ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that once the world of recovery is entered, both in treatment and in Al-Anon and Alateen meetings, the alcoholic finds a new structure of experience that rests on “alcoholic understanding” and a dialectical group process. It focuses on the universal singularity of each alcoholic’s recovery experience. The recovering alcoholic discovers a new interpretive theory of self, meaning, alcohol, and alcoholics. Alcoholism and recovery are group phenomena. In the recovery phases, treatment centres and Alcoholics Anonymous play central parts in restructuring the alcoholic’s self. In both phases the alcoholic develops situational adjustments to the problematic her alcoholism has produced for her. The disease of alcoholism thus becomes a structural phenomenon, attached to the emotional experiences of large categories of persons in contemporary American life. Alcoholism researchers, treatment centres for alcoholism, and Al-Anon and Alateen study and teach problem drinkers how to become recovering alcoholics.
