The AA Recovery Paradoxes

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The recovery story ‘The Professor and the paradox’ highlights several principles that are spiritual in nature. These are;

  • from weakness (adversity) comes strength
  • we forgive to be forgiven
  • we give it away to keep it
  • we suffer to get well
  • we surrender to win
  • we die to live
  • from darkness comes light
  • from dependence we found independence.

See; The Professor and the paradox

2 thoughts on “The AA Recovery Paradoxes”

  1. Hello Julius,
    If someone says to you “I’m a compulsive liar,” do you believe them or not? That statement in itself is a paradox, because it is self contradictory, which is precisely what a paradox is.

    At the most basic level, a paradox is a statement that is self contradictory because it often contains two statements that are both true, but in general, cannot both be true at the same time. In the aforementioned example, can someone be both a compulsive liar yet telling the truth at the same time?

    In AA recovery most of the program includes paradox’s. For example in the first step is a statement of powerlessness that we must accept and the paradox is that from ‘weakness (adversity) comes strength’. Once we have admitted powerlessness we seem to have strength to resist drinking.

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