the exchange of one crutch for another — "the way many not-yet-desperate-enough newcomers to…"
the way many not-yet-desperate-enough newcomers to Boston AA see Boston AA as just an exchange of slavish dependence on the bottle/pipe for slavish dependence on meetings and banal shibboleths and robotic piety, an ‘Attitude of Platitude,’ and use this idea that it’s still slavish dependence as an excuse to stop trying Boston AA, and to go back to the original slavish Substance-dependence, until that dependence has finally beaten them into such a double-bound desperation that they finally come back in with their faces hanging off their skulls and beg to be told just what platitudes to shout, and how high to adjust their vacant grins
Context
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.