A.A.'s Sacred Cow On the Job by Michael

How little things have changed! Most rehab programs are based on A.A. The majority of the treatment is devoted to getting the patient to surrender to the program and begin planning for a lifetime of A.A. membership. Any disagreement with A.A. ideas is seen as resistence to help, denial, or your alcoholism talking. The situation is not much different in A.A. meetings.

Dr. Bob is celebrated in A.A. for 12th-stepping 5,000 or more hospitalized alcoholic patients. Hardly cause for celebration! The treatment was basically A.A. indoctrination straight from a procession of A.A. members. Patients were only permitted to read the Bible and the Big Book. There were no alternatives to the A.A. way. You either gave yourself to A.A. or you were sent on your way. It was essentially coerced religion.

Dr. Smith had a positive affection for lists of authoritative directives such as the Ten Commandments, the Oxford Group's Four Moral Absolutes, and later A.A.'s twelve steps. He had an oppressive childhood under domineering parents who would send him off to bed at 5 PM every night. He used to sneak out his window to play with friends into the evening. He looked back on his sneak-outs as the first signs of his "rebellious nature", which he understood to be at the heart of his alcoholism. Poor kid.

Bob is also well known for many hard-nosed quotes:

"The steps need no interpretation. They are plain in language and simple in meaning."

To more than one newcomer he gave variations of this one which was directed at a very sick 32-year-old man, "You're pretty young. I don't know if you can make it. I haven't got any time or strength to waste on this unless you're serious about it."

"Let's not louse it [the A.A. program] all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind, but have little to do with our actual A.A. work."

Okay, wait a minute, Bob. Much of your understanding of your personality and your alcoholism as some sort of childish impulse is Freudian. Much of what Wilson wrote about "instincts run amok" in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is Freudian. And it is exactly an interest in the things that science can tell us that is freeing people from this Freudian nonsense, and finally helping people quit addictions without believing they need to join your religious cult.

Many A.A. members admire Bob's disciplinarian style. It fits well with the way they are used to treating themselves. You will hear them laugh about it at A.A. meetings. It's as if they believe like Smith did that alcoholism is a manifestation of some sort of "bad child" syndrome and being sent to bed at 5 PM is the way to deal with the problem.

The stern self-indicting Smith struggled with an intense desire to drink well into his third year of abstinence. Despite all the hundreds of alcoholics he intensively twelve-stepped, despite earnest prayer and moralistic self-examination, his obssession with alcohol was not lifted. You can witness others climbing this slippery slope in A.A. meetings to this day.