Alcoholics Anonymous has been in existence for 75 years and has been the road to sobriety for millions of Americans addicted to drink. AA's twelve-step program works, but no one really understands why, only that founder Bill Wilson created the steps by borrowing ideas from religion and philosophy, then turned them into a list infused with Bible-inspired scripture.
Our friend Brendan I. Koerner has written what has to be the definitive piece on AA and the enduring mystery that is at its core.
Photographs by Christian Stoll for Wired magazine
The success of AA has always mystified me. During my father's alcoholic life, we were often deluged with AA tracts with the 12 Steps upon the paper. I read over them, and my one thought, even as a skeptical child/teen, was "I better never become a drunk, cause if THIS is what is meant to save me, I'm fucked!"
ReplyDeleteThat "submit to higher power" thing was the one that freaked me---to say that I could not be self-determining struck me as so destroying to think about in my juvenile status powerlessness that it completely turned me off.