The other day, I ran across this 1983 New York Times article questioning whether “stress addiction” was a legitimate phenomena. Given the behavior of the typical cellphone toting, iPad poking, Twittering Tumblr-tagging teen, or the number of people you see walking down the street eating lunch as they text and talk to the earpiece in their ear, I think we can safely lay that debate to rest, and assume that some form of stimulation or stress addiction seems to afflict a lot of modern people.

So why does it seem like some people seem comfortable, even eager to add more stress-inducing activities to their life, while others seem to be trying everything imaginable to reduce the stress factors in their life? I think one of the first problems in “dealing with stress” is that there isn’t even a widely accepted definition of what it IS. This University of Maryland page says it’s a form of anxiety, which “is a feeling of fear, unease, and worry”. Merriam Webster says it is “a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation”.

Good Stress & Bad Stress

That dictionary definition above highlights a common misconception about the broad array of things we might call “stress”. From a common sense point of view, and in a view that is becoming more pervasive in health and wellness circles, stress can actually be a GOOD thing. In its simplest form, it’s a heightened reaction to external challenges or stimuli. So as long as the those external stimuli aren’t so persistent and intense as to overwhelm the individual, it’s a healthy survival response that helps us meet and overcome challenges. Historically, war has been one human activity that would reliably overwhelm the human organism, leaving many of its survivors with sometimes permanent stress-induced mental and physical health problems. But what about the crazy, stressful activities that people INTENTIONALLY engage in, like skydiving, bungee jumping, running for political office, or working in the finance industry?

Maybe You’re A Stress Addicted Chaos Junky

Strangely, like almost anything else, it is in fact possible to be addicted to stress or chaos, as mentioned at the top. The same chemical processes that are going on in the brain when you’re screaming and waving your arms on the trading floor may be very similar to those that are occurring when when you’re overindulging in your drug of choice. I’ve been on both sides of this fence, so I can speak with some expertise. Before I entered recovery a few years ago, I maintained the most immaculately orderly home and work environments you will encounter. The most common remarks people would make about my character would usually reference my organization, cleanliness, and grooming. Little did they know that these external things were the only thing anchoring the turmoil in my heart and head; my external world was a desperate attempt to maintain order SOMEWHERE, and physical objects and strict schedules make this fairly easy. Interestingly, after a few years of personal evolution in recovery, I find my home and workplace are often a lot messier, but I’m probably getting ten times as much done as before, and perhaps more importantly, I’m HAPPIER.

Your Personal Best Stress Level

I’m of the opinion that – as is so often the case in contemporary culture – the emphasis on reducing stress in our lives is oversimplified, ill-conceived, and is an easy monetization tool for the health care industry. A couple of problems with most people’s approach to stress are that a.) they lack the self-awareness to usefully define their stress levels, and b.) they lack the self-awareness to usefully define their stress levels. Yes, the two reasons I’m suggesting are the same. On the one hand, many people aren’t aware that the very tools they use to create organization in their lives are in fact the number one source of their chaotic and stressful existence. On the other hand, most people are unable to separate anger over personal dissatisfaction (i.e. frustration with unexpected outcomes, etc.) from a normal “stress” reaction. I personally THRIVE on a significant level of stress. The thing that will take me into an unhealthy zone in this regard is WAITING. Not because I demand that things be done on “my time”, but because I’m most centered when I’m “doing”. So if – like me – you struggle to maintain a high enough stress level in your life to satisfy your addictive nature, below are some tools I recommend for enhancing the overall chaos level in your life. Maybe embracing them all can make you finally snap, and then ease back into your own “good level”.

5 Sure-fire Tools To Enhance the Level of Chaos in your Life

Email

If you really want to escalate the level of disruption, distraction, and disorder in your day, use email. According to this NYT piece, in a 2007 study a group of Microsoft workers took – on average – 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. Email is a great tool for chaos generation all around. Also make sure you always have at least 10 messages in your inbox that require replies, send important messages as you LEAVE the office each day, and check it first thing in the morning. I jest of course. I just named three of the basic things that destroy attitudes and productivity. The point is, email is a useful tool, but if you don’t use it with some conscious thought, it will eat half of your day, and keep you in a perpetual tizzy. Empty your inbox. Could that one message be handled better with a quick phone call? MAKE IT. Is there going to be anything in your inbox at 7am besides problems that someone left you late yesterday? Probably not. Wait a couple of hours and get your workday going before you disrupt it!

