AA Purity

Sexy Drunk Christians: Chapter 1 Polluted Thinking Part 9

In AA, “purity” is “sobriety,” which is AA’s magical state of “serenity” which embeds in the culture, just like Christianity. In the AA worldview, sobriety is not merely a measure of abstinence or clean time. It is a measure of spirituality and the proof of having worked the steps via talking the talk and behavior judged by fellow AAs.

Just like Christians measuring each other’s purity, AAs quantify a lack of sobriety by someone’s cursing, anger, frustration, and other negative emotions. Serenity-filled AA members listen intently at meetings and quote the Big Book and Twelve and Twelve. They sponsor newcomers and chair meetings with their polished, perfected drunkalogues that never change because they are sober. The only new stories come from those still drinking.

This AA model of serenity, just like Christianity, is traditionally a man like the founding men of the program, so like the drunks who came before, he is a spiritual leader; though, he never says that because God is the only leader in AA.

Amidst a sea of old white men, model women with the smarts to get the program lead the new women on the path to serenity. Just like Christianity, sobriety culture admonishes sex, primarily for women, and AAs (both men and women) instruct members to avoid relationships for the first year while often pressuring and coercing them into sexual relations.

Still, AAs were warned not to have relationships, just like Christians, a directive that becomes internalized self-incrimination that reduces sex and relationships to wrongdoings or shameful interactions – primarily for women – by implying the newcomer is sick and incapable of having intimate relations. More importantly, AA purity serves the same purpose as Christian purity: an identifier of authentic AAs. Just like Christianity’s terrible sexual abuse problem typified by clergy or church elders preying upon the flock, AA Oldtimers use sobriety to prey on the weakest person in the room. AA calls this thirteen-stepping.

Just like Christianity, AA members talk like churchgoers on a Sunday morning but act like teens pressuring one another to participate in sex, less alcohol and drugs. Adults often prey on underage girls and boys sentenced by courts, parents, and counselors.

Just like the sexually abused Christians gaslighted by members and community to not say anything that might hurt the church, thirteen-stepping discussions take place in private, sexual assaults remain hidden from the public, and they are hardly ever prosecuted by police since AAs are reluctant to testify or talk due to the tradition of anonymity.

Keep your side of the street clean.

If you say something, you will only be hurting the AA.

None of these similarities should surprise anyone because AA is another sect or cult of Christianity, complete with the same sexism and misogyny Holly Whitaker, author of Quit Like a Woman, describes in The New York Times,

The values baked into its founding continue to shape the way the organization works, and it still has too many echoes for my liking of the ways women are expected to blame themselves, follow instructions and fall into line in a patriarchal society.¹

Just like Christianity’s abuse forming in power dynamics of wise clergy taking advantage of naïve parishioners, AA becomes a breeding ground with sexual predators rising to the top of the spiritual hierarchy simply by not drinking, going to meetings, and conversing in the AA slogans and platitudes. Courts dump criminals into AA alongside sick kids or anyone deemed alcoholic. Predators, purified of drinking, rise to the position of sponsors, surround themselves with vulnerable people, and when they strike, the victim is sent to…

1. Whitaker, H. (2019). Opinion | The Patriarchy of Alcoholics Anonymous, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/alcoholics-anonymous-women.html