Does Shame and Blame Work with Addiction?

In yesterday's post, I reviewed the book Unbroken Brain and listed the questions that it raised for me.  Today I'm going to explore the first question: If addiction is a disease, and not a moral failing, why does 12-step culture use so much shame and blame as a technique for getting people to stop using?

Back when Bill W. handed Dr. Bob his last drink on June 10, 1934 thereby founding Alcoholics Anonymous, there was no known cure for alcoholism.  It was considered hopeless.  Drunks died in prison, in hospitals, in drunk tanks or at best "sanitariums," or dove off bridges and buildings.  By the time they died, their families might have used plenty of shame and blame to get them to stop.  And it hadn't worked.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, desperate alcoholics themselves, were also respectively potentially a successful high level salesman and a prominent surgeon.  They were white men who had high expectations of themselves.  They found, through research, intuition and desperation, that they only thing that allowed them to not take a drink was a spiritual solution.  As the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous puts it, "What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." 

It would be wrong to imagine that shame or blame could ever help an addict.  Shame and blame are the addict's go to feelings.  No other person could ever inculcate more shame or blame for an addict or alcoholic than they do for themselves.  What 12 step programs (such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeater's Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Debtor's Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Gambler's Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and many many more) do is require rigorous honesty.

The single most important part of spiritual fitness is honesty.  When people can tell the truth about themselves, and get right-sized, the compulsion to use and drink is lifted.  That is what Bill W., Dr. Bob and millions of others since them have found.  But radical honesty is not a part of our normal culture, at least in the U.S.  Our culture rationalizes, tells white lies, justifies.  And we reward those behaviors.

So sometimes, when we come face to face with a culture like 12-step that requires rigorous honesty, it looks like it is shaming and blaming.  It is not.  It is owning up to the real devastation that we create when we are selfish, self-seeking, dishonest and fearful and we act out of those impulses.