In the year of the harmonic convergence, the sun set on my young adult life and I grabbed on to Alcoholics Anonymous in fear of everlasting drunkenness. Over the course of the next seven years I went through three sponsors. Year fourteen, the homeless year, I accessed online support at the public library. Sixteen years in, the last sponsor died and was not replaced. Year twenty was the last I saw of the rooms.
In the beginning when the mind fog cleared and I began trudging the road to happy destiny, it became obvious to me that some folks got to cruise instead of trudge. Later I realized how that was possible: rule bending by select interpretation of the texts based on knowledge of AA's hidden history. Still I did not give up the idea that if I would continue working the steps to the best of my ability, the promises found on page 89 in the book would come true for me. Or at least half of them. In the end days I searched diligently to find one or two once or twice.
Recently reminded of meditation by Pope 266, I was inspired to revisit the website of Agent Orange, an investigative critic of Alcoholics Anonymous. New information specifically of interest was that on the Pacific Group's Clancy Imislund. Clancy is an AA superhero; skid row mission founder, media darling, and pigeon of the late Chuck Chamberlain.
Chuck's and Clancy's tapes were required listening during my first seven years in AA. I was trained to worship them and emblazon their words in my memory banks.
One day while listening to a Chuck tape that had always grated on my nerves, I had the sudden thought that Richard Chamberlain was his son - the young child he mocked with one of his smart remarks in the annoying tape. At the time (the pre-google era) I couldn't prove my intuited theory and forgot the offending remark by not listening to that particular Chuck C. tape ever again. Those guys tell the same stories over and over anyway so my sponsor and the group busybodies never detected any deficiency in my chuckisms. The experience was one of the first indications that the gods of AA weren't as advertised .
About a year ago I spotted Richard Chamberlain's autobiography at the public library and stayed up the night to finish it. He is indeed the son of Chuck C. There was satisfaction in reading that Richard turned out to be a gentleman of integrity and purpose. Chuck never had a clue what those words meant outside of the AA definitions. That is why I was willing to leave poor old Chuck undisturbed in file storage - until today.
After catching up with Clancy antics at the Orange Papers, I got the sudden urge to google Chuck. Looks like the anonymous alcoholic made a name for himself with the beltway bandits.
On September 27, 1969, Chuck C. testified "anonymously" before the Senate Drug and Alcohol Abuse Subcommittee. He was introduced and led by fellow AA member Senator Harold Hughes. Indications are that they did not acknowledge their brotherhood for the record. I do not know if any of the other senators in attendance (Dominick, Saxbe, Cranston and Murphy) had any knowledge of the program.
Skipping past Chuck's AA-qualifying self-introduction, his purpose in testifying begins to unfold:
Now, we in Alcoholics Anonymous think that alcoholism is a disease. You have heard it spoken of this morning several times as such. I think informed medical opinion throughout the country recognizes it as a disease. It is defined as a disease of twofold nature, an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind. However, most of us, or many of us, think that there is a third factor. We think it's a living problem. We do not deny the allergy of the body or the obsession of the mind.
At this point, Chuck reverts back to his AA story in support of his theory that there is a "third factor" in the "disease" of alcoholism called a "living problem". Then he gets back on track:
Now, we feel that the medical approach and psychological approach, and the religious approach are all good. We feel that all approaches to this disease should be brought to bear upon it, but most of us are convinced that if we're going to get rid of the bottle we have to replace it with something better, with a state of being that makes drinking unnecessary.
Again, he goes off to Chuck land before getting on with the big set up:
We think that before long it might be the legal opinion that they can't throw us in jail any more just for being a drunk, that we have to be taken care of as sick people. And it looks as though there will have to be detoxification enters and halfway houses throughout the country.
And it's going to take a lot of money. It's going to take a lot of know-how. We are very pleased about the fact that there is a separate committee now that is very much interested in this problem and that it is manned by knowledgeable people. We think that perhaps through the medium of these meetings throughout the country more interest will be brought to bear on the Senate as a whole and that as a result you will get appropriations which will make it possible for you to do some things -- such as setting up these detoxification centers and halfway houses. (Emphasis added.)
