Originally Posted by
onlythetruth 
Well, having been in AA for nine years, and read all the literature, and worked the steps multiple times, and been to a couple thousand meetings, I'm pretty comfortable with my conclusion that AA does consider alcoholism to be a moral failing. The BB is really pretty clear about it.
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.
"So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help." BB, page 62.
Guys, I'm not trying to bash AA. Really. I know you folks love the program, and that's fine. But if AA doesn't consider alcoholism a moral failing, then the above words would not be in its primary text.
None of which even come close to inferring that alcoholism itself is a moral failing... what it does say, fairly clearly I always thought, is that we are deeply flawed people- the alcoholism we are so powerless over is a symptom of these flaws. And, only by addressing these flaws (defects) can we ameliorate this symptom of the flaws. Hence why nowhere in the text does it teach me how to not drink, instead it teaches me how to find a solution to the problem of which the drink is a symptom.