The Buchman / Smith / Wilson approach is not that much different from this. While Wilson was on the east coast, Smith was in Ohio, getting people out of hospital beds and having them get down on their knees.
The recovery speaker, John Bradshaw, talks of in 1966 how he was wheeled into the county hospital in a colma. When he came to, the staff surrounded him and helped convinced him to stop drinking. He did. He recites the date. He has been dry ever since. It is similar to how he stopped smoking 10 years later.
He did attend AA, and he speaks well of AA, but it is also clear that it was never a big part of his life.
In his talks he is not really promoting the 12 step groups. Rather, he is taking about family systems theory. He is not really speaking to an AA audience. And large numbers of AA people know nothing of Bradshaw.
AA has people admit that they are alcoholics. In fact, they make it into a badge of honor. But what does it really mean? It means that one is not going to attempt moderate drinking, they will stick to strict abstinence.
So much of human sociability is based on addictive substances. When the social environment encourages it, addiction is likely. I believe that anyone who goes far enough with an addictive substance will be permanently altered by it in such a way that it would be difficult to ever again use in moderation.
In most social converation, there is dry, there is drinking, and there is drunk. Most people don't see moderate drinking as being unsober. AA changes this. It collapses the middle so that one is only sober if they are dry. I think this is correct.
Once I attended a talk given by a faculty member at a local academic philosophy department. He was comparing the AA view to his own view of alcoholism, based on Quine Webs.
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The concept of alcoholism was collapsed and simply replaced with Heavy Drinking, and most of the ideas of AA were diffused. Instead it was really just the social environment.
One older man became irrate and even biligerant. He was a long term AA member. Normally he was very reasonable. But seeing AA scrutinized made him furious and he finally walked out.
Ever read Gregory Bateson, in the Ecology of Mind? He talks about AA. It is fascinating. He explaines about the powerlessness, and why it seems to work. See, when the alcoholic has blacked out, and then comes to, he feels powerless. But eventually he will be come cocky, and they he will say that he can drink in moderation. And so it goes.
So the AA powerlessness concept gets him to accept total abstinence. But there are other ways to see it, like just looking at the pattern. Sure, it is a kind of powerlessness, but you might instead call it something more focused. One who has done alot of heavy drinking has been altered by it. The powerlessness does not need to become a philosophy of life. I think AA promotes a kind of fatalism and crazyness.
