A full and thankful heart: writings about gratitude by Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder, Bill Wilson

Abstract

Background: A robust literature on gratitude has accumulated in recent years as a result of the positive psychology movement. Gratitude is a prominent theme in the 12 step program Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and yet there is little empirical research on the role of gratitude in addiction recovery, and less still on the role of gratitude in AA.

Method: Thematic analysis and grounded theory methodology were employed to produce a framework of AA co-founder Wilson’s conceptualization of gratitude in AA. In the AA text, As Bill Sees It, 17 pages are indexed to the topic “gratitude.” The content of these pages served as data for the current study.

Results: The resulting conceptual framework depicts three themes which describe a circular process: (1) benefactors exist in the form of God and other people, the benefactors (2) provide “gifts,” most notably the AA program and recovery from alcoholism, and (3) these gifts are reciprocated.

Conclusions: The findings closely map to psychological and philosophical depictions of gratitude as something that involves the aid of a benefactor in the provision of gifts that are unearned and cannot be repaid but which motivate reciprocation. The conceptual framework reveals constructs related to gratitude such as humility, arrogance, relationship to God, and interpersonal social support. These constructs can be examined as phenomena that co-occur with gratitude or as mechanisms of the effect of gratitude on recovery in future research.

Keywords:

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• qualitative methods
• gratitude
• addiction recovery

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my colleagues who provided valuable feedback on drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The “AA promises” are 12 statements which appear in AA’s central text, Alcoholics Anonymous, on pages 83 and 84, following the description of the 9^th step, “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others” (AA World Services, 2001). These statements enumerate a set of positive outcomes, e.g., “we are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness” (p. 83) that occur as the result of the AA member working the 9^th step.

2 In AA, a sponsor is an AA member who “has made some progress in the recovery program [and] shares that experience on a continuous, individual basis with another alcoholic who is attempting to attain or maintain sobriety through AA” (AA World Services, 1983, p. 7): the sponsored person is referred to as the sponsee.

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Notes on contributors

Amy R. Krentzman

Amy R. Krentzman, MSW, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work. Dr. Krentzman’s research focuses on factors that promote the initiation and maintenance of recovery from alcohol and other substance use disorders, particularly the mechanisms of therapeutic change that are precipitated by professional treatment, recovery community organizations, and 12-step programs. Dr. Krentzman studies spirituality, religiousness, forgiveness, gratitude, and practices such as prayer and meditation as they function in the context of addiction recovery.