Q: What's Step One in Al-Anon?

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." (Step One, Al-Anon)

Let's break this down.

Firstly, to understand why a bystander to the alcoholic is powerless over alcohol, one must understand why the alcoholic is powerless over alcohol.

To do this, one must go through the Big Book as the bystander, to understand the alcoholic from the inside.

In other words, one must do the Step One of AA, but one stage removed.

Once one has understood how the alcoholic is powerless over alcohol and why their life is concomitantly unmanageable (i.e. it is the alcoholism that is in charge of their actions around alcohol, and that wrests the ability to direct the person's life out of the hands of the alcoholic and places it in the hands of the alcoholism), one turns to oneself.

One realises that, if the alcoholic can't restrain themselves from having the first or subsequent drinks, one will not be able to either.

How is one's life therefore unmanageable?

To the extent that the alcoholic has an impact on one's life, to that precise extent is there an element of one's own life that is not under one's control or influence, namely the element that is in the hands of the alcoholic's untreated alcoholism.

Is that it?

No.

The Al-Anon develops dysfunctional patterns in relation to the alcoholic (essentially: (1) a failure to take responsibility for their own life (2) an attempt to take control of the alcoholic's life (3) an attempt to take care of the alcoholic (4) placing responsibility for their own life in the hands of the alcoholic; these are associated with concomitant mental conditions, namely (1) a refusal to accept their share of the blame (2) rage at the alcoholic who refuses to be or cannot be controlled (3) preoccupation with and fretting about the alcoholic and (4) blaming the alcoholic not only for the alcoholic's condition but for their own condition).

Addiction is a persistent return to a destructive pattern.

These patterns are destructive.

The Al-Anon persistently returns to them.

This is therefore an addiction of sorts.

The Al-Anon, without help, is unable to refrain from engaging in these patterns and, once the patterns are activated, they prove surprisingly difficult to halt. They're the equivalent of a jag. The anonism is as in charge of the Al-Anon and therefore their life as the alcoholism is in charge of the alcoholic and therefore their life.

The third layer is this:

Even once the alcoholic is eliminated, the above dysfunctional patterns are generalised as a way of approaching the world, life, and other people.

The above comprehensively covers the problem of the Al-Anon.

Footnote:

It does not help to belabour the analogy by attempting to map physical craving and mental obsession onto the Al-Anon's problem. That strains the analogy too far.

The spiritual malady is also a red herring. It has nothing to do with alcoholism per the Big Book, and it has nothing to with alanonism.

It is a generalised state of separation from God, which occurs universally, with individuals on a scale from more connected to God, at one end, to less or not at all connected to God on the other end.

The reason this is relevant at all is that God is the solution, and the spiritual malady is the impediment to the solution. It's the thing that the Twelve Steps get out of the way in order that God can solve the problem.

It's got nothing to do with Step One.

Alcoholism is two-fold: physical and mental.

Anonism is a cluster of beliefs and associated thinking and behaviour patterns.