What happens when people in recovery start using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to do their step work?

In Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, an essential part of the program is to work the 12 steps. Both AA and NA have nearly identical steps.

This is partly because Narcotics Anonymous is an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, the NA Basic Text starts out by thanking AA for being the foundation of the NA program.

When a person in recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction decides to get serious about their program, they may decide to find a sponsor to help them work the steps. A sponsor is another person in recovery with significant sober time or clean time. To be a sponsor, the person should have their own sponsor who has worked the steps with them.

Some people believe that a sponsor should also function as a friend and life coach, but the programs of AA and NA are clear. The primary function of a sponsor is to guide their sponsees in working the steps.

What exactly is step work? A significant portion of working the 12-steps with a sponsor involves completing written assignments.

How could artificial intelligence possibly derail these established 12-step programs?

Have you played around with ChatGPT? People who have experimented with this revolutionary chatbot are overwhelmed by the power of this cutting edge technology.

All you have to do is ask the AI to write something, and within a few seconds, it writes paragraphs about your topic, better than many human writers. Ask the AI for a list of 20 things to be grateful for, and it will give you a well-thought-out list of gratitude-worthy items.

One major sticking point for people in early recovery was the difficulty in writing down heart-felt, soul-searching words to respond to step-related questions. Some sponsors write lists of questions for each step, and other sponsors prefer to have sponsees work out of a published 12-step workbook.

Imagine that you are a newcomer to the program of AA or NA, and you have a sponsor who is hopeful about your potential for excelling in the program, but you are now confronted with step work, and your mind is blank. The questions often seem impossible, because they are often very general and open-ended.

Imagine staring at a question such as this: “How has my disease of addiction or alcoholism affected me physically? Mentally? Spiritually? Emotionally?” You start to question everything.

Do you have a disease? How would a disease affect your spirit? What is the difference between spiritually and emotionally? Unfortunately, many sponsors will respond to your questioning the questions as you just being difficult.

They tell you to pray and then just write what comes naturally. You then bring your next attempt after praying and writing spontaneously, and again, they shake their head. You somehow got it wrong again.

Will AI rescue people in recovery from dangerous relapses, or will it damage the integrity of the 12-step programs?

COVID nearly destroyed the traditional 12-step programs, such as AA and NA. The reason was that these meetings thrive on in-person interaction. They do not work as well when they are held as online Zoom meetings.

Now, these programs must confront the artificial intelligence revolution. Imagine the person in early recovery, stumped by vague step work questions. How is everyone else coming up with answers that cause a sponsor to nod approvingly?

Why not just ask the chatbot to answer the questions? Has anyone thought to do this yet? I once knew someone who had over 35 years of clean time in NA and he sponsored many young men over the years.

This particular man expected his sponsees to write long gratitude lists on a regular basis. He also expected step work writing to span across many pages. Being his sponsee was like being in college with massive writing assignments.

Until now, only the most dedicated sponsees could work with this particular sponsor. He was a kind man who helped to save many lives from addiction, but he was a difficult sponsor to please.

Imagine how pleased he would have been to be presented with pages of gratitude writing and many pages of step work writing. The issues of physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional would be well thought out and addressed correctly. There would be no difficulties in determining the difference between a shortcoming and a defect of character.

Should AI chatbots be banned from helping with Alcoholics Anonymous step work or Narcotics Anonymous step work?

Have we reached a time in history where sponsors are going to feed their sponsees written work into an AI checker to see if the content was written by a human or machine? Most sponsors are old school and will not care enough to go through the trouble. In fact, many will be quite pleased with the thoroughness of responses that come from a chatbot such as ChatGPT.

You might say that the sponsee will only be cheating themselves by not doing the stepwork on their own. Yet, is 12-step homework proven to help people to recover from addictions?

Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous generally do not have great success rates, which takes into account the entire program, not just written stepwork. If feeling rejected by a sponsor because you cannot understand the assignments might make you frustrated to the point of wanting to leave the program, maybe getting a little AI help would not be a terrible thing.

Of course, honesty is very important in recovery, so maybe more important that the source of your writing is the honesty that goes with it. So, if you are going to get help from an AI, you may want to discuss it first with your sponsor. Let them know what prompts you typed to get the output you present to them.

Let your sponsor know if you have made changes to the AI output to make it apply more to you personally. Or, even better, simply use AI-generated content as a guide to inspire you and give you ideas of what to write.

And, if you find it difficult to complete 12-step written assignments, you may want to seek out an alternative program that does not require written step work. There are many non-12-step programs that have at least as good of a success rate as AA or NA. For example, there is SMART Recovery, which is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

We know that we cannot use AI-written content in school, because that would be plagiarism and cheating. And, we know that we cannot use it in many other situations, especially when our audience expects content written by a human being. In the case of AA or NA step work, it is probably best to at least attempt to do the work without AI assistance, but if the AI helps you to stay drug or alcohol free long-term, then getting that help to clarify your thoughts and express them in writing can only be a good thing.