UC Santa Barbara

This dissertation seeks to understand how, from a naturalistic, interdisciplinary perspective, the spiritual aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous helps some people get and remain sober. First I sought to understand the historical origins of spirituality in AA as a necessary component of the program, investigating the ways in which the founding generation of AA members wrestled with their religious antecedents and American pluralism to arrive at a “spiritual, rather than religious” understanding of their program’s core mechanism of change. Then, through ethnographic participant observation and extended interviews with 34 current and former members of AA, I sought to understand how contemporary members of the program come to cultivate beliefs, practices, and experiences relative to God or a higher power “as we understood Him” and how they explain from an emic perspective why these help them stay sober and lead happier and more fulfilling lives. My research reveals that spirituality in AA, while expressed through many different concepts of God and higher power(s) and through practices aimed toward “conscious contact” with them, generally takes two forms: a sacralized relationship with human others, and a relationship with an extraordinary Other. While most AAs take part in both types of spirituality, atheistic and agnostic members often don’t participate in the second type, but they are still able to remain sober. I argue that both types of spirituality help the alcoholic to change their self-construal from more independent to more interdependent with their AA fellows, humanity as a whole, and–for some–an extraordinary God or higher power of their own understanding. This shift in self-construal, which AAs call a “collapse of ego at depth,” helps alcoholics to overcome the isolation and intense negative thinking that many describe as contributing significantly to their alcoholism.