Not-God (37 page)

The first of these ideas has to do with the concept of infinity. The infinite is the unbounded, the unlimited, the immeasurable,
the
absolute. In the history of human thought, the infinite has been identified with the divine. To be infinite is, in a word, to be God. To be human, according to the ancient religious insight expressed by Alcoholics Anonymous, is precisely to be not infinite, and so not God, but to yearn for just such unlimited fulfillment. The human thus longs — thirsts — to transcend the limitations of being human. In the phrase set forth by Saint Augustine as the theme of his classic confession: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
¹⁵

The alcoholic soul readily identifies with this quest. According to the insight underlying A.A.’s “spiritual program,” it was this thirst for transcendence that expressed itself in the alcoholic’s addictive, obsessive-compulsive drinking. The thirst for transcendence had been perverted into a thirst for alcohol. Some members of Alcoholics Anonymous have indeed guessed that it was the intuitive perception of precisely this perversion that inspired “good people’s” special disgust for alcoholism. Especially in A.A.’s early years, members often remarked on the dual sense of the word
spirit:
the alcoholic’s problem had been, in one formulation of the insight, confusing “spirits” with “the spiritual.” Bill Wilson at times observed to trusted correspondents that the alcoholic seemed to be an especially sensitive person, one haunted by a particularly pressing need for transcendence. That, he and others suggested, was why the spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous worked. It spoke to the need for transcendence by offering the alcoholic real contact with the really spiritual.
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The first message of that real contact was that the alcoholic himself was not, and could not be, God. Not-God-ness was taught first, of course, by bringing home to the drinking alcoholic his dire helplessness — his powerlessness over alcohol and the unmanageability of his life. But once this had been demonstrated, and the alcoholic had accepted its truth, A.A. occasionally faced a different problem with its newly sober member. At times, in the very flush of new sobriety, a formerly destructive drinker would adduce precisely this success to press another claim that threatened to deny not-God-ness: yes, he was not God, but that was all right because there was no God — no absolute — anyway. This equivalent denial of
any
ultimate reality of course still implied the ultimate self-centeredness that Alcoholics Anonymous had diagnosed as"the root” of the alcoholic’s problem. Because of this, A.A. had to meet its challenge directly.

The Alcoholics Anonymous response was simple. A.A. argued neither theology nor philosophy, but rather pointed to a simple fact in the drinker’s experience that effectively embodied a deeply philosophical and psychological truth — a fact that even by its very dissonance with traditional formulations eloquently made the key point. The alcoholic had been unable to stop his alcoholic drinking, the obsessive-compulsive acting out of his alcoholism, on his own, by himself. Yet within Alcoholics Anonymous he had achieved this success. Indeed, even before he himself had attained sobriety, the drinking alcoholic had been impressed by this group of men and women, former alcoholic drinkers, who had succeeded where he could not. All right, then, the first steps to sobriety did not require classic belief in a traditional “God;” but they did require that the alcoholic accept his not-God-ness by acknowledging
some
“Power greater” than himself. The A.A. group itself, clearly, was such a “Higher Power.” Its members had achieved what he could not, and in that admission lay the true core of the alcoholic’s acceptance of not-God-ness: there was
some
Higher Power; there did actually exist a Power greater than his own. In time, perhaps, he would come to accept what those who made up
this
“Power greater” accepted as
their
“Higher Power.”
¹⁷

Such acknowledgment was surely attenuated infinity and but small transcendence, yet it made the point. By drawing on his own proximate and vivid experience, it drove home the individual alcoholic’s personal limitation and so pointed to getting out of, beyond, the mere self as holding the only hope for “salvation” — at least from active alcoholism. The very existence of the A.A. group as successfully sober not only taught but insistently riveted attention on these two truths: the individual alcoholic was hopelessly limited, and he could transcend that limitation only by reaching beyond himself to others. This was the essential message of not-God-ness that broke the drinking alcoholic’s obsession-compulsion with merely finite and all too immanent and readily available alcohol.

