In my AA we say that alcoholism is a chronic disease. The same as (some forms) of diabetes, you don’t just get rid if it. Its something you can manage but not cure. It lies dormant inside of you the rest of your life.
My mentor (highly successful and 30 years sober) said it nicely: he has an angry tiger inside of him thats trapped inside a cage. One that will surely eat him if it gets out. His job is to keep the tiger in the cage.
Thats what it feels like. Every day. The cravings go down, the thoughts, etc. Self control improves. But the danger lies dormant for us.
Surprisingly enough, although there seem to be parallels with how people experience 'life after' both things, I find it curious that alcoholics I talk to often use the "caged animal" metaphor, whereas depressives tend to describe it more as walking "a tight rope" or "at the edge of an abyss" metaphor.
And while I find the steps here laid out really admirable, I struggle to see how to translate the steps to my afflictions.
Closest I can come is to see the impact of failing to trust. Failing to trust myself and trust others. And failing to let myself be vulnerable.
I.e. how bad was your drinking before you realized you had a problem?
Or should you start the rule with ‘you’ve been drinking everyday for a while’?
Personally, I was what you call a dipsomaniac. Colloquially that is called a binge drinker. I drank 4 to 9 days at a time from morning to night (and night time) without a break. Luckily I only drank like this 7 times in 4 years but I almost died in my last binge.
We see alcoholics of all kind in AA: frequent and a lot, infrequent and a lot, and frequent and little. The frequent and little are the hardest to crack because they have the hardest time with step 1. Now step one is actually comprised of two components: realizing you have a problem (easy for me) and also admitting you were not in control of your own life anymore (hard for me). Its only through doing the 12 step work really arduously, going to meetings and having a great sponsor that I was able to change enough to where drinking no longer ran my life.
Maybe it's because most people don't just randomly are offered cigarettes or because it went from a "50% of the population" to "10% of the population in this age group".
I'm not saying that sober alcoholics are making a big deal out of it, it just feels different - maybe because it is seen as a lot more problematic than being a smoker? Or harder to quit. Or because it's rarer.
Like someone else said, alcohol is far more in your face each day than other drugs.
It's also a practice to keep everyone on the same level. Everyone is an alcoholic -- otherwise it'd just be a bunch of old farts telling new guys what to do (then hardly anyone would come back).
For an alcoholic, it takes vigilance every day.
The idea is that our sense of identity and image of self shapes our behaviour, subconsciously to a large extent. So if someone offers you a cigarette and you're trying to quit, it can make a difference if you frame it as "No thank you, I'm trying to quit" (I still identify as a smoker, but I'm trying to not do it), vs "no thank you, I'm not a smoker (anymore)".
Applied to defining goals vs parts of identity- not "I want to run every day and compete in a marathon", but "I 'd like to be a marathon runner". Because, in a lot of cases, we want to do something because of the qualities or traits we perceive the people doing it to have.
To me, it sounds good in this context as well - instead "I have to stop drinking" - "I want to be a sober man".
[insert joke about “substance” and abuse here]
I've known people with substance abuse problems, some of them recovered and had healthy relationships with substances. Some of them stopped using for long periods but touching the substance again relit the problem just the same as before.
The latter group even sober for decades are still alcoholics (or whatever other substance). There are people for which the problem never goes away, they just manage not to indulge it.
That can still be OK, as what it is is a mix of empirical and arbitrary man-made alcoholism recovery program, not a God-given spiritual practice or a scientifically necessary one.
People have succesfully recovered with less, as well as more, as well as different steps taken. And inversely, people have failed even though they followed all 12 for a long time.
This is contrary to my understanding of 12 step. Silkworth's framing (which heavily influenced AA) was that alcoholism was the result of an individual's physical reaction to alcohol, not a moral failing.
> rooted in Christian theology
They were absolutely influenced early on by the Oxford Group, too, which did provide some of the context and language.
erm... did you mean the e.g. examples to be the other way around?
Commonly the 'mentoring' in 12 steps is also based on you contacting your mentor, rather than building a network of people that check up on you whether you realise it's a good idea or not. This varies between groups, however, it's not as consistent as some of the other individualist traits they tend to have.
