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AA vs. the Church: A Generational Observation
I live in a town called Seal Beach in the “Old Town” district where there are no fewer than four Irish bars on the same block of our very short Main Street. I noticed lately that I seem to be making friends in these establishments with the parents of old friends of mine. During the folly of our youth, we drank too much and caused too much trouble, and so did our parents I imagine. Those of us still alive had to have help lest things got irreversibly out of control.
The main reason I only see my friends’ parents in these pubs is because their kids, if still alive, became sober turning to Alcoholics Anonymous or similar organizations, and they have all rejected the Catholic Church. So, what I have in common with their parents is that I did not reject the Church. I still see their parents at mass. Their parents never got to the point where they had to refrain from alcohol 100% but I assume they are like me, in that the Church and its teachings have instilled some kind of temperance that keeps us from going to the point of no return. We are admonished against gluttony and debauchery and with the help of our faith and our confessors, we somehow manage to stay on the right track.
I suppose it’s healthier to drink zero alcohol than to drink like an adult Irish Catholic but I’m grateful it’s a step I didn’t have to take. There’s no getting around it. My friends should have listened to their parents. That’s a given. This is probably too peculiar of an observation to justify an “anyone else notice this?” but I’ll try anyway. Anyone?
Published in General
I live just across the river in Long Beach. I’m Mormon, but one of my closest friends is Catholic and has remained faithful, and I’d say he fits what you’re saying. Just turned 50, no stranger to wine but always in moderation; more passionate about coffee, tea, good food, and – always – good company. We’ve been to several of those spots on Main Street…for breakfast.
Compared to high school friends who didn’t maintain that faith anchor, I’d say he’s fared well, especially through the harder times. So, yes, I’ve noticed this.
Yeah, I used to smoke and drink to much when I was younger.
I never really quit, I just stopped. Meaning, I feel fine having a drink every now and again, and if I want to have a smoke with my neighbor once or twice a year I feel OK about that too.
Drinking even irregularly is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. So I don’t drink, except special occasions. I did have to implement a 2 drink rule though. I do have moderation issues, and about 2 drinks is about the place that I can maintain discipline. That third drink may as well be 12 (or 36 as one night in Dallas demonstrated).
Not sure how this fits, but it now comes out that “Middle aged new regular drinkers experienced lower risk of major coronary heart disease events than stable occasional drinkers or non-drinkers, but had increased risk of non-cardiovascular mortality and total mortality.”
Link to another story on the subject: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/
[As it happens I’m a non-drinker, thinking about taking it up as the Obama administration lurches into its 6th year]
We live in a different culture these days. I’m in your same demographic ballpark, Joe. I’m 53, Irish-Catholic, I go to mass every Sunday. I’d say I was faithful but I know me too well, and that’s up to God to judge anyway. I drink; I used to smoke but quit twenty years ago.
Our cultures doesn’t socialize the way our parents did … not to mention many generations before them. It helps to remember that the church was created (and developed for nearly 2000 years) in an environment where connecting with others was mostly limited to the people within a few miles of you.
I remember on a trip to Central America, we were told that the people wanted priests to give long homilies – after all, this was their only weekly social event, and they didn’t want to be rushed through it. In addition to its religious function, the church was a social bond. It was where people came together, because they had few other places to come together. Bars were one of the few alternatives.
Now, people socialize through their phone. Remotely. The global village is a TV concept.
Me, I didn’t start drinking until I was in my 40s. But I have observed something somewhat related to this topic. I was hanging out in my church lobby one Sunday evening and a group of people arrived for an AA meeting. As I listened in, out of sight but within earshot, I noticed an intense fraternal quality to their greetings. You could tell the group had a powerful we’re-all-in-this-together ethic. Someone new showed up and someone else who knew them from the “outside” had an awkward, yet endearing, moment of recognition: oh, you’re one of us.
