Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity by Christensen Paul A.;

Author:Christensen, Paul A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Performing Sobriety

Living sober and in recovery for AA and Danshūkai members means forging and performing a new identity in adulthood by reinterpreting past experiences and memories of individual alcohol use, particularly dramatic or shocking moments of drunkenness. Fear of disclosing one’s alcoholism to those outside meetings can also motivate a performance of identity during groups meetings, as a demonstration of competence with organizational conceptualizations of alcoholism and addiction. Returning to Carole Cain’s work, she notes that “the self-understandings of the individuals joining AA must come to reflect and incorporate the knowledge organized by the AA system of beliefs; cultural knowledge must become self-knowledge” (1991: 211). For the individuals discussed here, internalizing the belief system of either organization is essential to becoming an AA or Danshūkai member. It is part of a process whereby an individual member comes to see “not only his drinking as alcoholic, but his self as an alcoholic. The disease is a part of one’s self” (ibid: 214). Acceptance of organizational ideology signals an internalization of group concepts and an aligning of those ideas with new interpretations of self and identity.

Coming to view oneself as an alcoholic is thus a process of layering AA’s Twelve Steps or Danshūkai’s Oath onto past behavior and transgressions committed while drinking. Demonstrating engagement with this process occurs through meeting speeches which are displays of expertise and familiarity with group history, literature, governing principles, the disease model of alcoholism and addiction, and how all of these now explain and structure individual memories of consumption. As such, it is a system of incorporating the language of AA or Danshūkai into one’s sense of identity, and thereby coming to reinforce that understanding of alcoholism as the only viable interpretation of a successful recovery (Carr 2011). Experienced group members speak about their past through the language of AA and Danshūkai, most frequently seen when invoking admission, belief, and surrender—the major principles of the first three steps, and how they are now governing life principles. Through such acts members demonstrate their investment in sobriety group participation and the depth of their transformation from destructive drinker to sober and recovering alcoholic.

However, such a transformative process also manifests in frustrations that are voiced alongside members’ use of sobriety group language, resulting in a fragile yet consequential performance. For Japanese members, a reinterpretation of past drunkenness now viewed in hindsight through the lens of sobriety group ideology becomes possible by sharing personal stories during meetings—personal stories that are now colored as alcoholic, differentiating them from the actions and decisions a non-alcoholic would have taken and creating a shared pool of experience upon which others in the meeting can draw. This process allows members to connect personal experience to a collective “social memory” of alcoholism, yet offers little recourse to disseminate such discourse beyond the confines of the meeting (Antze and Lambek 1996: xx). Finally, it is a process that does nothing to stem the uncertainty and secrecy many Tokyo AA and Danshūkai members feel when the meeting adjourns and they rejoin a city and nation flush with alcohol and largely indulgent of its consumption.

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