God in a Bottle: The Spirituality of Alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous
Although the drinking of alcohol is not a controversial issue for society at large, attitudes toward it sharply divide religious groups. The Bible provides contradictory statements about alcohol. On the one hand, it “bites like a serpent and stings like an adder” but, on the other hand, it “cheers both God and man.” Baptists won’t touch it, but Catholics use wine in the communion rite where they claim that it is transformed into the blood of Christ. The greatest political triumph of Christian conservatives was the passage of a prohibition amendment to the American Constitution. Alcoholics Anonymous is thought by some to be a religion in denial; one of its founders said that, “Before AA, we were trying to find God in a bottle.” In some ways alcoholism is religion gone awry. According to psychiatrists there’s nothing wrong with the moderate consumption of alcohol.
Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1785 a marvelous scale of temperance and intemperance labeled “A Moral and Physical Thermometer.” In descending order, water was atop the scale, followed by milk and small beer. These drinks were equated with health, wealth, serenity of mind, reputation, long life, and happiness. Then came cider, wine, ale, and strong beer, which were paired with cheerfulness, strength, and nourishment when taken only at meals and in moderate quantities. Below zero on the scale we encounter punch, toddy, grog, flip, bitters infused in spirits, whiskey, brandy, and rum. The vices associated with these intemperate drinks start with idleness and proceed to fighting, obscenity, perjury, murder, and suicide. Associated diseases start with puking and morning tremors and proceed to red nose and face, jaundice, epilepsy, madness, and death. The course of punishments begins with debt and black eyes and goes on to the poor house, jail, whipping, and the gallows.
The good Dr. Rush was convinced that distilled spirits were the ruination of the new nation. Wine and beer in moderation were fine, but whiskey and rum were destroyers of health. In the 1780s the Methodists and the Quakers were like-minded in forbidding the drinking of hard liquor, the former because it interfered with religious practices and the latter because it interfered with self-control. Even the federal government got in on the act under the leadership of the Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton. A high federal excise tax on hard liquor was imposed in order to reduce the consumption of these drinks and to bring in badly needed revenue. In fact, the tax accomplished neither goal. Americans were a free people who liked their liquor. They resented any governmental intrusion on their basic liberty to drink and get drunk. According to the historian W. J. Rorabaugh, in the early 1800s “Americans believed that whiskey was healthful because it was made of a nutritive grain, that it was patriotic to drink it because corn was native, and that its wholesome, American qualities ought to make it the national drink. . . . The freedom that intoxication symbolized led Americans to feel that imbibing lustily was a fitting way for independent men to celebrate their country’s independence.” Group drinking gave way to individual binges and consequent delirium tremens, which was first reported in the 1820s.
The corrective response to widespread drinking came from the churches. Ministers in the Presbyterian church received directives from their General Assembly in 1812 “to deliver public discourses on the sin and mischief of intemperate drinking.” In 1826 Rev. Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian minister in Connecticut, delivered six sermons on intemperance that soon became a basic text for the American Temperance Society, which was founded in the same year. Beecher declared that “ardent spirits” (whiskey and other forms of hard liquor) corrupted morals, resulted in crime and neglect of education, and undermined the foundations of the nation. He stated that neither drunkards nor murderers shall inherit the kingdom of God, and he considered the sale of ardent spirits (but not wine and beer) as “a tremendous evil.” Another minister, Rev. Justin Edwards, became Secretary of the Temperance Society in 1829 and led a national program “for the purpose of removing that mighty obstruction which the using of intoxicating liquors as a beverage occasion to the efficacy of the Gospel and the means of Grace.”
Local temperance societies mushroomed from 222 in 1827 to 8500 in 1834, and national leadership switched from Easterners, who accepted the moderate use of wine and beer, to conservative Westerners, who championed total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. This shift can be seen in the Temperance Manual of 1836, which stated, “The Holy Spirit will not visit, much less will He dwell in him who is under the polluting, debasing effects of intoxicating drink. The heart and mind which this occasions is to Him loathsome and an utter abomination.”