Edit: Personally I suspect this partially explains why 12 steps has a pretty bad success rate.
It's not accurate to say AA treats alcoholism as a sin. The Big Book describes it as "cunning, baffling, and powerful." Something beyond ordinary willpower, which is precisely why Step 1 acknowledges powerlessness. The theological framing isn't about moral failing but about the need for what Carl Jung described a "vital spiritual experience." A psychic reorganization that ordinary self-will couldn't produce.
https://aaforagnostics.com/blog/carl-jung-letter-to-bill-wil...
What makes you define it is a health problem? Does that help?
Maybe calling booze a sin helps people.
Most importantly, you are answering someone who defined the steps without reference to sin or Christianity.
So, in this light it makes sense to treat it like a sin. And to be fair, it is a sin in modern society as well. We even have “sin taxes” for such vices we determine can be used for tax gain.
I see no real problem with this. I am unaware of any large program that forces you to give yourself up to the Christian God, but most require you to give yourself up to a higher power. This is obviously designed to give you a release from things you can’t control so you can use that mental power to help yourself get better.
Why were the jews unable to handle pork? Didn't their neighbours manage it?
There are many theories that try to tie it specifically to the conditions in the Middle East, but none that I'm aware of are particularly convincing.
That was as true 1000 years ago as it is today.
Cooking and salting the meat both greatly reduce incidence.
It is possible that cultures which avoided pork altogether lacked adaptations against the parasites at the genetic level or simply that somebody among them noticed the relationship with illness whilst missing the link with undercooked meat.
How do you square this against, say, the possibility that the early jews wanted to differentiate themselves from the egyptians? I'm not sure about the specifics of the archaeological record but perhaps it was the case that pork was an upper class thing in Egypt due to it being fat and tasty, and slaves and workers were instead fed beef. Then the rule in Leviticus might reflect this and conserve a part of an older identity. In early judaism at least some of the fat from mutton and so on was burnt as a cultic sacrifice, so maybe the idea was to keep tradition from before the exile to the Sinai.
Purely cultural reasons are plausible but pork is a staple meat in all cultures where it is allowed. It would be an inordinate sacrifice to make for tradition alone.
If differentiation was the motivation, couldn't they make laws against eating peas or some other inconsequential crop?
In context, pork was only one of many forbidden foods. Certain kinds of locusts being allowed while others not, certain kinds of seafood being allowed while others not.
They have been debunked as being good heuristics for food safety with 21st century knowledge but that doesn't mean they didn't stem from observations of poison, parasites, etc.
You could apply the same reasoning to the Jewish culture of cleanliness in general. It certainly differentiated them from many other contemporaneous cultures, but why would they wash themselves in the first place?
You're still defending possibility as such, and not arguing for relative likelihood. I find the lack of anchoring in early judaic society suspicious.
If you read the Torah you'll find that it is not a collection of argumentative texts. To the extent that Leviticus makes an argument it stops at two criteria, cloven hoofs and rumination, without further explanation. This is also how more well-known early judaic legal norms were communicated, e.g. the noahide laws and the decalogue are presented as is without further argument.
The context of early judaism was also quite deadly in itself, people died all the time from a variety of opaque reasons. Figuring out that someone died due to some meat-transmitted parasite rather than a disgruntled shedim wasn't very likely.
The Torah is quite unconcerned with things like health or actions that are supposed to result in a long life, insisting instead that these things are decided by G-d. Dying isn't given a very prominent place in this early theology either, it just kind of shrugs it off with a vague idea about Sheol as a container for souls, in case they just don't stick around like some ancestral ghosts or something.
Pork was widely eaten at the time, so the "good heuristics for food safety" thing seems entirely useless to me. People already knew how to prepare pork and did it, and pork isn't particularly insidious, if kept in a warm environment it'll ward off your nose and taste buds in no time. Beef (and mutton) is more likely to trick you into eating it even though it has gone bad, and it also carries a risk of giving you parasitical or bacterial infections.
Personally, even rejecting the food poisoning mechanic, it still rings more likely to me that some more superficial heuristic like "pigs and eels revel in the mud thus they are unclean" existed before religious and/or cultural significance("these beasts are unclean and I'm the Rabbi") was attached to it, rather than the wish for differentiation from other peoples appearing first("the enemy drinks water, henceforth we shall only drink beer").
