Addictionland - Addiction Recovery Blog

At what point does Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) become a subtle form of laziness? Do we really believe that the years spent living on self-will and all the attendant behaviors we've learned and damage we left will be "simply" fixed? Writing your fourth step is not simple-- it requires guidance, patience, and focus. Anyone can do it, but the endeavor should not be dismissed as easy. Our ninth step amends are ususally delicate interactions that require advance planning and rehearsal. Not simple, but achievable. 

I see "keep it simple" as used far too casually, often times in response to a question or issue that requires a bit of thought. Yes, there may be no right or wrong answer, but that does not mean that as recovered alcoholics we should not be spending time with the idea. Taking on intellectually-challenging concepts are a form of spiritual growth, no?

I do not tell my sponsees that it is a simple program. I tell them there is work to do to achieve a sense of simplicity in life. I don't dismiss their questions as "over-thinking," but try to offer my thoughts and then redirect them to the work at hand.

Cross-posted at Thump.

Next time you're in an AA meeting, take a look around the room. Maybe there are 25 people and, with rare exception, most of them are sober, right? In fact, many are months removed from their last drink, and you've probably got a group that has decades of sobriety. Putting aside where each person may be in their own recovery, that room is irrefutable evidence that AA works, right?

OK, multiply the number of people by 20. You've got 500 alcoholics now. Can't fit them, right?  Imagine them on each others' laps, standing in the doorway, lining the hallways.  Maybe you can hear them murmuring outside in the parking lot, unable to get in the door. What you've now added is the number of people who came to AA and left after a year, according to AA's own study:

"After just one month in the Fellowship, 81% of the new members have dropped out.  After three months, 90% gave left, and 95% have discontinued attendance inside one year." (Kolenda, 2003, Golden Text Publishing)

Now look around the room at the mostly drunk, strung-out, quivering mass of humanity. Still think AA works?

Most members of the AA fellowship will tell you that AA works because it works for them.  I know this because it's precisely what I did for 10 years.  It was the newcomers' responsibility to get it, not mine to impart it.   If they stopped showing up, I got good at shrugging my shoulders and saying, "they aren't ready," or worse, "they don't want it."

"Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not."

Alcoholics Anonymous, page 34, More About Alcoholism

Of the many internal rearrangements I experienced as a result of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the most profound was in how I understood the disease.  This shift was a direct result of being able to align the experience and pain of my repeated relapses with the explanation of the disease in the first 63 pages of the Alcoholics Anonymous text book (with the help of a terrific teacher).  Ideas and concepts I had held for decades about the nature of alcoholism were rendered embarassingly inaccurate.  Many of the AA sayings  I had chanted effortlessly for years (just don't pick up the first drink!) suddenly felt like codependent sloganeering.

Had you asked me several years ago what the difference was between a drinking problem and alcoholism, I would have likely responded "not much."  Try to explain it to me?  I'd have politely nodded but dismissed you as someone with way too much time on their hands.  I simply was not there-- I had double digit sobriety, a good life and the assurance that by keeping my memory green about where alcohol had taken me, I'd never drink again.  I've since learned that alcoholism is cunning and baffling; it can also masquerade as sobriety.  In retrospect, I was unaware that the very proclamations I valued as manifestations of my sobriety were really untreated alcoholism.  And it was biding its time, trying to find another way in.

But back to the point of the post-- what's the difference?  I see it this way:  the person with a drinking problem should stop, and usually can.  The person with alcoholism must stop and cannot.

"Yet we can't well content ourselves with the view that all these recovery failures were entirely the fault of the newcomers themselves. Perhaps a great many didn't receive the kind and amount of sponsorship they so sorely needed. We didn't communicate when we might have done so. So we AA's failed them. Perhaps more often than we think, we still make no contact at depth with those suffering the dilemma of no faith."

Bill Wilson, AA Grapevine, April 1961 "The Dilemma of No Faith"

Cross posted at Thump.

On the first Monday of each month, my beginners meeting reads from Living Sober.  I'm not sure who wrote this tragic little book, but the fact that Living Sober is conference-approved AA literature is one of the great mysteries of the AA fellowship.  Put nicely, there's just very little in Living Sober that you can line up with the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous.  In fact, much of it runs completely counter to the Big Book.  I like to think of it as  an operators' manual for the willpower.

And last night, we found ourselves reading one of my favorites, the chapter "Using the 24 Hour Plan."  This little treatise suggests that anyone can stop drinking for 24 hours, and that sobriety is really just stringing those 24-hour successes together.   One could argue that since AA has largely become a pep rally for abstinence, "Using the 24 Hour Plan" could be our new "How It Works."

I've got nothing against keeping it simple in the early phases of sobriety.  Getting past the physical urge to drink or use drugs is arguably the hardest thing we do, and unless we're locked up somewhere, it does require willpower.  Getting clear of that craving-- that maddening itch that needs scratching-- can be helped by breaking it down into digestable time segments.  I get it.

The problem, as I see it, is that many never get past One Day At A Time.  They grind it out, the physical obsession quiets, and they feel better.  They equate that physical restoration with recovery.  The condescending term used in AA for this feeling is a "pink cloud."  "Be careful," nods the sage oldtimer, "you're on a pink cloud."  This diagnosis is rarely followed with precise direction as to what the newcomer might do to guard against the looming relapse, unless you consider "keep coming back" to be meaningful advice.

"90 meetings in 90 days" gets my vote as the saddest old saw in Alcoholics Anonymous.  Don't get me wrong-- I absolutely love AA meetings, and I did the 90 meetings in 90 days ritual a couple times. Problem was, that was the extent of my recovery, so I lived with this nagging superstitious fear that if I missed a day, I was destined to drink.  And my AA friends apparently had no desire to disabuse me of that notion.  