Even Catholics formed their own temperance societies. The official stance of Catholicism reflected the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote, “It is not unlawful to drink wine as such. Yet it may become unlawful accidentally.” This opinion was based on Jesus’ words, “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Matt. 15:11).Aquinas added, however, that abstinence was sometimes requisite if a person takes a vow not to drink, if a person gets drunk easily, or if drinking scandalizes others. Catholics worldwide rarely abstained, but in 1849 a priest name Father Matthew came to the United States from Ireland, where he had convinced half of that nation’s alcohol-ravaged population to take the pledge of abstinence. He was extraordinarily well received by President Tyler and by the U.S. Senate. His Hibernian crusade netted several hundred thousand pledges as well as the enmity of Catholic bishops who disapproved of his fellowship with Protestant clergy.
The Eastern Protestant churches that helped establish the temperance movement were left behind by the growing popularity of evangelical frontier churches with their passionate revivals, camp meetings, and calls to be reborn in the Spirit. According to Rorabaugh, “When a man claimed grace, the minister looked for a visible proof of conversion, an indicator of true faith and allegiance, a token of renunciation of sin and acceptance of the Lord. One visible outward sign of inner light was abstinence from alcoholic beverages.” Temperance was not enough to claim salvation; only total abstinence would do. Opposition came from Primitive Baptists who considered the abstinence pledge blasphemy. They believed that “abstinence was sinful because God gave the spirit in the fruit of grain, and the ability to extract and decoct it, and then he gave them the inclination to drink.” Indeed, most scholars credit a Baptist minister for discovering the process to produce bourbon.
While the older temperance leaders hoped to change the nation’s drinking habits through moral persuasion, the new abstainers decided to push for a legal total prohibition of commerce in alcoholic beverages. State legislatures north of the Mason-Dixon line responded favorably but Southern legislatures, accurately perceiving the antislavery sentiments of many prohibitionists, did not. Thirteen states became legally dry. The laws led to civil contempt and within a decade were repealed.
The upheavals of the Civil War resulted in the temporary demise of concerns about alcohol. Then, in 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded. Five years later, under the leadership of the indefatigable Frances Willard, this remarkable organization reached out not only to the nation but to the world. Willard and her cohorts at the World WCTU were at the forefront of social reforms
such as the worldwide prohibition of alcohol, prostitution, child marriages, foot binding in China, the Japanese geisha system, and the sale of opium. The group championed voting rights for women, prison reform, child labor laws, unions and the right to strike, better treatment of natives in the Belgian Congo, a league of nations, a world court, vegetarianism, and world peace. These were interesting times for Christian idealism and for temperance. Many locales passed antidrinking laws and new towns were established to advance temperance values, the best known being Palo Alto, California, the site of Stanford University.
The temperance forces could not muster much political support. Their Prohibition party was a dud and could not dent the powerful and well-connected alcohol industry of manufacturers, brewers, and saloon keepers. Saloons were where working men gathered to talk. They were poor men’s clubs where regular customers made friendships, and for most it was the only show in town. Moreover, they were always open. A hard-working man couldn’t be expected to sit in a crowded, tiny tenement apartment and stare at his wife and children all evening.
The dream of prohibition seemed doomed except for one man, a minister from Ohio named Howard Russell, who believed that God wanted him to “drive the satanic liquor traffic down to its native hell.” He proposed an Anti-Saloon League in 1893.Two years later, under the leadership of clergymen, the League held a national convention and devised a strategy of establishing a branch in every church in the nation with a unified hierarchy of local, state, and national leaders. Its initial focus was the closing of all saloons and the shutting down of commercial alcohol production. Its method was political, not as a separate party but rather as a force that influenced established parties. That the Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, and Episcopalians were not supportive mattered little because there were more than enough devoted Christians to carry on the fight. The Salvation Army even proposed transforming saloons into soda and juice bars.