Multitasking

Face it. You’re not. Unless you’re amongst the 2 percent of people who CAN, according to research, and there’s a 98 percent chance you aren’t. So really all you’re doing when you multitask is under-performing, and stressing yourself out. But if you really are seeking that level of stimulation, there’s probably no better way to achieve your goal than texting and talking while driving, typing an email while talking on the phone, or doing all of this while you’re having lunch with me. Because then I’LL get stressed out, because ill-manners make me angry, and since you’re on the phone, my polite nature will force me to wait until you’re done to scream at you, which will add to YOUR stress level.

Saving Stuff

According to 2010 figures from the White House Office of Management and Budget, Americans spent 8.8 billion hours completing government forms. That’s just government forms! In America, employees print an average of 45 sheets of paper per day, and 30 percent of all employees’ time is spent trying to find lost documents. No wonder there are over 50,000 primary storage facilities in the US alone. We’re all afraid of throwing that thing out, because Lord knows when you’re going to need it! But seriously. Try a system like the Noguchi Filing System or a variation of the 43 Folders method, and those piles of documents that are crucial to national security – even though you don’t know what’s in them – will disappear.

Meetings

Have lots and lots of meetings. Hell, have a special meeting just to talk about all the meetings you’re having. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unnecessary meetings cost U.S. businesses approximately $37 billion in 2005 alone. I think your team should meet to discuss that problem. I’d share more thoughts on how the the travel and task switching aspects of meetings consume more time than the meetings themselves, but I’m late for a meeting.

Time Travel

You’re going to find this hard to believe, but I have a time travel machine. In fact, this is one of my favorite chaos generation tools. I bet you have one too, and don’t even realize it. It’s right in your head. I’d bet a nickel that one of the greatest productivity inhibiting, stress-generating tools at our disposal is in use nearly constantly by all but the most advanced Zen Masters. I have to confess that even while typing these words, I thought about a couple of meetings this week, and answered the phone twice, transporting myself across time and space to a place full of problems that actually don’t concern me right now, and that I can do nothing about. Want to stay in a constantly stressed state? Think about everything BUT where and when you are right now.

The Solutions

I don’t have one. That’s up to you. There are thousands of books and websites out there offering solutions to your stress-related problems, but frankly, I find merely searching and browsing these sources stress-inducing. Why not try a simple approach. Pause. Take an honest look at how you use technology, for starters. And then examine if you’re simply angry that things aren’t the way you want them to be, and get to work on changing them in manageable steps.

Whenever a friend tells me that they’ve made their New Year’s resolutions, my typical response is why, why, WHY? Because this is one situation where one “why” won’t do. Why on Earth do we spend 364 days of the year not doing something, and suddenly decide we’re GOING to do something? Or quit doing something (more on the start vs quit thing further on). It’s often been pointed out that many people – if not most people – spend more time planning a one-week vacation than they spend planning their life. And New Year’s is yet another instance of this kind of behavior.

What’s On That List?

According to this USA.gov list, the most popular New Year’s resolutions are…

• Drink Less (or Quit)
• Eat Better
• Go Back To School
• Get a Better Job
• Get In Shape
• Lose Weight
• Deal With Debt
• Quit Smoking
• Recycle More
• Save Money
• Do Volunteer Work

Do you see any recurring themes in there? I do. One would be guilt. Guilt about the things we fail to do all the time that are actually fairly easy. Like recycling, volunteering, and – barring unemployment issues that are genuinely beyond one’s control – saving, and dealing with debt. At the end of the year we suddenly realize how careless or sedentary we’ve been, and make some bold proclamation that magically, beginning in January, EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE. We throw in “volunteering” as a sort of all around tool to make ourselves feel better. It’s like religious redemption or something. A second category we might take note of here is prestige. Get a better job, go to school, and maybe get in shape. All worthy goals, but when suddenly targeted for action in December, clearly another thing to attempt to make us feel better about ourselves, in this case through our good looks and net worth. And the third category is a tangle of health, addiction, and fitness. So far we have a pretty good short list right out of church as motivators:

• Shame
• Pride
• Sloth
• Intemperance

But I’m just having a little fun here. The real point I’m trying to get across is that guilt and pride are horrible motivators that will either not be self-sustaining, or will lead to an empty-feeling kind of success.

