The God of 12 steps

We are a nation of unnamed soldiers in the war against our own appetites — a nation of chemically dependent and co-dependent, gluttons and gamblers, sex addicts, porn addicts and credit card abusers who look, anonymously, to one 12-step program or another to get out of the mess we're in.

Alcoholics Anonymous was the first 12-step program and is the most famous, but there are at least a dozen others, from Cocaine Anonymous to Vulgarity Anonymous. Anonymity, group support, an inventory of past mistakes, a willingness to make amends — all these are part of the 12 steps. But the core of the program, the landing from which all the steps rise, is the addict's connection to — and his surrender to — God, say many of the people involved in 12-step programs. Humans are powerless and alone in recovering from addiction, they say.

This spiritual component is what makes AA, NA, OA and all the other alphabet of A's work, say the people who champion the 12-step approach. It's also what rankles 12-step detractors, who see the recovery programs as too religious, maybe even a "stealth religion" all their own. Still others argue that the 12 steps aren't religious enough.

Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in the 1930s by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith — known more anonymously as Bill W. and Dr. Bob — who in turn based their ideas on an evangelical movement known as the Oxford Group.

Bill became an alcoholic after serving in World War I and spent Prohibition drinking two or three bottles of bathtub gin a day. Unable to quit, even after being hospitalized, he turned his life around after a visit from an old college friend. The friend credited his own sobriety to God, who "had done for him what he could not do for himself," Bill later wrote in "Alcoholics Anonymous," the AA Bible known among AA faithful simply as the "Big Book."

At that time, Bill himself was not a religious man, and in fact, "the word God still aroused a certain antipathy," as he put it. When Bill balked at the notion that he might need God's help, his friend made the suggestion that changed everything: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"

And so, today, five of the steps in all 12-step programs mention God, but the first reference, with its qualifying addendum, is the most telling: "God, as we understood Him."