The obvious point is that many churches aspire to that kind of fraternal quality, and few have it. It may be that conventional churches can never sustain it even if they start out having it. Also, I think it’s very relevant that AA is designed as a quasi-religion, with a God, a prayer, and a creed of sorts. And finally, you can’t have an strong sense of “in” without a strong sense of “out”: we’re different from everybody else is the fuel that feeds such groups.
AA has absolutely no policy for or against any church, and makes it very clear in its literature, but I have seen a kind of anti-Catholic strain in the rooms. The main problem, as far as I can see, is that the same willfulness, stubbornness, and egotism associated (by AA) with the disease leads to a loss of faith and disdain for whatever traditions you were raised in. Some people have so much trouble with the “higher power” part of the program that they try work-arounds, using the group or the program or the “universe” as a “higher power.” (If you read AA’s Big Book, you see a chapter directed at agnostics; remember, this was written in the 30’s.)
That all said, there are many of us staunch Catholics about, reminding the others that the program is NOT anti-Catholic, anti-Baptist, anti- any religion. Sometimes I fear the eagerness to assure newcomers that it is not a religious program makes them think they can’t belong to a religion.
I must be missing something here….
Whether or not someone finds the AA group more fulfilling than attending organized religious services is not the defining quality of an alcoholic.
Alcoholics may have lots of other issues, but they suffer from a disease and thus drink in ways that are outside the bounds of healthy, self regulating behavior. Their reaction to ingesting alcohol (even when the realize they shouldn’t drink but are still drawn to it) is the problem, not the fact that they didn’t heed temperance advice.
I also read the fascinating article about the health benefits of the “moderate” consumption of alcohol (I told my wife, “if I had four drinks a day I would not be able to function.”). I have come to believe there are large trends we humans follow, hook-up with, or believe without any thought, or investigation; almost as though we agree with never understanding what we agree to. I believe Prohibition is one of these trends – as we get further away from Prohibition and those who grew up under the propaganda of temperance along with the naysayers die off there is a trend towards alcohol production. The number of wineries, and most states now having producing wineries, craft beers, every small town having it’s own brewery, the numbers of different types of whiskeys, and again whiskey producing distillery’s in most states, vodkas, tequilas and most other liquors. With this increase in production (Supply and demand – demand’s it.) there is a resulting consumption and an attitude much different than we old timers grew up under. The predicted catastrophe for the country as a consequence of such increased production and consumption is nowhere to be found.
When I read the big book I saw confession as one of the pillars, that being an attempt to make amends to those one had offended. It seemed a Catholic idea to me albeit it that it was not auricular confession as a Catholic would recognize it.
I knew several people who found AA to be “spiritual” but that seemed to me to occur because they had little or no religious background before needing to take the pledge and go to the meetings. Many of those people definitely did not associate the deity of AA with the Christian Deity but then they had little understanding of the Christian Deity with which to work.
Unfortunately “spiritual” could be connected with fate or kismet and for people trying to work themselves out of a hole, fate or kismet does not necessarily work in their favor. Yet, by remaining agnostic on this point, AA was able to serve people who would not have been served by a specific reference to a specific deity.
[I would note that two drink limit noted above. I also have no need to finish either the first or the second. I like the taste, but not the result.]
IMO, the anti-Catholic strain is largely an artifact of Roman Catholicism’s dominance among Christian denominations, especially in certain parts of the country. In the “Joe and Charlie” tapes — an audio study guide to the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous — Charlie P. talks about abandoning his Bible Belt faith just as fiercely as “recovering Catholics” do.
As Frederick K. suggests, the AA program is designed to gently bring the God-hater back to a kind of faith. For example, when discussing the 5th step — Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs — the Big Book is counseling that:
The explanation in the original post:
…might make sense if alcoholism weren’t a disorder of the body and mind (BTW, the original conception of an allergy is a stronger metaphor than the disease metaphor). It also doesn’t explain the many Religious afflicted with alcoholism.
The person who introduced me to AA had been a postulant at a monastery (pre-Vatican II). His final jackpot involved being found in the sacristy in the morning, dead drunk on Communion wine.