So Should We Chuck The List Altogether?

Probably. Trying to fix all the problems in your life in one fell swoop is probably a pursuit destined for failure. Which will just set you up for more guilt and frustration. So what’s the solution? Achievability. Chunking it out. Doing what you can do today, and letting things proceed from there. Most people can’t manage more than one or two projects simultaneously, and in this case, we’re talking about SELF-DIRECTED projects that we’re planning to add to whatever ELSE we’re doing in our lives. Where will the time and energy come from to do all these new things?

How About A Plan?

Instead of making generic lists of positive activities to beat ourselves up with, how about using one of the many common methods for prioritizing the big picture, and then digging in on the right stuff? One example is the altitude approach suggested in the book Getting Things Done, wherein you put current actions on the “runway”, current projects at 10,000 feet, broader responsibilities at 20,000 feet, and so on. This kind of metaphor may not work for you, but there are MANY methods for prioritizing; the main idea is to have a realistic strategy instead an overwhelming list of tasks. And in this case, tasks that you’re apparently not very good at, or you’d ALREADY BE DOING THEM. You’re going to quit drinking, quit smoking, and start working out all at the same time? Really? Did you know that this could actually kill you? If you have a list like that, maybe you should slow down and do some research, and maybe even talk to your doctor. You’re suddenly going to start saving money and clean up your debt? HOW? Some people have success with Suze Orman’s material, some people have success with Dave Ramsey’s strategies, but the fact is that if you’ve been living in a way that has you in debt without a clear way out of it, you’re going to need guidance, and a workable PLAN. You’re going to eat better? What are you going to eat? If you’re also going to start working out, you’ve got some serious thinking to do, and some preliminary steps like cleaning out your cupboard and restocking it for the new diet. Now there’s an idea. When was the last time you cleaned your pantry? I know I’m overdue for some inventory control!

Spread it out. Take some time. Use your head.

One thing I personally did a few years ago has helped me tremendously. I was doing a general sort of year end review, and thinking about my goals for the next year. And then it hit me. Why was I doing this at the end of the year? I’m a very motivated, creative person, and A LOT transpires in my work in a year. So I made one New Year’s resolution that year, and haven’t made any since. What was it? I committed to doing a monthly review. It’s amazing how many things we intend to do in a year that fall by the wayside, and how many things we ARE doing that are really just helping us spin our wheels. For me personally, a once-a-month assessment is just about perfect. Maybe your time frame would be a little different, but a year is a pretty long time for the majority of the things in our lives that aren’t related to career and childrearing.

Besides, there’s more than one calendar.

Heck, at the end of the day – or the year in this case – the whole idea of when a year begins is pretty arbitrary. In fact, Wikipedia lists over 40 different calendars that are currently in use. I used to really enjoy one aspect of this when I managed a Chinese restaurant years ago. If I failed in a New Year’s resolution on the common western calendar, I’d just start again at Chinese New Year. This was all in jest at the time of course, but the truth is that every day is the beginning of of a year, if you want to measure life in years.

Me? I measure life in minutes these days. Mostly the one that’s occurring right now.

Happy New Year!

So a little less than six months later, New Year’s Eve rolled around, and I thought “well, things worked out okay last summer, I’m pretty sure I can go to some parties and just have a few drinks if I feel like it, right?” And I actually didn’t drink myself into a stupor; I was fairly moderate in my consumption in fact. But the next day, I was violently nauseous and hung over for the entire day. I mean with a brain-splitting headache, sweating bullets, and unable to even keep down WATER. It was awful. So I said to myself “well, I guess I learned MY lesson, huh?” and didn’t drink for over a year. The next time I drank was more like that first time I mentioned; except this time my reason was that I had met someone new, decided to let myself drink on a date. The short term repercussions frankly were almost non-existent.