But perhaps you're right and my mind can't wrap around that of those people from three thousand years ago.
I suspect the ancient jewish idea of cultic purity had less to do with washed skin and hair, and more to do with behaviour and discipline. It's much harder to ritually slaughter a pig than a sheep or cow, and perhaps this was associated with rumination by the early jews.
As for pork as food, it's as old as neolithic societies. Wild boars were a very popular food source, hence why they were eventually domesticated. Now pigs don't produce tasty milk in the same way sheep, goats and cows do, but they produce a lot of meat and offspring without being picky about diet.
Leviticus does not say 'pig meat makes your tummy ill and then you die, so obviously don't eat it', instead it says 'pigs don't chew cud, hence they're impermissible', and frames it as a cultic uncleanliness, similar to contact with menstruating women or somesuch. People don't get parasites and die from a hug with a menstruating woman, but there are still rules in early judaism about it and as far as I know no speculations about it being in any way health related.
If pork wasn't a main meat in Egypt and the Levant in like the bronze age, then it would likely not have been a prominent diet rule in early judaism. G-d has this tendency to make up rules about stuff that people do rather than stuff that they already don't. When it's about things that people don't have to be constrained from doing or encouraged to do that they're already keen on doing, the genre tends to be poetry rather than law.
And yet others were designed to distinguish the ingroup from the outgroup. That distinction is worth keeping in mind.
[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
Some of the medicines and treatments showing the most promise are still too expensive for many. AA programs are accessible and can be helpful. You think they treat alcoholism (or alcohol abuse disorder) as a sin? In the meetings there isn’t a whole lot of judging going on. It’s mostly mutual support and compassion.
There are fundamental physiological and psychological reasons also that alcholics in particular feel in the ways they do; this is (IMHO) quite distinct from the religious experience, but "the tools are right there". It's a common language that insiders can quickly pick up and there's a loose mapping to things that outsiders would understand.
Do we just not yet understand addiction enough to treat it properly? Are we able to treat addiction (so, for example, someone could successfully limit themselves to low levels of social drinking that don't cause them harm), but doing so is so difficult and hit-or-miss, that we give up and only promote full abstinence as the solution?
I also wonder if abstaining from alcohol can have negative affects on life for some people. Some people use alcohol as a social lubricant; abstaining might mean (detrimentally) less social interaction. In some cultures/environments, not drinking can be career-limiting (I think this is toxic, but fixing that can take generations). I think it's fair to say that, on balance, the pros of not drinking to excess all the time will (nearly?) always outweigh any cons of abstinence, but can we do better than either extreme?
I poked around at some studies, and what I found was interesting. It does seem that 12-step programs tend to outperform things like cognitive behavioral therapy (though there is some disagreement here). But also many of these studies are about whether or not a given treatment achieves abstinence from alcohol, not if it treats the underlying disorder. So I'm not sure what conclusions (if any) can be drawn.
(Ultimately, though, if the 12-step program worked for you, and you're happy with the results and with your life now, that's all that matters! I don't mean to demean what you've accomplished or throw shade on the life you have now. I just think this is a very high-profile societal/health issue that we seem to deal with in a very different way than we deal with others, and that seems strange to me.)
That is, I don't believe it is possible that you've had real world experience with alcoholics, because if you had, it would be obvious why it doesn't work the way you are asking about. Some addictions are just too powerful. It is not a matter of having failed to treat the root cause. It's a matter of acknowledging that, for some people, the only solution to alcohol is not to consume any. It doesn't mean they don't also try to treat and understand deeper emotional reasons for their drinking.
[1]: https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/08/addiction-sci...
[2]: https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/35742-newly-discovered-brai...
This is where religion reflects cultural technology that gets lost in the secular translation.
Secularists vastly overestimate man’s control over himself and his world. Most people lack the impulse control to partake in their vices responsibly. That’s why most Americans are fat. We have a world surrounded by temptation—snacks available everywhere—and we tell people to partake responsibly but they can’t do that. Most people don’t have that same relationship with alcohol or cigarettes, but for the many people who do it’s unrealistic for them to think they can just drink responsibly.
