If on the news tomorrow it was announced that scientists had come up with a pill to cure drug and alcohol addiction, the world would be both stunned and ecstatic. The cost of reliance on drugs in human and economic terms is staggering. The possibility to reverse centuries of suffering and death by taking a pill seems too good to be true. Yet though such a pill exists, it is likely that you have never heard of it. And the reason you haven’t heard of it is that the experts in the field have denied fiercely its effectiveness and credibility. These experts would be the people at Alcoholics Anonymous and those in the rehab industry, exactly the ones you’d think would be hailing the discovery. But no, because the first concern of the rehabilitators is not the welfare of the recovering but the state of the soul or lucrative income. Who would have guessed?

Despite the wide spread good will and acceptance towards AA as well as the Betty Fords and Hazeldens of the world, the recidivism rate of these places is staggering, upwards of 80%. That lack of success in curing people is important to the rehab industry. It is like the automobile industry building in obsolescence. In fact, the term recovering alcoholic serves the industry well. They don’t want recovered alcoholics. They prefer to be there with their arms and palms outstretched when the inevitable happens and the prodigal addict returns.

AA has what is famously called the Twelve Step Program. It seems more like the Sisyphus step program. The whole concept of AA always struck me as flawed. There are a number of things I find suspect. The meetings, the thought of going and telling your story to others in a similar situation may seem like a good idea but what does it accomplish? People cry, the people around them cry and then many of them head to the bar or bathroom to address their dependency. An acquaintance of mine, an ex-professional athlete turned addict then doctor, a driven and brilliant man, told me that nothing else matters until you control the addiction. Whatever baggage or excuses the addict brings with him is not something that can or should be dealt with until the dependence itself is under control. But at AA and the rehab for profit institutions, it’s all about sharing your life story, letting the pain out and worst of all, in the case of AA, turning your life over to a higher power.

Now, I could be wrong about this but isn’t turning to a higher spirit what got many of these people in trouble in the first place. The twelve step program is flawed from the outset because it asks you to give control of your life to someone who doesn’t exist. That may be okay when we’re talking Santa Claus, trying to be good all year so we get nice toys. But Santa Claus is just preparatory to serious religion, one where the stakes are not whether or not you receive gifts but if you’re destined for eternal bliss or everlasting damnation. Like Santa Claus who favors the rich over the poor, god can be an unforgiving bastard. Eternity is a long time; no chance for parole; no time off for good behavior, no recognition that maybe you’ve suffered enough, just burn baby burn. I don’t think even Texas has judges like that. At least in the Lone Star state they kill you after a few years.

In the first step of AA, you admit you’re useless, that you have no control over your life, that you are a major league fuck-up. Once you’ve taken that small first step of granting your worthlessness, you then accept that the only way that you can be saved is by turning your life over to an invisible but merciful sky god. God, a mighty smiter of enemies and an indifferent protector of innocents, will save you if you let him even though he has a long history of letting people die in shitty circumstances. But you will be different because for some reason, he loves you.

God is like that and if you attend AA you’ll be saved, maybe. You will be like those people who survive plane crashes who know that god saved them, how god was by their side that day. Too bad about that nice person sitting next to them who was burned to a crisp. Too bad about Stan Rogers. God had shown infinite, well limited, mercy to a survivor, who later got her bible back, hardly scorched at all. It was a miracle and the rest of that person’s life would be dedicated to doing good deeds or at least praying for more good fortune. I mean if god was hovering that close, couldn’t he at least have saved the person in the next seat? In fact, if it really was god, why did the plane crash in the first place? Doesn’t god have at least as much power as Superman?

I think this whole idea of outsourcing responsibility of your life to a higher power sets a dangerous precedent. Once you’ve done it the first time, it seems easy to do it again. Take George Bush for example. With the help of Stacey Keach, George handed his life over to god, and the next thing you know, he’s piecing out parts to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who albeit minor gods still demanded a slice of poor George.

Points two and three of the perpetual steps program are about turning oneself over to god, whoever that god may be, well maybe it is Dick Cheney after all. Step four is better. It’s where you do a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. While I’m not sure about the moral part, this step is consistent with Socrates belief in the examined life. Addicted or not, this should be an important action for all of us. The blame comes back to the source and we take responsibility for our actions. In step five, god returns as the addict has to tell god everything that is wrong about him, the addict not god. There’s nothing wrong with god that a good editor couldn’t fix. The addict has to mention these shortcomings to a friend as well, preferably a friend who leads an exemplary life, unblemished by addiction or sin.

