Print PageAA's Higher Power
Wesley Ludwig
wludwig@gwmail.gwu.edu
As I walked to my first AA meeting, I wondered what it would be like. I immediately conjured up amalgamated scenes from a few movies and TV shows. I imagined a room with a group of middle-aged men telling lurid stories about hitting rock bottom. Perhaps a peppering of the tricks they now use to keep from drinking.
As a medical student, I was beginning to learn about clinical aspects of addiction and treatment, but as I was soon to discover, I knew very little about the personal experience of addiction. A single trip to an AA meeting, as a class assignment, helped me begin to think about this fundamentally important dimension of alcoholism.
I arrived five minutes early and was lucky to get one of the last seats in a packed, hot room. As I self-consciously gazed around, I noticed that the participants were incredibly diverse. There were men and women, young and old, poor and wealthy, and of every race; it was surprising to see a group of people so disparate coming together over a problem so intensely personal. We all sat down and recited the 12 steps in unison--and between the communal recitation and numerous mentions of God--I began to feel that perhaps I was more at a religious service than a meeting of alcoholics. I was immediately taken aback. I did not know a great deal about AA, and had not anticipated the religious bent to be quite as prominent. Moreover, I did not understand the relevance of God. AA is supposed to be teaching a skill set that aids an individual in avoiding the usage of a particular substance; can God help in a meaningful way in this behavioral modification? Was AA just founded by a religious nut? I was hoping in the next hour I would discover some answers.
The group leader for the day started off by describing the difficulty he experienced during the previous week after discovering his partner’s infidelity, and introduced the concept of humility as a lead for the rest of the session. But where the group went from here was not at all what I expected. Most of the individuals that shared with the group did not retell their story, instead people talked about every day, average, boring life. Many people didn’t mention alcohol at all. People spoke about feelings of anger or annoyance in the workplace, feelings of rejections in relationships, or situations in which they had a difficult time being humble. The peculiarity of alcoholism began to slowly dawn on me. Many illnesses have a behavioral component, but few seem to have a behavioral element that is as pervasive and profound as with addiction. Every person has a range of characteristics and coping mechanisms they employ to navigate through the stresses of daily life. The cost of dysfunction for many people typically goes unnoticed. However for an addict, coping mechanisms and stress necessarily cause them to confront the most difficult aspect in their lives--their addiction. The 12 steps implore each person to engage in honest self-reflection, and make the changes they see fit. Their road to recovery involved intense soul-searching, and self-improvement and did not, at that time, require a discussion of drinking or rock bottom.
Of particular note, was the struggle that many individuals conveyed to not drink on a moment-to-moment basis. I was shocked by the extent and power of this desire. It extended from the moment people woke up, to social interactions, to the 5 o’clock whistle, and to many scenarios in between. Even for a veteran of AA that had been sober for more than 20 years, he had to consciously make the decision every day not to drink, and go to an AA meeting to reinforce that decision. Every day. There was an internal struggle of a magnitude that I could not have understood without having actually heard it described.
In the beginning of the meeting a young man had walked in 2 minutes late dressed in stylish but dirty clothes. He was sweaty and his hair looked matted and unkempt. He sat for the entirety of the meeting with his eyes mostly closed, and painful a grimace on his face. He was still, and quiet. At the end of the meeting, he volunteered to speak and without looking up said that he had been struggling all day not to use, and he had never felt closer in his entire life to doing it than he did right then. After a moment he then said, “I didn’t think it was funny- that shit that you were laughing about earlier” (He may have been referring to a quip about prostitution). And that was the end of the meeting. I expected everyone to rush over and offer him support and encouragement. He got up and nonchalantly walked out, while many other people milled about- no one tried to confront or engage him.
Perhaps that was what made AA so successful to many people in that room. Every person is in a particular place in his or her struggle, and AA offers the personal tools that one can develop and employ with the requisite dedication. It wasn’t a place to just share stories; it was a group that allowed the development of individualized skills to live your life in sobriety. It was not a place where you are forced to be sober by group pressure, it is about personal accountability and personal drive--an honest accounting of the person you are, and how to be sober as that individual. This pursuit requires marshalling every last reserve of energy and dedication, and where these end faith must fill in the rest.
This helped me to understand, perhaps, why God figures so largely into the AA framework. Remaining sober is a task so difficult and daunting, that it may be too intimidating for someone to attempt without the presence of an immutable and omnipresent support on which one can always believe and rely. The concept of a greater power may help that battle to enter the realm of manageability.
About the Author
Wesley Ludwig is a second-year medical student at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and completed his undergraduate studies and a Masters of Neuroscience at Brandeis University.
Published: October 14, 2010