When people with addictions engage directly with Spirit, they are able to move into a deeper, more creative state of consciousness that leads to recovery.

Did you know that Carl Jung helped to set the foundation for the 12 Step programs of recovery?

A few years ago I came across the letters between Bill Wilson and Carl Jung, which were written in 1961, six months before Carl Jung died. Bill Wilson was a cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)—the group that developed the original 12 Steps—and Carl Jung was the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology and is responsible for concepts such as synchronicity, archetypes and the collective unconscious.

In these letters, Wilson credits Jung for making major contributions to the spiritual foundation of AA, most notably suggesting the hopeless alcoholic is powerless and that a spiritual solution is most likely the only hope for recovery from alcoholism.

During his long career, Jung’s clients included Rowland Hazard, an American businessman and a member of one of the most prominent Rhode Island textile families. Hazard was a graduate of Yale, he served in the Rhode Island state senate from 1914–1916, and he was a hopeless alcoholic. Hazard later helped Ebby Thacher, another hopeless alcoholic, and Thacher eventually shared his experience and the connection to Jung’s philosophies with Wilson.

Here is a quote from Bill Wilson’s initial letter to Carl Jung:

“My recollection of [Roland’s] account of [your] conversation is this: First of all, you frankly told him of his hopelessness, so far as any further medical or psychiatric treatment might be concerned. This candid and humble statement of yours was beyond doubt the first foundation stone upon which our society [AA] has since been built. Coming from you, one he so trusted and admired, the impact upon him was immense. When he then asked you if there was any hope, you told him that there might be, provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience—in short, a genuine conversion. You pointed out how such an experience, if brought about, might re-motivate him when nothing else could. …”

Now a quote from Carl Jung’s response to Bill Wilson:

“Roland’s craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval [meaning biblical] language: the union with God. … The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is, that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. …

“You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum."

What does this mean? The highest form of spiritual experience counters the most depraving poison for those with addiction: alcohol.

I want to dig deeper into Jung’s conclusion through the book The Paradox of Addiction: The Call for the Transcendent, by Dr. Ashok Bedi, a Jungian psychoanalyst who is affiliated with the Kripa Foundation in Mumbai, India, which is dedicated to addiction recovery and helping people with HIV and AIDS. He wrote this book with Rev. Joseph Pereira, the founder of Kripa, and they both are strong proponents of 12 Step programs. 

As they point out in the book: Jung’s insights promote a “psychology of surrender, which in Jung’s terms means establishing a bridge from the ego to the self or the soul.” The paradox itself is mirrored in the words of the Apostle Paul, says Pereira: “Virtue is made strong by weakness…when you are weak you are strong…because My Grace is enough for you.”

They propose that, according to Jung, “A crisis or trauma can provide the sand grit around which the oyster of our personality may incubate the pearl of individuation and emergence. The breakdown of the ego is an opportunity for the breakthrough of the soul.” [Jung defines individuation as the process of psychological differentiation with the goal of developing our individual personality in the quest for wholeness and finding our true Self.]

And when people suffering with addictions learn to engage with Spirit directly, the addictions subside. They are able to gain a “spiritual experience”—a deeper, higher or more creative state of consciousness. This is one of the key principles behind 12 Step Programs, they conclude: “restoring a connection with the Higher Power. 

My personal experience in recovery, which began in 2007, has left me in complete agreement. It often feels as if I’m in an elegant dance to balance inner work—such as the prayer and meditation of Step 11 (See below)—with my outer actions in the world to truly live in integrity. For me, the spiritual “conversion,” as Bill Wilson called it, had to evolve from an event to an ongoing process—and it definitely takes continuous motion to keep evolving in consciousness.

I had to change so many things in my world: the “people, places and things” expression so often used in recovery. I had to give up the idea of ever going back to my corporate career because it revolved around drinking and entertaining. I had to embrace gratitude for what I do have and stop focusing on what I perceived I had lost (which was a lot). I need to embrace lifelong learning, which includes Jung’s analytical psychology, and my list grows as I continue to grow.

If you are ready to address an addiction that has become a debilitating distraction in your life, then understanding that 12 Step programs are based on solid, proven psychological concepts that trace back to the work of one of the most influential figures in psychology—Carl Jung—may be just the nudge you need to move in a new direction and join a community dedicated to helping you recover from the “disease of more.”

The 12 Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [insert your addiction]— that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God [insert your name of choice] as we understood Him [insert your gender of choice].

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Lisa Cedrone currently serves as the editor of Transformation Coaching Magazine and was the executive director of the C. G. Jung Society of Sarasota from 2016 until 2022. She is a mentor and teacher with a passion for sharing the experience, strength and hope from her own life-changing near-death experience and recovery journey. Lisa also spent 15 years as an editor and editor-in-chief for two of the largest business-to-business publishers in the United States. Her universal worldview changed following a profound near-death experience in 2002, during which she was given the opportunity to come back to our world and finish her learning journey in this life.