I did this off and on for about five years, and thought of myself mostly as “quit”. Then things changed a little. I reached the five year point of being about 99% sober (an important point I’ll get back to below) and around the same time ended a relationship, and moved to a new home. Before long, I decided to have some drinks one night with an old friend who was in town. No big deal. Then about six months later, I found some other reason – a birthday I think. Three months later, it was something else, and then a month or two after that it was Thanksgiving, then a couple weeks later it was “the holidays”, and a week later Christmas, then New Year’s, and pretty soon I was drinking once a week, and very soon after “a couple of times a week”, and before I knew it, I was right back where I had begun.

And then I tried to quit again. And it wasn’t very easy. I “Lone Rangered it” with moderate success, I went through three outpatient counselors, and finally with considerable abandon, I checked in for 30 day inpatient treatment, because surely THAT is the ultimate solution, right? Guess what. Three months later, I drank. And before long I was drinking every day again. And I hated every minute of it, and hated MYSELF for being so weak-willed. And then some magical things happened. First, while sitting on my stoop late at night staring at my 10th vodka and cranberry and pondering how stupid it was to be drinking so much, an old friend I hadn’t even talked to in a year or so showed up out of the blue. The last time I had seen him, he had been sober for a couple of months, so I asked how that was going. “Never been better” was his reply; he had just about a year sober. I shared how stupid I felt, and he said “well why don’t you QUIT then?“, and we shared the kind of black humor chuckle that only addicts can share. But I knew what he meant. I said “well why don’t you drag my sorry ass to some meetings then?” and he said “what a coincidence! I’m going to one tomorrow at 7am!” I shuddered at the idea of going to an AA meeting jittery and bleary eyed at 7am, not only because of those factors, but because in spite of all my clean time, I had only been to a few in my entire life. But he showed up the next morning, and I went, and I went to more meetings that week, and one thing I kept hearing was “you really should do 90 in 90“, which is 90 meetings in 90 days. So I relented and did it. And before long I found a sponsor. And now it’s three and a half years later, I’m still sober, and my life is changing in positive ways that I honestly never dreamed were possible.

And that “five year point” that I mentioned above? I”m going to share a little secret about quitting drinking with you. Having drank more than about 90% of the people I meet, and having tried moderation, just plain quitting, therapy and counseling, and inpatient treatment, I can assure you that if you’ve had a persistent substance abuse problem for any extended period of time, there’s a really good chance that none of those things will work. Why? Because for many of us addicts, our malady is a spiritual malady. And by “spiritual” I don’t mean “religious”. It’s something related to the heart and “the soul”, and I STILL don’t mean anything religious when I use those words. The essence of spirituality is as simple as doing the next right thing, and it’s REALLY hard to continue doing the next right thing without some guidance. And in my opinion, the only place most addicts will find the kind of guidance they’ll need is with other addicts pursuing the same path. Although the hard research on “sobriety time” is scant, I can tell you from the personal stories I’ve heard and the  experience that I myself have had that if you quit your drugs without injecting some spirituality into your life, 3 to 5 years into your clean time you will have some kind of setback. Why? That’s about how long it takes a person to get their life in order in all sorts of mundane ways – jobs, debt, relationship mending, etc. – and then be free to realize that they still feel empty because they forgot to recognize that other aspect of things, the things that give life a depth of meaning that makes it feel full all the time.

I could go on for days about this stuff, but let me just leave you with a simple thought. Do you want to quit something? Smoking? Drinking? Some other habit or addiction? Then QUIT. Don’t make plans to “quit forever”, just quit right now, and let being quit for now be enough. And if you don’t stay quit, quit again later. All the old jokes and cliches are pretty true. Especially the one about not quitting quitting. If I hadn’t failed at quitting so many times, I would have never succeeded, and frankly, all my failures and experiments are in fact the very bedrock of my recovery, as strange as that may sound.

So have you been thinking about quitting something? I have some advice. Why don’t you just QUIT?

Each week for the next few months, Nick and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is – you guessed it – Quit!

