A Spiritual Malady
When Bill Wilson, the “founder” of Alcoholics Anonymous, tried to stop drinking by medical means, he failed multiple times and was ultimately told he was hopeless and would likely die sooner than later.
Confronted with this, and visited by a friend who had managed to scrape together several months of sobriety via religio-spiritual practice, Wilson came to realize a very simple principle:
He was going to defeat his drinking by neither Self-Knowledge nor Will.
Armed with a “Spiritual Experience” which came in the hospital via prayer (as well as being tossed a copy of James’ Varieties of Religious Experience), he came to believe that it was imperative he begin to work with other alcoholics.
After a few years’ success practicing this newfound technique of service, he (alongside another drunk who he had helped to get sober) created the Twelve Steps (which would later exapt into Principles) — founded on the notion that one must look internally at the moral failings which prevented them from functioning properly in society, creating a supportive fellowship in which sufferers could people an anonymous subculture in order to learn and practice these spiritual techniques.
One of the typical challenges afflicting these people was resentment, which he came to realize was an aspect of Pride, or Vainglory.
Which prompts me to consider an idea which came to me recently concerning the disease model of addiction, in which I heard a phrase that continues to maintain coherence in my mind:
Evil is a (terminal) disease.
The reason the Seven Deadly Sins are called “deadly” is because they can, in a very real sense, become fatal.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Much of what thwarts alcoholics is a belief in their own self-destructive bullshit.
As cognitive John Vervaeke stresses (echoing philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt’s technical definition of “bullshit”), “the very processes which make us adaptive are those which make us susceptible to self-deception.”
Self-deception can take many forms, and an individual who has been socially isolated for long enough, and who has committed enough evil acts so as to hurt others such that we concretize our own isolation, will eventually reach the spot where an otherwise organic process of death will be high-jacked and accelerated by a more malicious one.
Bullshit is a form of thought or persuasion that is willing to overlook the criterion of Truth, often in order to distract from or rationalize away an overlooked issue.
Wilson realized that, in order to save himself from this cancerous malady, he had to experience a complete psychic change.
The study of how to heal a sick soul (“Psyche”) is called “Psychology,” and when Bill Wilson composed his book Alcoholics Anonymous to try to raise funds and help others in remote locations, he was also creating perhaps the most influential self-help book of all time.
For the soul can indeed become sick and, at William James’ suggestion, Wilson realized that religious scripture had for millennia been confronting this very truth.
His program of developing a secular language to address this phenomenon has helped tens of millions of people become sober, prompted new medical and psychological ways of dealing with addictive illness, and mutated into dozens of twelve-step models for other behavioral and substance addictions.
I have recently found through personal experience that breaking these ideas down into concepts like Sin (“error” or “imperfection”) and Evil (that which attempts to thwart and destroy the Good, Beautiful, and True), are convenient short-hands which (while being troublingly complex with respect to culture and identity) make the work substantially easier.
Goodness knows that we need this difficult work to become easier.
And, while every tool can be a weapon, it's still useful to apply them to work so long as the (psycho)technology remains effective.
In my own personal testimony, I've found these concepts to continue to be so.
If you would like to read more about my own personal accounts of my encounters with these concepts in confrontation with my own alcoholism, I will likely begin to write paid-only posts about my spiritual autobiography. Sometimes these will specifically involve my experiences with mental health care and my Alcohol Use Disorder. Others will involve my spiritual experiences and religio-spiritual studies, other assorted personal experiences, and (on appropriate occasions) how poetic theory is a serious and powerful phenomenological tool in confronting these issues. I will continue to occasionally post free content as I see fit.
Thank you for reading.