Rational Recovery ®

©2006 Jack Trimpey, all rights reserved.

It is often said that Alcoholics Anonymous membership is “like trading one addiction for another.” In reality, 12-step recovery is not another addiction, such as an addiction to meetings, nor an addiction to AA, nor an addiction to recovery. Instead, the original addiction is preserved in a peculiar state called, “in recovery,” tentatively sober, one-day-at-a-time.”

This is because AA is a fellowship of addicted people, with a program created by addicted people for addicted people. In recovery, one is truly living in the bubble of his original addiction, although in a momentarily (one-day-at-a-time) dry state. All of the priorities, values, relationships, social norms, moral codes, and even the mandate of addiction itself, is preserved in pristine, original condition from the day of one’s first AA meeting. Just beyond the pious veneer of AA, there is a remarkable convergence between 12-step recovery and the mandates of addiction itself.

Even the speech of people in recovery remains entirely in the idiom we call Addictive Voice, i.e., thinking that supports or suggests the possible future use of alcohol or other drugs. Any attempt to veer out of the Addictive Voice will be criticized by the recovery group as “denial,” “self-centered,” “delusional,” “dry-drunk,”or “your disease talking.”

By envisioning a future punctuated with possible “relapses,” people in recovery remain between using episodes. As long as an eventual relapse appears possible, that glorious event will cast a shadow over each day in the interim. People in recovery continue to live by the script written for them by addictive desire. From this vantage point, we can clearly see AA as the painted shell of one’s original addiction.

In recovery means in addiction.
In addiction, as in recovery, self-intoxication is considered an innocent act. One may apologize or accept responsibility only for behavior under the influence, but not the act of self-intoxication. The preferred company is other substance abusers, and evenings away from home are taken for granted. As any common drunk will tell you, his family is part of why he drinks; the same is so in recovery. In recovery, the family must be supportive and never confrontive. Because renewed drunkenness may occur at any time, life must be structured around that possibility.

While abstinence appears to be the desired goal, no such thing is so in the group, which esteems “sobriety” and looks askance upon “willful abstainers” who deny their powerlessness over addictive desire. Sobriety is said to be in accordance with an enlightened state of being in tune with one’s higher power, a state of grace, a spiritual dimension unknown to those who abstain by excercising self-restraint.

The recovery group provides no information at all about recovery from addiction through abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. It is likely that AA has no such information to give, for that information would quickly emancipate most of its members from its obligatory meetings. No one ever recovers while “in recovery,” and those who leave AA are actively discouraged (jinxed) from success through their own efforts and integrity. Members warn those intending to leave AA that relapse is practically inevitable, because without the saving grace of AA, alcoholics become “dry-drunks.” AA lore is full of stories of dry-drunkism, tales of alcoholics who tried to go it alone and became miserable, irritable people without the capacity for happiness, yearning to drink every day until finally the struggle to stay sober became so painful that they drank again, always with catastrophic consequences or death.

The step program is enigmatic, full of counter-intuitive advice such as the idea of powerlessness over addictive desire. To survive the onslaught of an irresistible desire and imagined disease, members are required to form a profoundly dependent relationship upon another member who also is bereft of independent judgment in his personal affairs. Together, they strain to believe a creed that contradicts their native beliefs and original family values, and cultivate fear of the bodily desire for addictive pleasures. This condition should be called, “recoveryism,” for that word is far more descriptive than the pretend disease of problem drinkers, “alcoholism.”

Deep structure
The key to understanding the basic dynamic of recovery group dependence is in the deep structure of the 12-step belief system. AA intercepts newcomers who are on the verge of recovery — aware of the problem and ready to take strong action — and disables their problem solving abilities with the disease concept of addiction. Prepared to get a grip and summarily quit drinking for life, newcomers rightly expect they will meet recovery veterans who will encourage them in their quest for secure, permanent abstinence. Instead, the newcomer is met with a bewildering flurry of inverted thinking intended to discourage willful abstinence and encourage continued attendance.

1. Recovery is not an individual responsibility, but a group project.
2. Your religion, native beliefs, and family values are insufficient and part of the problem.
3. You are a comprehensive victim, from womb to tomb.
4. Drinking is not a moral issue! It’s an innocent symptom of addictive disease.
5. Free will does not apply to people suffering from addictive disease.
6. You must not struggle to gain control, but surrender control.
7. Only if addictive desire abates, may you confidently refrain from drinking.
8. Dependence is good; independence is bad.
9. Groupers exist on a social and philosophical plane above others (normies).
10. The 12-step program is divinely inspired, inerrant, and Bill W is a saint.

Code of the Beast
I have presented the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous below, not for the purpose of derision, but entirely to provide informed consent to recovery group participation. Naturally, professional services that reflect any of the elements of this system of thought, such as addiction treatment and substance abuse counseling, will be similarly at odds with reason and common sense, and will reflect the inverted nature of the 12-step program itself.

Keep in mind the following definitions, which are keys to understanding:

The Beast: Addictive desire; the desire to drink/use, to get high. The animal (party-animal) desire for the pleasure produced by alcohol, drugs, and other vices.

Addictive Voice (AV): Any thinking, in language or imagery, that supports or suggests the possible future use of alcohol or other drugs.

AV —> Beast = Bark —> Dog

The implicit Addictive Voice appears in italics below each of the numbered statements of stepcraft.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Before Thee, O Mighty Beast, I am powerless. (more…)