Heavy Drinkers

J. said something to me the other day that made me stop and think. We were talking about alcoholism (big shock) and she reminded me that the big book of AA makes a distinction between the alcoholic and the heavy drinker. “The worst thing” said J. "is when an alcoholic gets a heavy drinker as a sponsor. Heavy drinkers have a different experience with alcohol and the advice they may give an alcoholic could be misleading.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, I don’t know if that is an exact quote or just the way I remember it. I found myself wondering what is the difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic. For example, how does a heavy drinker, who has gone into AA for help, differ from an alcoholic? Does the heavy drinker know at that point that they are just a heavy drinker and not an alcoholic? All that is required for membership is a desire to stop drinking. So it doesn’t really matter if you like one beer or twenty. It doesn’t matter if you can stop after two drinks or can’t stop after a dozen, all you have to want to do is stop. The rest is for god to sort out.

There are a lot of anti-AA websites out there that will tell you that alcoholism is not a disease, and that AA is a religion or worse a cult. More there are sites that will talk about the abysmal failure of AA to “cure” most of its members. I remember talking to an alcoholic once who told me that one in a hundred who walked thought the doors would still be there in 6 months and that one in a hundred of those ones would still be there in a year. That is a frighteningly small number when you think about it. But none of this convinces me that AA is wrong or that AA is bad or that we should throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater because the numbers aren’t to alcoholics what penicillin is to bacteria.

Why are people so vehemently against AA? That is a hard question. But if I had to guess, most people who hate AA were people who at least visited those rooms and that most people who come into contact with twelve step programs do so because they are unhealthy in some way and are looking for help. Maybe AA couldn’t help them, or maybe they weren’t able to accept the help that AA offered or maybe the syntax of AA just rubbed them the wrong way. Who can say. One thing is for sure it elicits violent emotions from some. You wouldn’t think someone visiting a church or a therapist would walk away spitting vitriol against other members, but that is what happens in AA. Some hate AA with a passion, even though AA really exists as an organization designed to help people cope with their addictions. Sad.

I sometimes wonder about my own drinking as well as that of my family. I have had friends tell me “you’re a lush” and one co-worker who outright called me an alcoholic to my face. Clearly I think I fall into the category of heavy drinker, as I think most of my family does. But the difference between heavy drinker and alcoholic is a tenuous one and should never be taken for granted. The road to heavy drinking often interescts with the road to alcoholism and it might only take a gentle nudge to push one from one path to another.

I had a grandmother who was probably a heavy drinker until she found out she had cancer. I don’t know the facts of the story, but the way I tell myself the story is that my grandmother got the cancer and then she got drunk. My father tells me a similar story, one that ends with him in al-anon for about a year.

I go to al-anon. But I couldn’t imagine only going for a year or two. Al-anon has become a part of my way of thinking. It isn’t the only way, but the language of al-anon is inclusive enough that it fits nicely into my own spiritual beliefs that are really informed for the most part by picking and choosing what I believe from the best of most world religions. Al-anon lets my spiritual beliefs evolve as I grow and change, and it gives me a forum to voice these changes with a group that not only listens but affirms and offers feedback.

Today In church I asked my pastor about the new church movement. He sighed and said it would take hours to explain. His wife nudged him and said he had to work on his elevator speech about the movement. A few minutes later someone, I think it was my wife, said: “It’s like a cross between church and twelve step, isn’t it?” He agreed, adding more details and analogies. I kept thinking that there was an Episcopalian joke in there somewhere. But we’re Methodists, or at least they are, and so I kept it to myself.

Whenever I think about my spirituality I always seem to ask myself the same question my wife pointed out during that conversation on alcoholism. Am I an alcoholic in a room full of heavy drinkers? That is, does this or that spiritual message really fit me? Or am I just being lead the party line and swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. The question of “who are you” or “what do you believe” is so open ended and so vast that it is easy to get caught up in the moment, caught up in “what do I believe” and forget for a time that what I really believe in is the search for questions, better questions, more probing question than these that force me to examine myself and let go of the answers. The answers are so temporary and so little anyway, it is the questions that really interest me. Forget about the answers, those like so much else are really ends in a life full of possibility. Why be settled with answers? I find my life works best when I let these go and leave the rest up to god.