What is AA's relationship
with the community?
Answer
Now that our methods and
results are better known we are receiving
splendid cooperation everywhere from clergymen,
doctors, employers, editors - in fact, from
whole communities. While there is still a
well-understood reluctance on the part of city
and private hospitals to admit alcoholic
patients, we are pleased to report a great
improvement in this direction. But we are still
very far, in most places, from having anything
like adequate hospital accommodations.
Over and above this traditional
activity, we may give some counsel to those who
work upon various aspects of the total problem.
It may be possible that our experience fits us
for a special task. Writing of Alcoholics
Anonymous, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick once said:
"Gothic Cathedral windows are not the sole thing
which can be seen from within. Alcoholism is
another. All outside views are clouded and
unsure." Thus, with our inside view - one best
seen by those drinkers who have suffered from
alcoholism - we would help those working on
alcohol problems who have not had our first hand
experience.
While we members of Alcoholics
Anonymous are not scientists, our special
insight may help science; while we are of all
religions and sometimes none, we can assist
clergymen; although not educators, we shall,
perhaps, aid in clearing away unsure views; not
penologists, we do help in prison work; not a
business or organization, we nevertheless advise
employers; not sociologists, we constantly serve
families, friends and communities; not
prosecutors or judges, we try to promote
understanding and justice; emphatically not
doctors, we do minister to the sick. Taking no
side on controversial questions, we may
sometimes mediate fruitless antagonism, which
have so often blocked effective cooperation
among those who would solve the riddle of the
alcoholic.
These are the activities and
aspirations of thousands of the members of
Alcoholics Anonymous. While our organization as
a whole has but one aim - to help the alcoholic
who wishes to recover - there are a few of us,
indeed, who as individuals do not wish to meet
some of the broader responsibilities for which
we may be especially fitted. (Quart. J. Stud.
Alc., Vol.6, Sept., 1945). .
Another Answer
Many an alcoholic is now
sent to A.A. by his own psychiatrist. Relieved
of his drinking, he returns to the doctor a far
easier subject. Practically every alcoholic's
wife has become, to a degree, his possessive
mother. Most alcoholic women, if they still have
a husband, live with a baffled father. This
sometimes spells trouble aplenty. We AA's
certainly ought to know! So, gentlemen, here is
a big problem right up your alley.
We of A.A. try to
be aware that we may never touch but a segment
of the total alcohol problem. We try to remember
that our growing success may prove to be a heady
wine; will you men and women of medicine be our
partners; physicians wielding well your
invisible scalpels; workers all, in our common
cause? We like to think Alcoholics Anonymous a
middle ground between medicine and religion, the
missing catalyst of a new synthesis. This to the
end that millions who still suffer may presently
issue from their darkness into the light of day!
(Amer. J. Psychiat., Vol. 106, 1949) .
Another Answer
Alcoholics Anonymous once
stood in no-mans land between medicine and
religion. Religionists thought we were
unorthodox; medicine thought we were totally
unscientific. The last decade brought a great
change in this respect. Clerics of every
denomination declare that, while A.A. contains
no shred of dogma, it has an impeccable
spiritual basis, quite acceptable to men of all
creeds, even the agnostic himself. You gentlemen
of medicine also observe that AA is
psychiatrically sound so far as it goes and that
A.A. refers all bodily ills of its membership to
your profession. Therefore, it is now clear that
Alcoholics Anonymous is a synthetic construct
which draws upon three sources, namely, medical
science, religion and its own particular
experience. Withdraw one of these supports and
its platform of stability falls to earth as a
farmer's three-legged milk stool with one leg
chopped off. That you have invited me, an A.A.
member, to sit in your councils today is a happy
token of that fact, for which our society is
deeply grateful.
What, then, has Alcoholics
Anonymous contributed as third partner of the
recovery synthesis which promises so much to
sufferers everywhere? Does Alcoholics Anonymous
contain any new principles? Strictly speaking it
does not. A.A. merely relates the alcoholic to
the tested truths in a brand new way. He is now
able to accept them where he couldn't before.
Now he has a concrete program of action and the
understanding support of a successful society of
his fellows in which he carries that out. In all
probability, these are the long-missing links in
the recovery chain. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol.
50, July 1950)
