“Brenda Shaughnessy mines the dictionary in order to re-invent it. This kind of surprise functions like a template placed over our expectations, producing poems rife with inversions, puns, and game-playing. Here are a few stanzas from her poem “Your One Good Dress”:

. . . And the red dress (think about it, redress) is all neckhole. The brown is a big wet beard with, of course, a backslit. You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

@MissA I just read reviews on her book “Interior With Sudden Joy”. I can’t wait to read it.
Thank you!

I think it’s an old AA slogan, but who said it first may be lost in the mists of time. Hopefully someone can get you closer. It might be from one of their books.

Don’t know, Lilly. I kept coming back to Shaughnessy. Maybe she’ll have a footnote!!

@MissA I’m pretty sure it’s a standard AA slogan and if you google “you’re only as sick as your secrets” with the quotes, you’re going to get a whole lot of hits regarding AA, 12 Step Programs and recovery programs. But I have yet to find any indication of who actually said it first, anyone willing to attribute the quote to a particular person or a particular source. But I could certainly be wrong, as I often am, particularly because I have not been able to answer the actual question, which is “Who coined the phrase…” And I am not familiar with Brenda Shaughnessy. Who is she and when did she first used the term? And is she or has she ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Just joking on the last one, of course, I was starting to get a little bit of an interrogational tone there, I think. :-)

First time I heard it was at an AA or an ACOA meeting, I forget which. And it is so true. But I don’t know what its origin is???

It has been said in AA for many years.

I would like to have one of these.modern language.some hum y hum stuff

Lilly, I don’t know…if I find something, you’ll know it. You are most likely right. I like first hand knowledge that I confirm with the googlee-ites!

O. Hobart Mowrer, a professor of psychology, used the phrase “You are your secrets” in a book written sometime between 1948 and 1960. I don’t know which book, but this citation refers to it:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311692763_Preserving_Guilt_in_the_Age_of_Psychology_The_Curious_Career_of_O_Hobart_Mowrer#tooltip-64911

Wikipedia attributes the re-phrasing, “you are as sick as your secrets”, to him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Hobart_Mowrer#Religious_views

Mowrer’s work developing what we today call group therapy had “a substantial legacy in the alcohol and drug rehabilitation field”, so the chances it came from him are good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Hobart_Mowrer#Later_years

I knew Hobart Mowrer in the 1960’s. His daughter said somewhere that he coined it, but characteristically, he said he thought he got the idea from one of Lloyd Douglas’ books. However, cursory searches of Douglas’ works does not turn it up there, so Hobart is the putative author. Hobart died decades ago, so I think it is alright now, and I am sure he would not mind it, to identify him as a member of AA. He was an insightful, genuine person.