The League was very pragmatic and very successful. It delivered votes to any politician, drunkards and teetotalers alike, who supported its program. In 1913, despite the veto of President Taft, the League was responsible for the passage of a national bill prohibiting the shipment of liquor into dry states. Emboldened by the victory, the League declared its real agenda, no alcohol for anyone anywhere. In the midst of World War I both the Senate and the House of Representatives, buoyed by patriotic feelings against beer-brewing German-Americans, passed a prohibition amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1917.
The one person most responsible for the passage of the amendment was a Methodist bishop named James Cannon, whose influence went beyond his home state of Virginia to include all the Southern and border states. After securing prohibition he flexed his muscles in 1928 to defeat the Democratic presidential candidate Alfred Smith, an anti-prohibitionist and a Catholic. Smith could not win without the South, and the South was controlled by Cannon. With Herbert Hoover’s victory, Cannon’s star rose so high that H. L. Mencken said he was “the most powerful ecclesiastic ever heard of in America.”
Once the religious right got the prohibition bandwagon in high gear, many others, including the American Medical Association, businessmen, labor leaders, and liberal preachers of the Social Gospel movement, climbed aboard. They demonized alcohol and focused on it so intently that it became the cause of the nation’s ills. They believed that prohibition would result in economic prosperity, personal happiness, good health, and social stability. However, Bishop Cannon’s intense hatred of Catholicism and his drive to impose prohibition on the entire nation belied the sleazy underbelly of a supreme moralist. In 1929 the charges against him came out fast and furious. War profiteering. Illegal stock deals. Adultery. Corrupt political practices. His enemies reveled in this exposure of hypocrisy. With Cannon’s disgrace, the anti-alcohol crusade lost its greatest leader, and the exposure of Cannon’s weaknesses awakened the nation to the weakness of prohibition itself. Clearly alcohol had been responsible for many problems, but the prohibitionists had oversold it as an agent of evil. In fact, prohibition resulted in widespread lawlessness and the creation of a vast criminal underclass. Instead of prosperity, the nation was hit by the great economic depression. Tired of austerity and naysayers, Americans repealed prohibition in 1933.
The Last House on the Street: Alcoholics Anonymous
The joy that greeted prohibition’s end was quickly tempered by rising alcoholism rates. However, no one much cared. Churches, humiliated by the failure of “the great experiment,” closed their doors to alcoholics; only the skid-row rescue missions, generally detested by alcoholics because of their singled-minded focus on salvation, and the surprisingly progressive Salvation Army, where drunkards merely had
to sing for their supper, reached out. Physicians didn’t know how to help. Psychoanalysis, the consuming passion of psychiatry, didn’t focus much on alcoholism. Freud regarded alcohol as a substitute for sexual gratification, and Karl Abraham described alcoholics as suffering from an oral-dependent personality. In 1933 Sandor Rado dismissed alcohol’s pharmacological effect as the major factor in alcoholism. For him, alcohol’s pleasure was generated by its symbolic meaning; the alcoholic’s mind was fixated at an early, oral stage of development and the bottle of booze really represented mother’s breast. Alas, the repressed alcoholics who needed their nips and who fitted this formulation were not those likely to benefit from psychoanalysis.
Since the formal religious, medical, and psychiatric systems offered little hope, alcoholics were forced to turn inward for help. It was not a new idea. In 1840 a small group of alcoholics in Baltimore started the Washingtonian Movement, in which recovered alcoholics led group meetings to foster sobriety and rehabilitation. Despite initial success that bordered on the spectacular, the movement fizzled out in a few years. It’s failure was due to criticism by religious temperance leaders who decried the Washingtonians’ lack of interest in establishing ties with them. The temperance movement swallowed up the Washingtonians.
The new movement inward started in Zurich in 1931, where a wealthy American financier named Rowland H. was treated for alcoholism by the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung was a psychoanalyst much interested in spirituality and religion. After a year of failed treatment, Jung told his patient that since nothing else had helped perhaps he should place his hope in a spiritual experience.