Alcoholics Anonymous thus shifted attention from the material — even if “spirits” — to the spiritual that truly satisfied the spirit. The lesson involved also a shift of attention from quantity to quality. Both of these changes derived from A.A.’s understanding of the fundamental nature of alcoholism as “obsession-compulsion.” Because the alcoholic’s striving was for the infinite, for transcendence, it could not be satisfied by pursuit of the material. The material was necessarily finite, measurable, limited. Of the material there could always be “more,” and so concentration on the material when the real quest was for the spiritual was doomed to frustration. By stressing that it presented a “spiritual program” for “quality sobriety,” Alcoholics Anonymous changed the drinking alcoholic’s fixation and drive to imbibe ever more alcohol to a dedication to seeking the
quality
of
the spiritual
in his life. Unlike the material, of which there could always be “more,” the spiritual was inherently qualitative. The spiritual could admit of degrees, perhaps, but spiritual phenomena were essentially either-or. Despite all the styles of living discernible, one is either alive or dead. The alcoholic, at least, is either drunk or sober, even if both states allow for degrees all too easily noticeable. More classically, in the theological understanding that informed A.A.’s insight, one is either saved or damned.

As is evident from the examples, even in these clear cases of either-or, there is a tendency in the human mind that imposes some perception of degrees, of shadings. One reason for A.A.’s almost instinctive avoidance of the Oxford Group’s “Four Absolutes” lay in the insight derived from its early experience that encouraging this perception led to a different kind of obsession-compulsion, one that, allowed entrance into the alcoholic’s thinking, led in its turn to alcoholic drinking once again. But with the specter of a possible “absolute spirituality” removed as a reachable or possible goal against which to measure, the alcoholic was enabled and encouraged to concentrate on the either-or, to focus attention upon enhancing quality rather than increasing quantity. The difference may be subtle, but the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous insisted that it was real, and the practice of Alcoholics Anonymous as both fellowship and program was designed to teach that difference.
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A.A.’s emphasis that it is a “spiritual program” for “quality sobriety” works to offset the danger that even the sober alcoholic might think in quantitative terms of
increasing
sobriety rather than from the qualitative concept of
growing
in it. As adherents of a “fellowship,” members of Alcoholics Anonymous judge the success of their groups not by the numbers who attend but by the serenity of the sobriety of those who attend. “Serenity,” as spiritual, is inherently unquantifiable. Nor does the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as “spiritual,” admit of quantitative comparisons. Despite the recognized importance of taking the Twelve Steps and attending meetings, A.A. members do not “measure” sobriety by the number of times they have been through the former or by how frequently or for how long they have practiced the latter. No Step is ever
perfectly
taken, Wilson stressed in and after writing
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions;
and the wisdom of A.A. has taught that meeting attendance can be
too
frequent. “You didn’t get sober to go to meetings,” enthusiasts are often cautioned; and any who are perceived to brag over the frequency or faithfulness of their meeting attendance are usually less than gently reminded that such grandiose fanaticism smacks of the “dry drunk” syndrome.
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In a similar vein, speakers at A.A. meetings, especially those who themselves in fact have long-term sobriety, are wont to remind their hearers — and themselves — that “whoever got up earliest this morning is the ‘most sober’ person in this room: this is a day-at-a-time program.” There are no recorded instances of members of Alcoholics Anonymous pushing back the alarm clock before they go to bed in order that they may be the “most sober” at the next day’s meeting.

“Obsession-compulsion,” as presented by Alcoholics Anonymous, arose from seeking to grasp the infinite by pursuit or piling up of the limited, from the effort to attain the spiritual by means of the material. But the infinite, as qualitative and spiritual, was not
additive;
that is, it could not be attained by the adding up of
any
quantity of limited experiences. Rather, the demanding quest to lay hold of the essentially unlimited by pursuit of the inherently finite became
addictive
— doomed to the frustration of self-defeat. Happiness, A.A. taught, was not attained by
having more;
nor, its witness testified at every meeting, could peace be found in material things.