Science only recently seems to be identifying something that poets and pop songwriters have known for ages: It’s a fine line between love and addiction. Which can raise some difficult to answer questions. Like “Did I put in 12 hours of work today because I love my work, or because I’m a workaholic?”, or “Did we get rip-roaring drunk last night to celebrate our friends birthday, or because we’re a bunch of alcoholics?” Adding to the possible confusion is the fact that the current popular definition of the word “addiction” allows it to be applied to just about anything. The list of possible addictions these days includes gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, internet, work, exercise, shopping, even self-injury. Oh. And drugs of course. So if you’re wondering if you have an addiction problem, how can you find the answer? Well, there are legitimate online tests for everything from internet addiction to alcoholism, but we suspect it’s just as likely that you can get addicted to addiction tests, and never end up actually doing anything. Another little problem you’ll encounter is that a genuine addiction is in fact very similar to love. Chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all running around suppressing or assisting neural activity and triggering all manner of pleasure and pain responses, and the associated senses of reward or remorse that comes with them. But knowing what all these chemicals are and what they’re doing in your brain right now isn’t really of any practical use; you can’t control any of them on a direct granular level, even with the most sophisticated modern pharmaceuticals. If you could, addiction research wouldn’t still be a multi-million dollar industry.

So How Do You Figure Out If You’re Addicted?

According to the book America Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, about 1 in 10 Americans twelve or older are hooked on alcohol or drugs, another 61 million smoke cigarettes, and millions more are addicted to other things like gambling, compulsive overeating, and sex and pornography. So statistically, you have a pretty good chance of having an addiction problem. Below is a quick checklist for what would seem to be more obvious indicators:

• You just wrapped your car around a tree and a police officer is giving you a Breathalyzer
• Your spouse has left you saying “call me if you ever quit [INSERT ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOR]
• You’re reading this on a library computer because you’ve lost your home because of your cocaine budget

This is of course part of the dark humor of addiction and recovery. As a person in recovery myself, I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard at AA meetings that would blow your mind; stories about how far things can go down before a person is willing to look at their drug of choice as a possible factor in their situation. Which highlights one of the first problems in facing addiction. I’m going to make reference here to the legendary poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, i.e., the Known Knowns. If you’re not familiar with it, he made the following statement at a press briefing in 2002: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know”. This remark has received a lot of criticism, but is in fact very straightforward and logical. However, it leaves out an important fourth possibility, which is critical to an understanding of addictive behavior. That fourth possibility is the “unknown known”. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek coined the term to describe “unconscious beliefs and prejudices that determine how we perceive reality and intervene in it”. He was using it in a different context, but it is exceptionally apt when exploring one’s perception of their possibly addictive behavior. The concept is more typically referred to by the thoroughly abused term “denial”, which has in my opinion reached the status of “psychobabble” via the constant popular use of the word. I would outline this first problem in recognizing and acknowledging one’s addiction with the following simple list of possibilities that is fairly analogous to the “Known Knowns” concept:

• There are people who truly don’t know they have a problem
• There are people who know they have a problem but don’t care yet
• There are people who know they have a problem but don’t know what to do
• There are people who know they have a problem but are enmeshed in denial

In the case of the first scenario, a person under the influence of a mind-altering substance may be the worst judge of their state, and may take a long time to even realize they have a problem. In the case of the second scenario, the societal norms of the first world may make it easy to mask a serious problem with humor or connoisseurism, so that person may have to have a tragic event like an auto accident before the problem is apparent to themselves. And in the case of the person who “doesn’t know what to do”, it’s easy to say to oneself for years that “I should really do something about this”. The addictive brain is very adept at delaying choice by maintaining varying degrees of depression and impaired long-term reasoning.

Maybe You Just Have Bad Habits

The peril in assessing the possibility that you have a real addiction problem is that a lot of negative behaviors can be thoroughly entwined with the substance abuse itself, and it’s also possible that an individual is “self medicating” a legitimate disorder of some kind. Only a professional can help you assess the latter, and only self-honesty can help you assess the former. But one indication that you don’t have a substance abuse problem is if – duh – you don’t actually ingest an addictive substance! That doesn’t mean you don’t have other “addictions” you might look at. In his book Life! By Design (I haven’t actually read it, for the record), real estate consultant and coach Tom Ferry talks about four addictions that are common for modern people: addiction to the opinions of others people, addiction to drama, addiction to the past, and addiction to worry. This is actually a useful list; routinely if I ask someone if they feel they have one of these “addictions”, they’ll admit to at least one. My personal advice to someone who finds their life blocked up in a manner that’s indistinguishable from that of an addict’s? Explore therapy if the issues are trauma-based or deeply rooted in the past, or find a life coach if they’re not. Sometimes the best action is simply action, and much like with “real” addiction, the first step is admitting the problem, and the next is DOING something about it. The bottom line, in any case – at least as stated by the DSM-IV – is quite simple: “When an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed”.

