- Joined
- Aug 3, 2021
The spirituality aspect of it creeped me out until I read Infinite Jest, then I understood it. It's not about something interceding as much as believing. Belief that you have something to be accountable to and which can help you resist what seem like insurmountable urges because you've thoroughly rewired your nervous system to believe you NEED booze or whatever else. By the time you hit rock bottom, you've connected your addiction with so many facets of your existence that triggers tempting you to drink are frequent and unavoidable. AA emphasizes this in that it's explicit that it doesn't matter what you believe in, just that you have blind faith that ultimately you can live a sober life. This just happens to come easier wrapped up in a higher power because humans are instinctively prone to religious thinking. It's a tool that helps more people than these groups would help without it and their goal is really utilitarian- get addicts out of addiction. The real theological or philosophical truths of existence really aren't the goal, and it's not like people who are that fucking down in life are really likely to contribute to either of those fields of thought anyway.Ehhh.
For anyone that AA works for, awesome. Congratulations.
It weirds me out a bit, personally.
Generally speaking, I think itās misguided to plead to God to intercede in personal matters. Goes back to the āfootprints in the sandā judeo-motivational art from the 80ās.
Youāre sitting there begging āplease God help me to not drink this beer Iām currently opening and hoisting toward my faceā and God is like ādude, weāve been through this. Iāve taken care of the backend already; you just need to stop making this be about MY failures because definitionally, they donāt exist. If you drink the beer, youāll suffer. If you donāt, youāll improve. The rules of the game are already set up so this is the case, now you just do your part.ā
I'd highly recommend the book to anyone who can stomach reading a 1000+ page book. It's one of the few modern books I consider a masterpiece and despite it being a bit intentionally confusing at first, it comes together and (obviously for something that long) has a lot more thematic stuff going on than just addiction/AA.