So where did this oft-repeated commandment come from?  You can't find it in the original AA program literature, but then again, much of what you'll hear in meetings today doesn't come from the AA program. No, like many of our modern pearls of wisdom in AA, the 90 in 90 idea comes from rehabs that felt obligated to give some direction to the freshly-detoxed alcoholics and addicts they were churning out like processed cheese.  So, in addition to a headful of slogans and a copy of Living Sober, the wide-eyed rehab graduates were instructed encouraged to get to 90 meetings in 90 days, lest they find themselves back in rehab (where, conveniently, most major credit cards are accepted).

The problem with 90 in 90 is that it implies attendance at meetings is all that's required to recover, and that could not be further from the vision of Alcoholics Anonymous.  When it is not paired with an almost immediate immersion in step work, 90 in 90 is tantamount to putting the new person on a shelf.  And it's nearly impossible to stay sober there.

To be clear, attending AA meeting is far better than not attending AA meetings, and if having a little rigid structure early in your recovery is helpful, then by all means, do 90 in 90. The real issue with the idea is one of emphasis. It's so over-used that it has become a form of temporary sponsorship, unfortunately because we're either reluctant to (or incapable of) telling the new person just how urgent their situation is and what's required to recover. Sadly, 90 in 90 provides cover for the person who lacks a message of depth and weight, who masquerades as an informed, experienced member of Alcoholics Anonymous.  

In other words, me, for over a decade.

A lot of times in twelve step fellowships, heavy drinkers, heavy drug users end up in the fellowships because of an intervention of one kind or another; or maybe they just want to change their life and somebody has pointed them toward the rooms and they’ll show up.  They don’t necessarily have to work the steps the way an alcoholic does.  They don’t necessarily have to become consistent with meetings.  A lot of times what will happen is they’ll come around for awhile and then slowly back away - disappear and learn that they can stay stopped on their own willpower, or they can even moderate, that happens quite often.  That’s Type One. 

“Type Two…your husband is showing a lack of control, for he is unable to stay on the water wagon, even when he wants to.  He often gets entirely out of hand when drinking.  He admits this is true but is positive that he will do better.  He has begun to try, with or without your cooperation, various means of moderating or staying dry.  Maybe he is beginning to lose his friends.  His business may suffer somewhat.  He is worried at times and is becoming aware that he cannot drink like other people.  He sometimes drinks in the morning and through the day also to hold his nervousness in check.  He is remorseful after serious drinking bouts and tells you he wants to stop but when he gets over the spree, he begins to drink once more.  He begins to think once more that he can drink moderately next time.   We think this person is in danger.  These are the earmarks of the real alcoholic.  Perhaps he can still tend to business fairly well.  He has by no means ruined everything.  As we say among ourselves, he wants to want to stop.”  This is probably the majority of the people that show up in the twelve step fellowships, they are somewhere between a type one and a type two.  But let’s just look at the type two.  He’s showing a lack of control.  He can’t quit even when he wants to.  After a binge, he’ll come out of it and he’ll want to stop but then he’ll convince himself that he’s going to drink moderately next time and he’ll start drinking again.  Sometimes he drinks in the morning and throughout the day to hold his nervousness in check.  That nervousness is an actual detoxification from alcohol.  That high level of anxiety is actually a part of a detoxing process.

Okay, Type Three.  “This husband has gone much further than husband number two.  Though once like number two, he became worse.  His friends have slipped away.  His home is in a near wreck and he cannot hold a position.  Maybe the doctor has been called in and a weary round of sanitariums and hospitals…” or rehabs and detoxes…”has begun.  He admits he cannot drink like other people but he does not see why.  He clings to the notion that he will yet find a way to do so.  He may have come to the point where he desperately wants to stop but cannot.  His case presents additional questions which we will try to answer for you.  You can be quite hopeful of a situation like this.” 

   Now why are they saying that?  As the person gets worse, why are they saying you can be hopeful?  I believe it’s because the closer we get to a full concession of our powerlessness, the closer we as alcoholics get to accurately assessing how much trouble we’re in, the more enthusiasm and motivation we’re going to have for practicing a recovery program that nobody wants to practice and few people will even believe will work for them because they’re so different.  So again,  his friends have slipped away…that happened to me.  I didn’t have any friends any more.  My home was in a near wreck.  My home exploded and everybody left.  Could not hold a position, I was becoming unemployable.  The only reason I had a job was because I was in construction and there was lots of alcoholics in construction, including my boss.  I started the weary round of sanitariums and hospitals.  I had gone to outpatient.  I had gone to in-patient.  I had gone back to outpatient.  I was trying to show up at some support group meetings but somewhere in the back of my mind, it was very, very difficult for me to realize that I am going to have to quit drinking for good and for all.  That was a very, very difficult concept for me to come up with and I had all of the earmarks of the type three. 

     “Type Four…you may have a husband of whom you completely despair.  He has been placed in one institution after another.  He is violent or appears definitely insane when drunk.  Sometimes he drinks on the way home from the hospital.”  Or home from the detox or home from the rehab.  “Perhaps he has had delirium tremens.”  I had those.  “Doctors may shake their heads and advise you to have him committed.  Maybe you have already been obliged to put him away.  This picture may not be as dark as it looks.  Many of our husbands were just as far gone, yet they got well.”  Okay so, the worse you became, the more hope these early Alcoholics Anonymous members have for you.