The Bucket of Crabs, or Why AA and Alanon Can Be Bad For Your Health
October 1st, 2009 |
A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Mary Ellen Barnes, Ph.D. & Ed Wilson, Ph.D., MAC
Click here to contact Mary Ellen and/or see her Profile
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The “Bucket of Crabs” is one of our favorite analogies. Pulling crabs out of traps on Kodiak Island, we’d just toss them into a big bucket – no need to put a lid on the bucket.
Why not?
Because as soon as one crab would start to climb out, the other crabs would drag him, or her, right back down into the bottom of the bucket. There’s no escape to life back in the ocean. And that keeps happening until all of the crabs end up in the steamer.
The point?
Pick your support group with care. Most so-called alcohol support groups are, in fact, merely a bucket of crabs who will keep dragging you back down to their level. Try and escape and you’ll be warned that it’s too dangerous to get a life, or to mingle with “normies,” or grow up. It’s too dangerous to stop building your life around alcohol.
So you stay in the alcohol bucket, drinking or not, or complaining about your spouse, or parents, or children, or……
And what’s the point of all of this?
Obviously the point is to avoid actually making any real change. That’s what groups like AA and Alanon and Alateen do best, they help you maintain the “security of familiar miseries” – as we termed it 25 years ago – instead of fixing your life.
But why would you want to trade the illusory security of the crab bucket for an actual life out in the real world?
Remember, despite all of the con men and hucksters, alcohol abuse is a choice and you are free – not powerless – to make a different choice at any time. If you’re the spouse, parent, or child of an alcohol abuser, you are also free to make choices, including the choice to get a life of your own. Not a life focused around another’s alcohol abuse.
You can always choose to be recovered, not in crippling, life-denying, “recovery.” You can choose to be an ex-drinker just as many of us are ex-smokers. You can also choose to be someone who used to waste you life on a drinker but got a grip, got over him or her, and got a life of your own.
Please, alcohol abuse is a choice, not a disease, and you can escape the AA/Alanon Bucket of Crabs. Don’t let the doomed continue to drag you back to share their misery and their fate.
©Copyright 2009 Mary Ellen Barnes, Ph.D. & Ed Wilson, Ph.D., MAC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Mary Ellen and/or see her Profile
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7 comments so far
Misery loves company, and that’s what keeps these groups thriving year after year! Thanks for taking such a powerful stand against them, even though it is not the most popular stance to take, and getting the truth out about the un-necessary act of joing these types of programs to get help and turn your life around. There are other ways to do it- AA is not your only hope!
Here in Amsterdam (Holland) AA and other support groups for alcohol and drugs abusers are meant to be a temporary support group. The problem is that people who start attending these “get together events” tend to make these events a very important part of their live´s, another unhealthy habit I would say. A habit that excludes other social happenings because they seem to be less satisfying than mentioned support groups. Why would that be?
This is as perfect as the example could get… peer-group is very important and especially so for people riddled with problems and those that are trying to cure themselves…
I for one think that it would be much healthier to be addicted to being a part of this social group than to continue with the negative behavior that brought them here in the first place. I think that for many alcoholics AA and meetings like these are the first places where they find support and acceptance and find others who know what they are going through. Why does that have to be a bad thing when they have been shunned by others for exhibiting poor choices?
I agree with Faye. Yes, many people are able to stop abusing drugs and/or alcohol on their own. Then there are the people who go to a 12-step meeting then go have a drink! It takes all kinds. The 12-step program works well for some people and not for others. Why bash a program that works for some? The 12-step program is really not about complaining. It is about processing and being supported as one learns new coping skills. Remember the ethic “First do no harm.”
According to the American Medical Association Addiction is a medical illness. Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol. AA or how some have put it in the past, as the Midnight Church saves lives and have helped people recover from the disease of addiction.
People attend Church meetings every Sunday or Temple on Saturday! It that bad??? I am trying to understand why going to the “midnight church is bad! It has help billions of people over the years! Why is that a bad thing? It is peers helping peers. It is not “a bucket of crabs” It is about Spiritual Growth. Taken right out of Emanuel Swedenborg’s writings and the writings of William James.
AA teaches people how to live again. Teaches them how to have fun sober. People who belong to AA are neither a “glum Lot’ not are they a “Bunch of Crabs”
My daughter has 3 children and is currently going through a divorce. She consistently attends 3 Alanon meetings a week, which also includes a ’social time’ after each meeting, which causes her to get home at about 1am every time she attends a meeting. The amount of time she is away from her children is starting to effect them, especially during this most difficult time of adjustment and transition. She is also a full-time student, and the children spend 1 night / week with their father. They are ages 6, 3, and 20 months. Any advice for a deeply comcerned grandmother?