June 17, 1996
The 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous often comes under public scrutiny by competing private services that know the price of everything and the value of nothing. This time they even fooled your staff writer (“Faith Fading as the Basis of AA, Some Leaders Say,” May 20).
To begin with, there are no “leaders” in AA. Even the AA literature states emphatically, “Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.” Second, the late Rev. Sam Shoemaker did not invent AA. He did not start it and he is not its patron saint, despite the desperate campaigning over the years, mostly by Episcopal lay persons and clergy.
Sam Shoemaker was a saintly man, an inspired preacher, author, homilist and dedicated Christian.
But these “leaders” and “disciples of the Episcopal priest from Pittsburgh on whose principles the 12 steps are based” err in confusing Rev. Shoemaker’s “principles” with the “Oxford Movement” of Frank Buchman, a Lutheran minister in the 1920s and 1930s.
Finally, as a professional drug and alcohol counselor since 1980, I can honestly state that after many millennia of mankind’s suffering from the chaos and tragedy of alcoholism, the 12-step program of AA is the only treatment that has come even close to solving the mystery. That’s why, when you go to a modern-day detox and rehabilitation center and pay up to $20,000 or more for the privilege, they will give you daily doses of the AA 12-step program.
JACK O’NEIL
Sewickley