Steps six and seven seem like big losers to me. You have to concede you’re ready to be saved and then humbly, is there any other way to speak to god, ask him to remove all your defects. Good luck on that one. If god were willing to do this, why would you be required to go to a meeting? Why couldn’t he just do this when you say your prayers at home? And why, if god removes all your deficiencies, do you head to the bar right after the meeting? Is this defect guarantee itself defective? Does the warranty only apply when you’re actually at a meeting surrounded by others who make you feel guilty or might squeal on you? I think there are few things hidden between the lines that you should know before you go turning your life over to god.

Steps eight and nine involve making another list, this one of all the people you have hurt in your alcohol induced stupor After the list is complete you go to making amends unless the best course of action is to stay away lest you hurt do more damage. I’m in favor of the latter category. Who wants to listen to an alcoholic or drug addict slobbering about how sorry he is just before he starts the cycle all over again?

Number ten is benign but redundant. Four and ten can be combined to cut down the number of steps, especially important for the elderly

Step eleven is one of my favorites. You meditate and pray so you can make conscious contact and better understand a nonexistent being’s plan for you. Talk about setting yourself up for failure. When this deception was initiated, it was the ten step program. Step eleven was added later by Samuel Beckett.

Step twelve is where you agree to become an evangelist and spread the message of your spiritual awakening. Once again, isn’t that what brought you to AA, waking up and looking for spirits? You can now be a sponsor. With all dewar respect, if I’m looking for a sponsor, I’m searching for someone with money, not an ex- junkie. I would be after say Enron, AIG, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, well-run companies, good corporate citizens which aren’t drunk but spend like they are.

After you have successfully completed all twelve steps, you are given a calendar to keep track of the days or hours before you have to start the whole charade over. There are no partial passes, no incomplete grades. If you screw up, you have to begin right from step one. At this point, any logical person would start questioning where god is in all this. You just completed the course, bared your soul to a bunch of strangers, told god that your life belonged to him, had your awakening and there you are again at the Fox and Hound with all your drinking buddies. These guys mostly know when to stop or are at least sober enough not to attend evangelical gatherings. As stated on a T-shirt, “AA meetings are for alcoholics. I’m a drunk.”

So you have tried trading your addiction to drugs for an addition to god. Except that god is nowhere to be found while there are many bars beckoning. If god really cared about you why wouldn’t he destroy the Fox and Hound with fire and brimstone similar to the light show he staged with Sodom and Gomorrah? Why would he let you pass by just as happy hour starts? God would be a lousy babysitter. The kids could be playing with matches and the day’s newspaper and god would be watching Sex in the City.

AA and its many offshoots have been colossal failures. They can’t help but flop because at their core is the idea that you give control of your life to a mythical figure. Actually it could be worse; you could have birds plucking out your liver, as cirrhotic as it may be. You can’t trust these sky gods; they’re in it for themselves. If they can turn a blind eye to Prometheus, the Plague, the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, and Rush Limbaugh, do you really think they give a shit that you’re a drunk? It’s likely that god even has distillery shares; hence the third part of the one, indivisible god, the Holy Owned Spirit.

The vast majority of those who recover from drug or alcohol addiction do it on their own, without support groups, without AA, without Betty Ford, without Hazelden. Those who claim to understand the most about addiction either ask people to acknowledge a fable or expect clients to return every few months, credit card in hand.

Now along comes a pill that pits science against god and profit. The most vehement opponents are the very groups whose patients could best benefit. The vested interests claim that even if such a pill exists, it alone cannot save people. That may be true to a degree, but as my wise acquaintance said, until you deal with the addiction, all else is futile. What the addiction industry has been doing has been an unmitigated failure that has cost or ruined millions of lives. That these institutions are not leading the charge to embrace a medicine that would minimize or eliminate craving, speaks volumes to the true motives of the evangelists and profit takers.

Checking in for therapy is good public relations, especially for those in the public eye who have done something embarrassing, unrelated though it may be to drug addiction, like being homosexual. Treatment offers a canard for their behavior and ensures that they will be handled kindly upon their return to public life. They’re not fags, they’re drunks. God is more understanding of the latter which allows moral people to take the same stance. Beyond the PR value of a stay in rehab or in claiming to have found god, the rest is an unscientific sham.

Are AA and the rehab clinics of the world willfully blind or are they willing to deceive in order to keep their patients hooked and the market open? Isn’t that what the dealers do?

Copyright © 2009 Paul Heno