ABSTRACT
The alcoholic self who comes to Al-Anon and Alateen finds an existing society of recovering alcoholic selves. In G. H. Mead’s terms, Alcoholics Anonymous is an emergent society of pre-existing alcoholic selves organized around the principles of recovery contained in the texts of Al-Anon, and Alateen The illness, alcoholism, and the sick person—the alcoholic—are thereby located within an interpretive circle that for Al-Anon and Alateen. As E. M. Jellinek noted, the conception of alcoholism as an allergy had been set forth 1896. Not only is alcoholism a family illness, but it is an illness, Al-Anon and Alateen argues, that cuts to the core of the self of every individual who is involved with the alcoholic, whether wife, child, close friend, father, mother, or employer. Thus Al-Anon and Alateen’s alcoholism is transformed into an emotional illness, into an illness of self, emotionality, and being in the world.
