locks them into a phase of I nonalcoholics working in the field of chronic police-case inebriates, the family bails them out or pays the resistance and denial. Others must ‘ alcoholism. vast majority being undersocialized, fine. In the area of social morality break this lock ,before AA can reach Under present conditions, AA undereducated, underskilled, home- or ethics, this type of alcoholism is the vast majority of alcoholics. The reaches not more than five percent less males. Because these persons extremely damaging to thousands of most basic change needed to free the of the estimated 13,000,000 alco- are homeless and considered no- other persons. Yet society accepts it, alcoholic is to stop rewarding him holics in Canada and the U.S.Each bodies, they get dumped in our jails, and rarely does this type of alcoholic for his drinking! Everyone wants to year, there are more persons in AA courts, and prisons as the normal reach prison as a result of family help the alcoholic, because he is and other recovery programs, but modality of treatment, injury or driving under the influence sick. Thus, the process of addiction the number of active alcoholics not The only inevitable consequence or other serious failures. to alcohol is a series of rewarding getting help is increasing far more of this cycle is to increase the prob- In no way is this advocating im- experiences provided .by significant rapidly. It is my contention that we ability that these persons will again prisonment of alcoholics as a modal- others in the life of the alcoholic. will continue losing ground unless appear in public in a state of intoxi- ity of recovery. I do think we would Some years ago, I heard the late . we change our focus and treat alco- cation. However, our punitive action get far better results, however, if we psychiatrist Dr. Harry Tiebout state holism as a family illness and a continues despite the fact that these left the public inebriate alone and that Bill W., one of the co-founders social disorder. We’ve got to stop men are not harming spouses or had more stringent discipline for the of AA, taught him more about hu- , making the alcoholic the target of children. They are simply not in inebriates who are parents. In the man nature and human problems our primary effort, both in treatment contact with their own nuclear fam- long run, the appalling indifference than any other person he had ever and in philosophy of treatment of ilies, as forty percent never had one to alcoholism as a family illness and known. Dr. Tiebout, on this occa-

sion, gave four definitive steps in the This is hitting bottom and not berecovery process of alcoholism as he ing picked up by friends, professionlearned it from Bill. By examining als, employer, and family. Drinking . these four steps, we can see how AA is enormously beneficial to the alcohelps the alcoholic remain sober so holic and will continue to be so, that he can recover from alcoholism until the illness destroys the person, and, more important for the pur- for as long as the significant others poses of our consideration, why most in the drama remove the consealcoholics never try AA or any other quences of drinking. We, the nonalmodality of recovery. coholics, keep the alcoholic locked Paraphrasing Tiebout’s steps, the in the phase of resistance to any process is as follows: First, the alco- other method of solving life’s probholic must suffer a painful and trau- lems, by rewarding the drinking or matic situation as a consequence of aborting the painful consequences. drinking. Next, family and friends J, would suggest that somehow the must allow this situation to remain AA Fellowship, through its General painful long enough to result in step Service Board, public-relations divitwo, which is deflation of egotism in sion, and printed literature, expend depth. Third, as an act of faith and every effort to kill off the one great trust which has nothing to do with fallacy which is so often erroneously reason or intelligence, the alcoholic attributed to AA -“You can’t help must choose humility as a way of an alcoholic until he wants help.” life. Fourth, he must seek and find This mistaken philosophy should be help. This is where AA comes into replaced with the idea that AA can the picture- as a fellowship of re- help the alcoholic if family and covery, based primarily upon faith friends stop helping the alcoholic and trust. stay drunk.