Alice joins AA

It happened to Alice, too. Sort of.

I love Alcoholics Anonymous comic books. 

Not only are they entertaining, in a colorful, drama packed way, but they offer the discerning reader plenty of opportunity for righteous indignation. For a long time I was so outraged by the cartoons AA aims at adolescents that I neglected to notice the obvious in the ones intended for adult men and women. 

There's a lot there to get worked up about, let me tell you.

It's obvious that AA is aiming at a very different demographic with this comic book intended for women. 

Unlike the relatively successful, stable, married Joe, poor Alice is a single mother with legal and financial problems, raising her children all alone. Her husband, (or ex-husband, I don't believe the cartoon ever specifies which), appears to be a deadbeat dad who never pays the bills on time and wants to take her children away. The only people in the world who seem to give a damn about Alice are her mother and her attorney.

Alice isn't greatly tempted to drink by the promise of fun. 

It's the pressures of her life that exacerbate her alcoholism. Well, nothing new there. Women and men Do tend to have different reasons for drinking to excess. Joe drank for fun, Alice drinks to escape. Alice is portrayed as a cliché, a "typical female alcoholic". She's maternal, hardworking, isolated, impoverished, and co-dependent.

When Alice goes to her first meeting, she's greeted at the door by women. 

Only women are pictured talking to her. She's surrounded by women, exclusively, in fact. A few 

men can be seen lurking in the background, but the women form a protective phalanx around her. Apparently the GSO thinks the subliminal promise of a romantic interlude is not the angle to take when attempting to attract prospective female members.

There is no fairy tale ending for Alice. 

There is no reconciliation with her husband, who continues his campaign of threats even after she stops drinking. The comic book offers no subliminal hint of sexual adventure in her future. Yeah, she makes a lot of new girlfriends, but are we being told that the best AA has to offer Alice is the chance to be a better mother to her children?

What I object to most is the way the AA women in the pamphlet are portrayed as so helpful and protective. 

Sorry, girls, but AA is simply not like that. Perhaps the male lurkers in the background and the circular barrier of women portrayed in the pictures is the GSO's way of warning the female newcomer to be on guard. Why don't they just come out with it? I'd rather they showed AA like it really is.

Might I suggest an alternative scenario for a new AA comic strip, perhaps it could be titled,  "Jane: 13 Stepped at the Door".

Plot: 

Jane, an underage drinker, or a comfortable housewife, a college student, or even a beat up old tramp, finds that her drinking has spiraled out of control and decides to try AA. She goes  by herself.  At her very first AA meeting she's swarmed at the door by every male under sixty and maybe even a couple of old geezers. 

With few exceptions, the other women are jealous and decide to snub her. Some of the more compassionate ones have been stung by newcomers a few times already and are unwilling to risk it happening again. The one or two women who do attempt to befriend her are looking for some advantage in doing so, probably financial. Jane does, after all, have a job.

None of the women offer her their phone number, but most of the men do. Jane does find a sponsor, a controlling woman with ulterior motives who tells her that she needs to "find her part" in every bad relationship she ever went through. Jane, a natural caregiver and a formerly abused woman with extremely low self-esteem becomes suicidally depressed halfway through the steps. 

Her physical isolation is perceived as vulnerability by all of the fast talking alcoholic con men in her group. They single her out, having quickly determined that Jane has no one who really cares about her.

In no time at all, Jane either becomes tied to the worst possible AA man for her particular personality type, or else gets passed around a bit before she finally wises up. She then has several options; she either falls into line and becomes an abuser herself, gets fed up and quits AA altogether, or goes home and washes down a couple of bottles of pills with a fifth of generic vodka.

That's Real AA. 

It's not the kind of AA the admen write about, though. If they told it like it is, no woman would ever want to set foot inside the door.

And that's the point of this exercise.

The propaganda disseminated by AA's GSO targets specific demographics with the acumen of a Madison Avenue ad agency.

All in the name of Recovery.

My animation consists of clippings from the pamphlet titled "It Happened to Alice", copyright 2006, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., with the addition of a few comments of my own.
I have borrowed excerpts here under the provision for fair use, (educational use, parody, and satire), included in the US Copyright Act.



Maybe I'll make a gif of the GSO kiddie cartoons one of these days, if I can find the time.

motchka, pre-enlightenment