"healing Ourselves and Our Planet": the Emergence and Nature of a Generalized Twelve Step Consciousness 1

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Room, Robin
Copyright Year	1992
Abstract	In the course of the 1980s, many of those who participated in Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups came to think of themselves as members of a more general "12-step movement" or "recovery movement" transcending AA or the other particular groups which they attended. Included in th e infrastructure of this movement, centred particularly in the western part of the U.S., are 12-step club and meeting houses, specialty stores, books and literature, and monthly newspapers. Primarily drawing on the letters column of one of these newspapers, Recovering, some features of the emerging 12-step consciousness are described. Members frequently think of themselves as multiply addicted. Thus, although AA retains a special status as the heartland of the movement, many members shift their primary affiliation from one 12step organization to another as they perceive their major life-problems changing. The fragmentation inherent in the separation of 12-step organizations by problems is for some a source of strain, and there are reports of unofficial "All Anonymous" meetings. There are strains, too, between the originaly 12step ideology of service, with its practices of 12-stepping and sponsorship, and the ideology of codependency, which fosters skepticism about overcommitment to relationships and to others. On the other hand, a developing political consciousness based on 12-step thinking draws particularly on codependence ideology. At least in Recovering, based in the San Francisco Bay Area and apparently in the generation of the 1960s and 1970s, the tone of the political discussion is ecology-minded, feminist, pacifist, oriented to communit y building, and against the excesses of marketing-driven consumerism. There are discussions of stages in the development of 12-step consciousness, moving from inward and personal to outward and social concerns, with an evangelical and even millenarian streak in some discussions of how the movement can "focus on the healing of the planet".
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www.robinroom.net/healing.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article