the exchange of one crutch for another

The theme's central objection to the Program, stated and then dismantled in one motion. Boone's clever reading of the nun-film — salvation as just swapping one will-obliterating habit for another — is precisely the too-smart newcomer's excuse: AA is only slavish dependence on meetings and platitudes instead of the pipe, an "Attitude of Platitude." And the book's crushing answer is the arc it predicts: the objection is valid and irrelevant, because the disease will keep beating the objector until he comes back with his face hanging off his skull and begs to be told which platitudes to shout. The wisdom is that being right about the platitudes does not save you; only surrendering to them does.