Chuck then asks his own question, "In this event what would be the position of Alcoholics Anonymous?" To which he answered himself:
Traditionally we neither endorse or oppose any causes. We cooperate but we do not affiliate. We are on tap in most of these things, but never on top. So I think our position would be this: That when the detoxification has been accomplished, that we would, as individual members of Alcoholic Anonymous, then be available to share our experience, strength and hope with those who are coming through the halfway houses. And it is from this angle that I think that it would be of the greatest benefit to your program. We cannot take an active part as a society, but we can take an active part as individuals.
"On tap . . . but never on top"? How obsequious. Nevertheless, Chuck has cut "AA" a piece of the pie and offers his fellow AAs in sacrifice to the great work:
[W]e are most happy that you, all of you, are headed in the direction in which you're headed. And we want to help as much as it is humanly possible for us to help, both in seeing to it that you get an appropriation - maybe by doing a little work on the rest of the Senate by letters, and so forth - and also by being on tap when you need to call on us later on.
Senator H interrupts to clarify AA's position in the scheme of things. Furthermore and in conclusion and while still on tap, Chuck pours a sparkling future for the industry:
They are going to be sent to these detoxification centers. But they're going to be sent there by the court or by the police instead of being sent to jail. They will have to go through that. But to a large extent they will have to go to the halfway houses once they are set up.
Only one other senator cross-examined Chuck:
Senator Dominick. That program has worked; that's what I want to know?
Mr. Chuck C. Yes.
Senator Dominick. Where they say you go there or you go to jail?
Mr. Chuck C. Very definitely. I happen to be very familiar with Judge Harrison's work up in Des Moines. But I believe Judge Taft in Santa Monica was one of the first to use this approach many, many years ago.
And I've talked at meetings where there were over a hundred men and women who had been sober a year or more who had initially been sentenced to the program by Judge Taft and it worked.
Senator Dominick. Let's use another word. Let's say recommended.
Mr. Chuck C. Recommended. Okay. (audience laughter).
During the testimony, there were no facts or statistics requested or provided to show the effectiveness or success rate of the alcoholics anonymous program. The numbers that Chuck offered concerned the potential market of a recovery industry:
Now, we have been in existence as Alcoholic Anonymous for 34 years. We have a membership of perhaps some 500,000 but we see that's just a slight percentage, it may be 2 percent, of the problem drinkers. And that's all we've been able to accomplish in 34 years. But we're not selling it short. We love it, but much more has to be done.
And so it appears that Chuck C and Senator H established the foundation of the recovery industry by casting the magic words "common knowledge" upon the "disease" of alcoholism. A disease that demands government attention and intervention. A disease which led to an industry that 41 years later saturates politics with influence. An industry whose founding movement continues to enjoy media protection, as suggested by this 2000 headline from the UK Guardian:
Drink advice service? Oh come on. Given the story content, the damn thing should have blasted: Thirteenth Step Exposed! I won't count how many times it was suggested - after slogans and steps proved ineffective for myself and others - that lecherous behavior be forgiven because the book says that "whenever I'm disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with me".
My arguments against this particular AA principle were dismissed by the grand ones yet they themselves would come up with a commandment or slogan to justify their own questionable advances and score-settling activities. Nevertheless and again, I kept working the steps. I imagined that my own sense of integrity and goodwill, in the hands of the higher power, would lead to a life that was "happy, joyous and free". It took me twenty years to figure out that I would not benefit from the real meaning behind the slogan "it works if you work it".
Chuck Chamberlain and Senator Hughes were following in the footsteps of AA's founder, Bill Wilson. All three, and their AA friends, successors and agents, were/are fast-talking schemers convinced that some are more equal than others. That, for the most part, is the secret knowledge of Alcoholics Anonymous.