Rowland H. dutifully sought and found religion in the Oxford Group. Founded by a Lutheran minister, the Oxford Group was a nondenominational organization devoted to re-experiencing the dynamism of the early days of Christianity through inspirational talks, group discussion, and mutual support. Rowland’s conversion and the process through which he achieved it was what one historian has called a “founding moment” of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Rowland then introduced his alcoholic friend Ebby to the Oxford Group. He too experienced a conversion (although he later reverted to drinking) and in 1934 tried to convince an alcoholic stock broker named Bill Wilson in New York that religion was the answer. Wilson responded by going on a bender. He then sought help from a psychiatrist, William Silkworth, who hospitalized him. Wilson went into a severe depression. He gagged on the notion of a greater power, but cried out in despair for God to show himself. “Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe.” He pictured himself on a mountain in a spiritual windstorm. “And then it burst upon me that I am a free man.” As the ecstasy subsided he experienced “a new world or consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence and I thought to myself, ‘So this is the God of the preachers.’ A great peace came over me and I thought, ‘No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are all right.’” Since he was neither a religious or spiritual person he feared that this ecstasy was the product of a brain damaged by alcohol, but the psychiatrist said no.
Wilson’s life changed for good when he discovered William James’ book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. In it he learned about the ecstasy that accompanies religious conversion and about the hopelessness that often precedes the change. James’ book presented many case histories, including that of a homeless, friendless, dying drunkard who became an active and useful rescuer of alcoholics after his conversion. James also described the peculiar features of the “state of assurance” that comes with conversion: a sense that all is ultimately well, a sense of perceiving truths not known before, and a sense of clear and beautiful newness within and without. Wilson talked about the hopelessness of his condition and his subsequent conversion with his friend Ebby. From these talks he imagined “a chain reaction among alcoholics, one carrying the message and these principles to the next.”
In 1935 Wilson was disconsolate while in an Akron, Ohio hotel. A business deal had failed and Mother’s Day was coming up. He needed a drink. The hotel bar was just a few steps away. What to do? Maybe he would feel better if he could talk with a fellow alcoholic the way he had talked with Ebby. He called several ministers and finally was referred to a woman member of a local Oxford Group. She invited him to her home and introduced him to Dr. Bob Smith, a chronic alcoholic whose career as a surgeon was in ruins. Wilson talked and talked some more about his life and his drinking. In this one-sided conversation he discovered a truth: telling one’s story can be therapeutic. He concluded by saying, “I needed you, Bob, probably a lot more than you’ll need me. So, thanks a lot for hearing me out. I know now that I’m not going to take the drink, and I’m grateful to you. “The sorry surgeon, who at times didn’t even appear to be listening, responded by telling his story to Wilson. A relationship formed and a month later Wilson noted, “1935, June 10. Dr. Bob had his last drink. Alcoholics Anonymous founded.”
AA is not exactly a religion, although it comes close and some critics have described it as a religion in denial. It isn’t a Christian organization either, although its roots are. Its famous twelve steps, unconsciously recalling the twelve disciples, are powerful statements. Most people are surprised to learn that abstinence is not one of the steps.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove these as defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
AA also has twelve traditions that are truly brilliant. They essentially maintain AA’s neutrality on nonalcohol issues, its refusal to accept outside contributions or to endorse, finance or lend the AA name to any facility or enterprise, and a commitment to “remain forever nonprofessional.” AA’s independence has served it well, although it has hampered impartial research into its effectiveness. In most of the Western world alcoholics can attend meetings free of charge where they can tell their stories and listen to the stories of others. This acceptance, provided only that the alcoholics have a desire to stop drinking, is present even when everyone else rejects them and has led to the description of AA as “the last house on the street.”
