Q - How do you justify calling alcoholism an illness, and not a moral responsibility?
A
- Early in A.A.'s history, very natural questions arose among
theologians. There was a Mr. Henry Link who had written "The
Return to Religion (Macmillan Co., 1937). One day I received a call
from him. He stated that he strongly objected to the A.A. position
that alcoholism was an illness. This concept, he felt, removed moral
responsibility from alcoholics. He had been voicing this complaint
about psychiatrists in the American Mercury. And now, he stated, he
was about to lambaste A.A. too.
Of
course, I made haste to point out that we A.A.'s did not use the
concept of sickness to absolve our members from moral responsibility.
On the contrary, we used the fact of fatal illness to clamp the
heaviest kind of moral responsibility on to the sufferer. The further
point was made that in his early days of drinking the alcoholic often
was no doubt guilty of irresponsibility and gluttony. But once the
time of compulsive drinking, veritable lunacy had arrived and he
couldn't very well be held accountable for his conduct. He then had a
lunacy which condemned him to drink, in spite of all he could do; he
had developed a bodily sensitivity to alcohol that guaranteed his
final madness and death. When this state of affairs was pointed out
to him, he was placed immediately under the heaviest kind of pressure
to accept A.A.'s moral and spiritual program of regeneration --
namely, our Twelve Steps. Fortunately, Mr. Link was satisfied with
this view of the use that we were making of the alcoholic's illness.
I am glad to report that nearly all theologians who have since
thought about this matter have also agreed with that early position.
While
it is most obvious that free will in the matter of alcohol has
virtually disappeared in most cases, we A.A.'s do point out that
plenty of free will is left in other areas, It certainly takes a
large amount of willingness, and a great exertion of the will to
accept and practice the A.A. program. It is by this very exertion of
the will that the alcoholic corresponds with the grace by which his
drinking obsession can be expelled. (N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book', Vol.12,
1960)
Bill
W
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