Alcoholics Anonymous and the Disease Concept of Alcoholism

Abstract

Summary Although the idea of "illness" helped many early and later members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A. A.) to understand their alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous neither originated nor promulgated the disease concept of alcoholism. The main contribution of A.A. in this area was the broadening of the extant concept to one of "threefold" malady, with an emphasis on "the spiritual." Examining the political and medical contexts of the time as well as A. A. literature shed light on the culture's changing understanding of alcoholism in the second half of the twentieth century.