I'd prefer if you didn't generalize here, especially since there is no "secularist bible" that lays out what "secularists" believe (or do not believe).
“X believes Y ” almost invariably just means “I think most X I’ve come across seem to believe something like Y”. Read it as such.
There are also other books written by both lay authors and those with theological credentials that seek to describe what a "good" Christian should believe and do, though to be fair, none of them are universal across the Christian faith (*).
No such work exists for "secularists".
(*) though fair enough, even "The Bible" doesn't entirely meet that standard given disagreements between both the high level denominations (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant) and the subdivisions within each.
Because the Bible is not a single book but a complex arrangement of at least 66 books (Roman Catholic Bibles include another seven books that Protestants do not recognize) written over many years by multiple authors, the question concerning versions can be complicated.
One major division is stems from Old Testament versions; Roman Catholic Bibles are all derived from the Septuagint version (3rd Century BC translation of original Hebrew scriptures into Koine Greek) of the Old Testament, whereas Protestant Bibles returned to the original Hebrew texts.
There are over 450 known versions of the Bible in English alone.
While there are estimates of several thousand distinct christian dennominations, the *major* categories are Catholic (50.1%), Protestant (36.7%), Orthodox, including Eastern and Oriental communions (11.9%), Other (1.30%).
I don't mean to nitpick, I grew up in one of the last "remote areas" of the planet and we were inundated with missionaries (when listed (now not) we had at least a hundred different types of christian mission here) that all had beliefs that only superficially appeared similar.
One wing of my larger extended family is fractured by a run of Christian brothers and sisters all raised catholic, all with military service, and all progressing to different barely compatible denominations and scarcely talking since.
> No such work exists for "secularists".
Secularists also have at least 66 books to draw on for morals, ethics, and common human values. It's debatable whether a book is even required to act with cooperation and respect with most others.
That’s about all you can say about the accuracy of the bible in describing what Christians believe.
For instance saying “Christians believe in killing men that have sex with menstruating women” is pretty ridiculous.
Most American denominations do not treat food as sinful, so the prevalence of fat religious Americans isn't a rebuttal to my point. If you look at denomations that do, the statistics are quite remarkable. Mormonism, for example, is a remarkable cultural technology: https://www.deseret.com/2010/4/13/20375744/ucla-study-proves....
Another example would be New England congregationalists, who have an ethos that "food is for fuel, not for enjoyment." We have many retirees from that demographic in my town and they're all unusually thin and healthy.
Utah is also ranked #1 in upward mobility in the country: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/social-mobility-in-the-5....
So healthier, happier, and with more economic opportunities. All from a group of religious minorities who live in a desert with no natural resources. Quite remarkable.
Almost as remarkable as your ability to completely invent something, and then present as a fact. It is similar to how you claimed Trump has a concrete policy of abandoning unfounded foreign policy engagements 2 weeks before he invaded Venezuela on charges the DOJ now admits were fake [0].
The state itself debunks your claim, from geology.utah.gov: "Utah has abundant and diverse energy resources including conventional fossil fuels, unconventional oil shale and oil sand resources, and areas suitable for renewable resource development" [1].
Site selection magazine also disagrees [2].
Utah Business disagrees, too, specifically: "Utah is blessed with abundant natural resources, many of which have played a critical role in shaping our economy" [3].
Another one: "In 2019, Utah remained one of the top 10 U.S. states for metals and industrial minerals production, with continued active exploration" [4].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/trump-venezuela-drug-c...
[1] https://geology.utah.gov/energy-minerals/
[2] https://siteselection.com/got-minerals/
[3] https://www.utahbusiness.com/thought-leadership/2023/07/17/u...
[4] https://naturalresources.utah.gov/dnr-newsfeed/utah-one-of-t...
eg. and on the record
* https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/02/child-migran...
* https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-studies/ca...
* https://kelsolawyers.com/au/paedophile_offenders/brother-kea...
Still, I concede your point that buggery and physical child abuse at an industrial scale isn't especially creative and just the usual dull grind played out again and again.
I would imagine that if there was a drug that removed the addictive desire for alcohol (and/or some other drugs, perhaps), all of us would know its name.
