Dick B. discusses Recovery's Higher Power Puzzle

What is this "higher power" that so many are talking about these days.? Not just in Alcoholics Anonymous, not just in treatment programs, and just in the endless books of those who write about alcoholism (and occasionally about the solution for alcoholism).

The fact is that this single phrase "higher power"--probably germinated in A.A. four years after its founding--produced a recovery puzzle, but not a recovery solution. This is not to say the phrase is never used in recovery language. Rather that it has been used to the point of obscuring the solution--which is reliance on God.

Early Akron AAs didn't talk about a higher power. If they were really serious, they trusted God--"the God of the Scriptures," as he was called by A.A. cofounder Bill W.; and "Heavenly Father," as he was frequently called by A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob.

But the phrase "higher power" can be poison in the hands of some who are told a "higher power" can be a chair, a light bulb, Santa Claus, or "Somebody." And such is the advice thousands of AAs, and other alcoholics and drug addicts, are given very frequently in their meetings, by their speakers, and through the literature now being pumped their way.

This show will be the first of several to explore the "higher power puzzle." The series comes because so many have asked me to research and write upon what I often call the "nonsense" gods of recovery, in order to identify what they are and where they came from.