All that glitters is gold. Glass glitters, therefore, glass is gold.

All addictions are diseases. Measles is a disease, therefore, measles are addictions.

Alcoholism is a bad behavior. Beating one's wife is a bad behavior. Have you quit beating your wife yet? That's what's known as a double bind, there's no way one can "win" that. If you say "No" (presumably because you never beat your wife in the first place so you can't very easily stop doing what you didn't start?) you look bad and if you say "Yes" then it looks like you were "bad" in the past and how could you?!

I think the problem is sometimes we're talking about apples and oranges and then decide fruit salad is the "wrong" answer. Why does anything have to be only one way or another for any or all people at any or all times?

I think AA works to get people working with other people, to realize one can't do it "alone." That's true because people were "made" to function a certain way, in relationship with other people. There's no such thing as a "self-made" person. You can't cook dinner for the children and work late to further your career at the same time, that takes 2 people. Even when we go belly up and realize we need to change our behavior, it's not because it doesn't work in the "vacuum" of our own lives only; zombiette needed her doctor to tell her she was going to die if she didn't change before she decided to change and then did. I think AA's "I'm helpless" is just another way of showing and agreeing with, of "listening" to "you're gonna die if you don't change" with it coming from another person. Until some people "agree" with AA's "I'm helpless" and stand up and say before other people, "Hey, I'm Perna and I'm a drunk" it's equivalent to zombiette's laughing in the doctor's face. Zombiette didn't stay on the same road she was on. She instead, agreed with the doctor who was selling her the perpendicular route. Some people are "defiant" and want to prove the doctors wrong and some people are more "compliant" and want to please the doctor or use other people's help. Neither approach is "wrong" or better/worse than the other.