(Edited to fix a misconjugated verb)
From “The Truth We Won’t admit: Drinking is Healthy” is the author’s telling of what “alcoholic” means to the lay person. Drinking every day in the lay person’s thinking is alcoholic behavior, but blitzed on a Saturday night is not. Logically both these behaviors could be alcoholic, or non-alcoholic behaviors – it is not the drinking it is the motivation behind the drinking – the need, or purpose. The American trend is more production and consumption; I hear no outcry because of this trend. Is it possible Joe the drinking habits for you and the parent’s of your friends are not the abnormal, but the norm? Believing you stayed on the right track is not correct – there was the track and the non-track. The others choose the non-track. I rarely drank because I believed – incorrectly – if I started drinking inevitably I would just fall off the track (As if the drinking was cumulative.). Now I understand I have to want to fall off the track. So most evenings I have two whiskey and Seven Ups to mark the end of the work day and feel relieved I do have to look down for the tracks.
This applies to much more than drinking. I’ve heard it said by older folks that problems people used to share with priests and friends they now share with psychologists/psychiatrists.
Alcohol consumption per capita was a good deal higher 35 years ago, peaking at about 2.8 gallons of ethanol equivalent per person. Peaks in the usage of other intoxicants happened about the same time (table on page 28 here).
It has moved up a bit in the last 20 years; your theory about craft beer, wine, and especially spirits, may make some sense. But it’s still well below its peak.
TPOHN – I think you were spot on until the last three lines. What I was indicating about the disease concept, and I would believe Fricosis Guy was suggesting by the allergy example, was that there is some hardwiring that makes drinking different for the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. Instead of “wanting” to fall off the track, I would suggest that a percentage of the populace is predisposed to drink in a way that will lead them to what can be clearly labeled as “off the track”.
How true — but a priest can forgive your sins — and so can your friends (at least, the ones that hurt them!).
Actually if you don’t prescribe to the disease model, I am still spot on with the last three lines. I believe more in the sin model than disease model, or as you said “allergies” – which is a great way to circumvent the problem with the disease model. If it is a disease all would be afflicted equally and have the same prognosis – this does not happen. Do you have the disease and then drink, or do you drink and then get afflicted by the disease? Is the disease inherent in the alcohol – like a virus able to withstand the toxicity of the alcohol? How does one diagnose before hand whether you are going to be afflicted? Can yo be pricked with a Vodka needle and breakout in bumps? Which again is back to a point – as a disease are we all inevitably going to become alcoholics just by consuming? This would explain the push for Prohibition – everyone is eventually going to become an alcoholic so keep people away from the alcohol. Besides the definition of “disease” my other problem is control; with a disease no one has to claim responsibility – it just happens. But it doesn’t, it happens with a choice to not regulate – a disease or allergy does not behave in this manner (AA is notorious for it’s “fearless and moral inventory” so the alcoholic takes responsibility – again why would anyone take responsibility for an allergy they are not responsible for?). I also talked above about the choice of supply which can be found at almost any supermarket and I was corrected – even though there is a huge supply, choice and availability this person pointed out consumption per person was higher 35 years ago. For the disease/allergy model to work – wouldn’t the increase in population coupled with the increase in supply inevitably lead to increases in the disease being present in greater numbers and greater consumption per person? Or might the disease passed over the population and people are no longer afflicted – maybe it is a disease. Personally I think in terms of brain development and addiction occurring early on in adolescence, or adulthood creating pathways in the brain which become permanent. I believe a pattern of thinking develops, which can be both a positive or negative experience, around the consumption of alcohol, which for most alcoholics can never be altered. Their thinking about controlling the consumption of alcohol is incomprehensible. Again in terms of sin, Paul talks about changing a sinners thinking by dwelling on God and His Word. Is this vastly different than the alcoholic dwelling on the AA Steps to change their thinking. So it is not a disease it is the “stinking thinking” of the alcoholic?