The 12 Year Itch and the Dark Night of the Soul

Last Monday I gave a friend his 1 Year medallion.  He had been 2 months short of 10 years when he drank for 2 weeks.  In the months leading up to his relapse he did everything he could think of: he attended meetings daily, he spoke with his sponsor and warned of his increasingly dangerous condition, he prayed more and more desperately -- yet he relapsed.

As he described his feelings and behavior in those last few months before his relapse I was intrigued by the fact that what he was saying sounded exactly like classic descriptions of The Dark Night of the Soul, that stage in the spiritual path when one feels alone, abandoned, hopeless, with nothing working as it once did.

This is very close to the Darkness Visible that William Styron describes in his memoir of deep depression and that is how it is usually diagnosed and treated today.  I am not denying that depression is real, has a chemical basis, and that drugs can help.  I've been there myself.  But for someone on a spiritual path such as the 12 Steps, there is often more at play.  The Dark Night is a known stage of the spiritual path that has been described repeatedly across centuries and across cultures.

Yet we in the Fellowship seldom discuss it.  I have come to call it the 12 Year Itch, since I've repeatedly seen it hit somewhere around 10 - 12 years of sobriety.  The fact that we don't discuss it is not so surprising when we look at our 2 'canonical' texts: The Big Book, written when Bill, the main author and the most senior member of the Fellowship, had only 4 - 5 years, and the 12 + 12, written exclusively by Bill when he was in the depths of what would be a 12 year depression.  In neither case was there anyone directly involved in the writing who had been through this very difficult part of the path.  Bill's spiritual advisor, Ed Dowling, was certainly aware of the issue but as I remember their correspondence he didn't push it very hard.  The result is that when someone with double-digit sobriety talks about a spiritual crisis the answer in all the meetings I've attended is along the lines of 'keep coming', 'pray', 'turn it over', and the ever helpful 'just don't drink.'

Here is where I hit an interesting quandary.  Our basis in the Big Book and, to a slightly lesser degree the 12 + 12, is the foundation of our unity.  Yet there is a wealth of wisdom literature from many traditions over thousands of years that address issues in spirituality that our literature touches just as little as that wisdom literature touches alcoholism.  How do we bring the benefits of these wisdom traditions into our discussions in a way that will not threaten our unity?  As far as I can tell these are not really 'outside issues' in the sense of the 10th Tradition - in fact they are central to our spirituality  -  but the various ways they are addressed in different religions and traditions are potentially divisive nonetheless.  As so often happens, I'm confused.