Unconditional acceptance is a major factor in AA’s effectiveness as identified by Edgar Nace in his highly regarded text on alcoholism. Another factor is the consistent debunking of denial that alcohol is a problem. At AA meetings, for example, each speaker starts with “My name is ——, I’m an alcoholic.” The defenses of grandiosity and self-suffering are also addressed: alcoholics must admit that they are powerless over alcohol and that a power greater than themselves could restore their sanity and remove their shortcoming when “humbly” asked to do so. Nace also identifies positive aspects of group therapy present in AA fellowship: abstinent alcoholics provide hope by serving as role models; new social skills are learned; information is provided; there is opportunity for catharsis followed by a sense of group solidarity and cohesiveness.
The literature on AA is not as large as one might suppose because AA steadfastly maintains its independence and the anonymity of its members, thus making research difficult if not impossible. Many disorder-specific groups have appropriated AA’s twelve steps, e.g., Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc. The American membership of AA is about one and a half million persons (about half a million more worldwide), many of whom sport bumper stickers on their cars with the slogan, “One Day at a Time.” Overcomers Outreach, founded in 1985 by an alcoholic minister in California, utilizes the twelve steps but in a totally Christian context. It should be noted that although AA is not supposed to be aligned with any particular religious persuasion, most group meetings include a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. This Christian flavor is a turn-off for some alcoholics, especially Jews. Rational Recovery, founded by a social worker, disavows the higher power concept and focuses on alcoholics’ irrational beliefs. It caters to AA drop-outs and claims one thousand groups in the United States.
The most detailed studies of AA dynamics are Ernest Kurtz’s paper “Why AA Works” and book Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous. The curious book title refers to the fundamental first message of AA: “The alcoholic’s acceptance of self as human is founded in his rejection of any claim to be more than human.” AA members must accept the limitation of their being; an alcoholic cannot drink alcohol safely. Formal religions take personal limitations as a problem that can be overcome by participation and belief in the mechanisms of salvation offered by a particular church. Religion aspires to perfection and contains what it considers to be absolute truths. However, organized religion promised too much for the founders of AA. When asked why AA separated from the Christian Oxford Group, Bob Wilson replied, “The Oxford Group wanted to save the world, and I only wanted to save the drunks.”
Yet, this boot-stomping hardcore stand on abstinence flies in the face of everyday experience. A glass or two of wine with dinner, champagne to celebrate a wedding, a few beers while watching the Super Bowl, a snifter of cognac on a chilly winter evening or a thimbleful of wine at communion surely do no harm. In 1864 a Scottish physician, Francis Anstie, felt that three drinks a day was a safe limit. In fact, most people drink alcohol without any adverse physical, mental, or social consequences. About one-third of Americans are light drinkers, one-third are moderate to heavy drinkers, and one-third are teetotalers. Amazingly only seven percent of Americans drink half of the alcohol (one-tenth of all drinkers). This group of alcoholics and problem drinkers creates havoc for themselves and others, but for ninety percent of drinkers alcohol usually is a benign substance.
While claims for the health-promoting effects of modest drinking are somewhat shaky, abstinence isn’t necessarily beneficial. A review of data from several long-term studies indicates a consistently higher mortality rate for current abstainers than for current moderate drinkers. George Vaillant, an eminent alcohol researcher, offers two explanations for this finding: the group of current abstainers may include severe alcoholics in remission whose mortality rate is almost as high as active alcoholics, and in communities where drinking is common, abstainers may develop greater physical morbidity because of their tendency to manifest impaired mental health and interpersonal relations. Vaillant’s own long-term study of 400 males contained 80 abstainers and 80 moderate drinkers. Comparison of the groups shows that abstainers were far more likely (by a 2 to 1 ratio in most categories) to be in a lower social class, to ever receive a psychiatric diagnosis, to use immature mental defense mechanisms, to never achieve independence from their families of origin, to never marry, and to have difficulties with spending time with friends and with taking enjoyable vacations. You abstain at your own peril.
Christ and Claret
There is something of the religious and spiritual in alcohol. When distilled spirits were created centuries ago, they were called aqua vitae, the water of life. The same phrase in Gaelic is usquebaugh, which gives us the word whiskey. In some ways it is a mystical substance so heavily endowed with symbolism that a leading scholar considered alcoholism as “the attempt to satisfy religious needs by nonreligious means—alcohol.”