Alcoholic experience taught Alcoholics Anonymous that the root of the alcoholic’s addiction to alcohol lay essentially in his misunderstanding and denial of the spiritual. The active alcoholic was attempting to attain the spiritual, the unlimited, by means of the material. He was trying to achieve a
quality
of living by the mere adding up of quantities of or experiences with alcohol. This insatiable craving for “more” and “again,” a veritable addiction to addition that was indeed an addiction to addiction itself, contained its own perverse ironies. The first was that the addictive drinking of
more
alcohol became progressively
less
fulfilling.
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The perception of this irony further impelled Alcoholics Anonymous to present itself as a “spiritual program” for “quality sobriety.” From the beginning, Alcoholics Anonymous intuited that a deep root of addiction lay in the denial of the reality of the spiritual. It is only in the realm of the spiritual, as Western thought has understood it, that transcendence — going beyond — is not achieved by mere addition, that quality is not improved by the mere increase of quantity. The reality of the spiritual — that something could be real without being tangible — was indeed A.A.’s first and only advertisement. It was not the number of drinks left undrunk but “living the program” that constituted the evident sobriety of its members.

Also related to the spiritual was A.A.’s intuition and use of the second irony inherent in the phenomenon of alcoholism, the irony that linked its presentation of the threefold disease of alcoholism as “obsession-compulsion” and as distorted dependency. In searching for fulfillment as qualitatively human — a spiritual search — but seeking this fulfillment in increasing quantities of alcohol, the drinker trapped himself in a contradiction. The drinking alcoholic demanded a
control
that was inappropriate and so impossible. This demand for control involved a claim to the absolute; it strove to reach beyond the limits of human finiteness. The alcoholic attempted to achieve by the drinking of alcohol what reality would give only by living as fully human. Reality does not grant to humans
absolute
control over moods and feelings; emotions are meant to be
responses
to reality, and mainly to realities outside the self.
Absolute control
over emotion, in the sense of absolutely autonomous self-determination of moods and feelings, involved a claim to unlimitedness, and so a claim beyond any human.
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This striving demand for such absolute control led, with all the perverse irony characteristic of deeply religious thought, to its very opposite — absolute
dependence
upon a most finite and tenuous limited creature, spiritous liquids. The First Step of the A.A. program pointed out to the alcoholic this frustrating irony. His refusal to accept dependence upon ultimate reality — the refusal implicit in the claim to inordinate control — had led to a perverted dependency upon the virtually unreal.

A.A. proposed and indeed operated on the assumption that this denial of dependence upon ultimate reality was at root a denial of the reality of the spiritual. It was this denial of the spiritual that A.A. found underlying all the other denials so characteristic as to be pathognomonic of alcoholism. The alcoholic’s first denial was of the reality of his finiteness: by “playing God,” he denied that he was not God. In his solipsistic claim to be the ultimate reality (“self-centeredness”), the alcoholic falsely limited his acceptance of what
was
“reality.” The self-centered alcoholic accepted as
real
only that which was subject to his own rationalization and control. This limitation of “the real” cut off the alcoholic from “the spiritual,” from that by definition beyond human manipulation. The use of the chemical ethyl alcohol for its mood-changing effects marked the alcoholic’s insistence upon absolute control over faculties that related him to reality outside himself. Such an insistence was an abuse that resulted in lack of ability to use properly. Emotions controlled absolutely by the self eventually no longer related the self to outside reality, and so perversely issued in lack of control of even the self. Reality comprised of only the controllable effectively excluded not only “the spiritual” but also other human beings insofar as they participated in the spiritual. Thus the alcoholic imposed upon himself the alienation and isolation characteristic of alcoholism.
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The alienation that resulted from the alcoholic’s denial of dependence upon spiritual reality led to a more demeaning dependence upon the material substance alcohol and the unreality that it provided. This process ironically led, in an ever-tightening vicious circle, to even more alienating denials. The alcoholic’s first denial of his own limitation as finitely dependent, his denial that there could be reality beyond his rationalization and control, ended in his absolute dependence upon the very means of control that he had chosen precisely because it was supposedly controllable — his drinking of alcohol. This new dependence, of course, was even more vociferously denied; and thus the alcoholic cut himself off from those who would help him by calling attention to his dire plight. Those who cared for the alcoholic
had to
separate themselves from him: in order to preserve their own sanity, they had to extricate themselves from the alcoholic’s ever-expanding web of denials. The alcoholic’s initial denial of limited dependence upon spiritual reality was revealed as intrinsically and ironically perverse when it issued in an absolute dependence upon alcohol that progressively destroyed his relationships with other human beings. The chosen means of control itself eluded control, and other people — the desired objects of control — abandoned the alcoholic, taking their reality with them.
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