We certainly have drugs that can almost immediately terminate the effect of, for example, opiates, but that has nothing to do with ending addiction to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfiram
I learned about it on Reddit while clicking the (now removed) "random subreddit" button. I believe it was this subreddit:
Life is hard. People fall back on bad habits and many won’t even realize that it’s happening until it their life is in ruins. If that has happened to you there are often no more second chances.
So for some they may be able to recover and have a drink every now and then. However, if your life has become upside down enough to enter a 12-step program, it’s often because there were no other options.
You say that as if it's obviously true. Not even a hint at an argument for it. Nor a mention of what you consider the actual root issue.
For some people the root problem is simply that their biological reward/motivation system with regards to a substance is just too much. If they drink they can't stop drinking and there's no deeper issue to solve and no cure besides abstinence.
Very few people can get high on heroin or meth and not have it be a permanent problem. When you do it you get addicted and when you get addicted there's no deeper problem than using the substance and needing to stop. The only advice for people is to never touch these things.
Different people have different reactions to different substances. For many, they just need to never do things and that's that. Alcohol is a "never touch" substance for some people.
Why do you think that's true?
Medical literature and talking with people who have done these things and knowing about their usage afterwards. Particularly people who have done lots of different drugs and isolate a few things as just different.
One of the disservices done to young people being taught about drugs is the misrepresentation of the addictive quality of various drugs and lumping everything together.
In short, my key takeaway (as an outsider) is that with AA it’s helpful to get people sober and there’s value and comfort in that. Unfortunately that comfort has diminishing return. People (e.g., my ex) put in the time (in a comfortable sorta way), but then don’t put in the work (read: progress to address the root problem).
Finally, as an unrelated / random side note, my theory is that if you evaluated late in life alcoholics (read: 30 yo and up) most would test positive for NPD. In the hands of someone suffering from NPD, alcoholism is one hell of a weapon (e.g., manipulation, avoid accountability, etc). Also, within the context of The Program you will never be encouraged to seek help for your NPD.
NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder ?
>> overblown levels of self-importance, arrogance, and selfishness, as well as a lack of empathy for others.
Googled the term, but couldn't exactly see the connection. Fortunately, I currently only interact with a few people I consider alcoholics. AA definitely addressed the lack of empathy, at least.
I learned about this from Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind.” I’m sure it’s documented elsewhere.
> God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
Every time I think of it, I also think of the Man's Prayer recited at the end of every episode of the Red Green Show:
> I am a man. But I can change. If I have to. I guess. Amen!
Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous don't actually do the 12 steps as designed by Bill Wilson. They don't understand that it's a piece of spiritual technology designed to produce a spiritual awakening and a reorganization of personality. I've met many people who have become better people through the 12 steps.
I've rewritten them here to give a basic outline and remove any mention of a theistic god. I am not a professional so please forgive me if I've over-simplified or got something wrong. This is how it worked for me at a basic level.
1 - Take a look and see if you have a problem. Admit you have a problem if you have one. You can't fix a problem you refuse to recognize.
2 - Recognize you've tried to solve it by yourself and have failed. You need help from others.
3 - Humble yourself enough to ask for help and be ready to follow direction
4 - List all the complaints people have about you and analyze what you might be doing wrong
5 - Share your failings, no matter how embarrassing, with a trusted other on the principle that confession is good for the soul and sunlight is the best disinfectant
6 - Ask yourself if you're really willing to change. That's not a given. Maybe you aren't.
7 - If you are then do what it takes to change. This is going to be different for everyone.
8 - Look at step 4 and see who you need to apologize to
9 - When you feel you are ready and sufficiently reformed, apologize and make restitution to those on the list you made in step 8. To those that aren't willing to talk, let it go and don't bother them.
10 - Make it a practice to do steps 4 through 9 as needed. We believe in progress not perfection.
11 - We need to remind ourselves daily that we have a problem that we can't solve alone and that we may need the help of others on any given day. I've heard it called a disease of forgetfulness. We may need to wake up in the morning to read and pray if so inclined. As one person told me, "carve out a little piece of each day for the 12 steps"
12 - Carry this message to others who are still suffering