But What If You ARE An Addict?

As someone who has been in recovery for a few years after various failed approaches, I have some simple advice. Therapy – unless the therapist is in recovery themselves – isn’t very productive. And simply quitting is a set up for either using again, or eventually becoming a slightly brittle, slightly abrasive person, the kind of person often referred to as a “dry drunk”. Why do I say these two things? Because after a lot of exploration and personal failure in dealing with my addictions, I eventually discovered that for many addicts (including myself), the problem isn’t just behavioral or chemical, it’s spiritual. And before you run away in terror, let me define what I mean by “spiritual”, because for many, the word tends to evoke images of airy-fairy new age types or “prosperity Christians”. By “spiritual” all I mean is “living correctly”, and by that all I mean is being responsible for one’s actions, taking care of and loving oneself, and as a natural result of these actions, possessing compassion and love for others, and peace of mind. One of the slow and difficult to detect side effects of long-term substance abuse is a slow deadening of the subtler aspects of one’s character. And one of the only effective ways I’ve found to heal this damage is through the fairly rigorous methods of conventional 12-step programs. It took me a long time to embrace this approach, because it takes some real focus and tolerance to attend enough meetings to get the best of what the approach has to offer. Like any spiritual practice or other kind of discipline (including major religions), AA and NA attract all manner of people, from the “Sunday Only” type to the dogmatic and rigid-minded “thumper”. It personally took me a while to filter through the crap to get to the good stuff, which is the basic principles themselves, and the massive support group that is available literally 24/7, at an unbeatable price. Which is FREE. And this support is going to be crucial should you ever decide to deal with your addiction, because your problem doesn’t really go away, you just learn to live with its existence.  As this Harvard Mental Health Letter piece points out: “Long-term memories are formed by the activity of brain substances called transcription factors. All perceived rewards, including drugs, increase the concentration of transcription factors. So repeatedly taking drugs can change the brain cells and make the memory of the pleasurable effects very strong. Even after transcription factor levels return to normal, addicts may remain hypersensitive to the drug and the cues that predict its presence. This can heighten the risk of relapse in addicts long after they stop taking the drug.” So those brain chemicals we mentioned at the top ARE important, even if you can’t directly manipulate them in the short term.

In an upcoming piece, I’ll outline what I jokingly call “Alcoholics Anonymous Lite™”, which is a primer for people who – like I did – might miss out on the best that 12 Step programs have to offer, simply because of all the heavy-handed and quasi-religious attitudes that its more hard-core devotees seem to possess.

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially
2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality
3. Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others
4. Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and Satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion
5. Leaders who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers
6. Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal

To me, this sounds more like a description of a member of one of today’s polarized American political parties than anything, but let’s address it in the context of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m just going to present the list again, but with comments.

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially.
AA does neither. You can find open meetings all over the world, and as AA literature makes clear, “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking”.
2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality.
This is where a lot of misunderstanding probably occurs. AA in fact encourages self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, but most active drunks and addicts have neither, so AA encourages a support network through sponsorship and regular meetings.
3. Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others.
This is true in the early stages, but only to the extent that a “member” surrenders themselves to such decisions. In many cases, an addict or drunk could frankly do no better than to listen to the advice of those who’ve found some solid ground and for no reason other than their rediscovered compassion want to help others do the same.
4. Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and Satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion.
This is simply not an aspect of AA. In fact one of the key tenets of AA is to not judge others by one’s own framework, but rather to ask oneself what one’s responsibility in a situation is. Discussion is the cornerstone of AA, it’s what meetings are all about, and although there are meetings where certain kinds of discussion will be squelched, it is usually for the assumed benefit of the group discussion; for example, when someone tries to hijack a meeting as a “personal therapy session”.
5. Leaders who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers.
AA has no leaders or hierarchy that controls individual meetings. Members of AA will often end up idolizing the founders or the people in their “sponsorship genealogy”, but this is nowhere outlined as a basic principle in the twelve steps.
6. Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.
Well, this one hits the nail on the head. It seems like everyone you talk to in AA has the mindlessly obsessive goal of…STAYING SOBER.