Blood, a fundamental ingredient of religion, can be symbolized by alcohol. The Bible, for example, calls wine the blood of the grape. Religious sacrifice is more than a sacred tribute; its essence is the communion between God and worshipers that results from carving the flesh and spilling the blood of the victim. Originally the meat and blood were devoured (they still are by Christians, although the practice has been spiritually sanitized), but over time the blood alone was invested with supernatural power. When the Jewish temple was destroyed and the Jewish people dispersed, animal sacrifice was displaced by wine offerings. Even in secular life some qualities of blood have been attached to alcohol, qualities such as life (the bleeding that accompanies birth, the distillation to produce aqua vitae), death (exsanguination from ruptured esophageal veins secondary to alcoholic liver cirrhosis), and impurity (menstrual blood, alcohol as an agent that defiles). Drinking together and “pledging in the cup” may substitute for the intermingling of blood to seal covenants between groups and individuals.
Alcohol’s intoxicating “power to stimulate the mystical qualities of human nature” provides a core religious feeling of transcendence and can provide a sense of meaning in life for alcoholics. Alcohol’s physiological ability to transform consciousness can, depending on the context, be interpreted as a transcendence of everyday experience, an entry into the cosmic world of spirituality that brings us nearer my God to Thee. Alcohol, however, comes to dominate the lives of alcoholics and slowly replaces a higher spiritual power with itself, an unholy comforter. Oates describes this as being “trapped in the idolatry of alcohol itself . . . [the alcoholic] looks to alcohol for redemption from the burden of his humanity, the power of his guilt, the threat of his insecurity.” Bill Wilson himself said that “Before AA, we were trying to find God in a bottle.”
Alcohol also satisfies what Clinebell identifies as the religious needs for experiences of trust and relatedness. By drinking, the alcoholic feels “a temporary but highly valued experience of unity.” Alcohol provides an illusory closeness to others, at least during the early stages of intoxication, and it fosters a psychological regression. Just as infants expect mother to provide for them, alcoholics feel entitled to God’s protection. Such narcissism is eventually rebuffed by reality with resultant feelings of despair. Unlike God, who doesn’t always come through for everyone, much less alcoholics, alcohol always anesthetizes against despair and takes care of drunkards. It is their lifeline for a while, until it corrodes in the acid world, and they drown.
E. M. Jellinek, one of the greatest students of alcohol, claimed that milk, necessary for an infant’s survival, and water, necessary for the continuance of life, are basic fertility symbols. Alcohol came “to displace water and milk as the ritual symbol par excellence of the stream of life” because of its psychological properties: “When we ingest an alcoholic beverage we have at least the illusion of the expansion of the chest; we feel stronger, more powerful, more self-confident.” In the classical world fertility was associated with wine. Dionysus and his superabundant son, Priapus, were gods of crops and vegetation among other things; the latter was revered by some as the creator of the world, while the former was one of the rare gods who promised a better life after death. Dionysus had his orgies but he also was the Lord of Souls, his likeness painted on numerous sarcophagi leading drunken revelers to a happy hereafter. The notion that dead drunks can achieve a higher condition in the afterlife has, for Jellinek, some significance in understanding the psychology of addiction. “Drunkenness can be a kind of shortcut to the higher life, the achievement of a higher state without an emotional and intellectual effort.” In truth, chronic drunkenness leads but to death; the rest is wishful elaboration. Alcoholism is religion gone awry, a metabolic error of the religious impulse.
Alcohol as master is an embalmer, each sip sapping the life force. But alcohol as servant cheers both God and man. There is room enough in the world for both Christ and claret. It’s merely a matter of proportion.
This essay is excerpted from PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion & the Holy Book, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon and Pitchstone.
Armando Favazza, MD, is a retired professor of psychiatry at the University of Missouri–Columbia Medical School and internationally renowned for his work on culture and psychiatry. His book Bodies Under Siege is considered a classic in the field.