Thanks Jo, for actually posting the 12 steps. In no way is my response meant to reflect negatively on yours.
Articles of this nature, may be more indicative of how society perceives recovery in general, than how recovery views itself. No matter how alcoholism is defined, its illness affects the body and the mind. Alcoholism, and the recovery programs that have spawned from the twelve steps, often unbeknownst by so-called experts have not simply a condition and a treatment process respectively, but are a magnification of life as many now know it to be. Recovery from any addiction is not a zero sum game, but rather a journey that hopefully continues to grow. To imply that recovery and medicine cannot co-exist in the way that they have for the last eighty years, is a disservice to the medical community, and also to the millions who have recovered exclusively in twelve step programs.
Had the article spent as much precious ink exploring the negative connotations and attributes on both sides of this issue, as it did in providing mere lip service, the reader would’ve been more informed on motive, and less confused about the warrants of a rhetorical lecture, which collapses endlessly beneath the weight of its entirety. Recovery programs are not based on anonymity. If they were, no one could ever find them. They are borne out of necessity. And to debase them in some sort of philosophical fodder for the faculty lounge down at the medical school for the sake of fixing something that ain’t broke is, well disconcerting.
Getting sober may frequently originate with the participant going through intervention to assuage treatment, but intervention as a continuum is a mischaracterization that would open the door to rebellion, which is a fatal malady sought only by people who may not have the best interest in mind for the welfare of the alcoholic.
In the book Alcoholics Anonymous is a section called The Doctor’s Opinion where Silkworth describes the allergy, the phenomenon of craving, and the alcoholic who needs to find something more than human power can provide. I would cheerfully recommend that reading to the medical director who wrote this piece.
What Dr. Silkworth could not foresee, is the fine line that medicine would eventually be required to walk between pharmaceutical benefits and the potential for behavioral exploitation. Scores of people have increased the quality of life through the former, but behind the prospective latter lies a heavier reliance on drugs in general, which, in a highly volatile environment, could possibly increase problems for addiction, but also be a very lucratively feasible outcome for the realm of medicine.
There’s one way that the pharmacological industry can look at recovered drunks and addictive behaviors in the light of its own advantage, and that is obviously not by assisting them in their quest to find a higher power, nor in the psychic change that supplements such a discovery encountered by working the twelve steps. It is unfortunately through the prism of a huge dollar sign.
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