AA’s Supreme Leader and Corporate Headquarters

So this is where people who know little about AA get confused. The fact that there is a central organization called the “General Service Office” suggests that there is some kind of top-down hierarchy, but nothing could be farther from the truth. AA operates with an inverted pyramid style of governance that key founder Bill Wilson referred to as “benign anarchy”. Anybody could start a meeting, anywhere, at any time, and pretty much structure it however they wanted, as long as they stuck to the most basic principles. They could in fact do so even if they DIDN’T adhere to those principles – nobody could stop them – but that would be a pretty absurd pursuit. The General Service Office exists primarily to print AA literature, respond to public inquiries, and organize conferences. It’s right there in the basic principles that AA “is not aligned with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes“. What seems to upset most people about AA is the simple fact that it doesn’t fit their rigid perceptions of life, culture, and organization. AA does no marketing, recruiting, or lobbying. You can’t become the leader of a group and keep power, and no-one can tell you when to come and go. Trust me, I’ve watched them come and go in my three years of recovery, and no-one was chasing them down as they went.

The God Thing & The Judge

I think it’s pretty safe to say the “God thing” and court sentencing are two of the biggest contributors to the perception of AA as a cult. It’s unfortunate that the nation’s traffic courts often sentence repeat drunk-driving offenders to AA; although it may benefit a few of them, it’s completely antithetical to the principles of AA, and the enforcement of attendance at AA meetings is completely at the discretion of the legal system. AA has no interest in “gaining members” this way, and if AA regulars collectively DID have an issue with the practice, AA’s own principles would prevent barring such people from attending anyway. And the “God thing” I keep referring to? This is really where AA has some perception problems. It took me years to realize that addiction was in fact not a behavioral problem, but a spiritual problem, and I really believe a real addict has little hope of recovery without grasping this. But that doesn’t mean I robotically accept the usage of the term “God” and all the obviously Christian references in the AA oeuvre. I think it prevents a lot of people from discovering the benefits of AA, and makes the 12-step approach an easy mark for criticism.

But Does AA Work?

That’s often at the crux of the criticism. Does it “work”? My answer would be no. You do. But the principles of AA certainly aren’t WRONG, and do a lot more to enhance people’s lives, and nothing to harm them. And for me, they were the building blocks of continued sobriety and happiness that seems to grow continually. In an upcoming piece I’ll address why AA didn’t work for me for years, and why it suddenly did. The reason was shockingly simple. For now, I’m going to go do one of the many things I never had time to do when I spent all my time drinking. And I’ll quietly express thanks, something I learned how to do again with AA. Maybe I’ll pick up a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?. It looks interesting.

First of all, the serenity prayer often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Okay. Before I do my own deconstruction, let’s observe how much it resembles a mother Goose rhyme from 1695:

For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.

And here’s how I re-frame it to make it not only palatable to myself, but quite useful.

“God grant me the serenity”

Let’s stop right there. I do coincidentally believe in God in a way that I won’t go into here, but I don’t necessarily find this grant-seeking useful here. So I change it to:

“Whoa. Chill out for a moment”

Okay, now I can think about what to do next:

“to accept the things I cannot change”

Still not crazy about the wording, but now that I’ve slowed down for a moment, I ask myself “wow, can I really do anything about this right now? If I can, I do. If I can’t, I put it in my little “to review” box for later consideration, and let it go for the moment.

And then…

“the courage to change the things I can”

If I really need to, I just buck up a little and remind myself that whatever it is I’m contending with, it’s highly unlikely that it’s insurmountable.
And lastly, that bit where it goes:

“and the wisdom to know the difference”

Well, just by slowing down and re-assessing, I’ve already exercised some wisdom. I let it all go, knowing that if I made an unwise decision, it’ll come and bite me in the ass and I can do this all over again.

So here’s my version:

Whoa, chill out for a minute. Time out!
Can I fix this right now? Cool. Let’s do it.
No? Okay, let’s take care of this as soon as we can.
We’ve done the best thing we can do for now, which is identified it for review.
Let’s move on.

Damn I’m havin’ a good day!