Ah boy.... I'm sure by now you've encountered the abysmal success rate that Alcoholics Anonymous, and I would presume by extension, other 12-step groups for substance abuse such as NA. It is SO LOW, that one is actually better off going without such a group and simply deciding to quit without any program. See http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effe...otreatment for discussion and tables about this issue. In the book _Games People Play_, there is a game which involves AA in which some of the alcoholics backslide and begin drinking again so that the "sober" alcoholics have someone to rescue.
I know that you haven't been court ordered to these meetings, but you have been ordered by the doctor/program from which you're getting the medications to help you off of the opiate addiction with the medications being held hostage. I don't know of a court case which involves that so much as there are district court decisions in which a person cannot be mandated to attend 12-step meetings with their religious overtones as a condition for other things because it violates the establishment clause. See http://www.webcitation.org/5lyGIFiqE "But the appeals court said Nanamori should have known in 2001 that coerced participation in a religion-based program was unconstitutional because eight state and federal courts had ruled on the issue by then and all had agreed that a parolee has a right to be assigned to a secular treatment program." Although you are not on parole, withholding or threating to withhold medications amounts to coercion And, http://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I96_0137.htm In a case which came short of declaring 12-step programs a religion, it did say that there were enough religious components to it to make coerced attendance a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
These groups on their own claim about a 5% recovery rate. If someone with a 5% recovery rate were touting their methods which are only slightly better than faith healing, http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/wirthstudy.html has a long discussion of faith healing. If someone were touting a method of faith healing as a method of recovering from diabetes or heart problems or cancer and requiring a faith-healing augmentation to their medication therapy, they would be laughed away, and certainly no government or insurance would pay for such a treatment.
Now, 12-step groups, 12-step recovery is so ingrained into the medical community now as a whole, that it is accepted as "the only way that works" to "save the lives" of "millions of alcoholics/drug addicts" that it's accepted in hospitals accepting government funds (including Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and many others). There are even 12-step chemical addiction recovery programs in Veterans Administration hospitals and Bureau of Indian Affairs hospitals. In any other field, if "Billy Sunday" tried to convince them that patients could be healed, and only healed, if they attended his church services, no government, insurance, or other 3rd party payer would accept it. They wouldn't even accept it in any other area which cannot be directly measured, such as mental health. Alcoholics Anonymous, and by extension other 12-step groups have done their sales and outreach very well to people in charge of these things. If hospitals receiving any government funds or government-run hospitals required some faith based program to help heart patients, cancer patients, diabetics, and told them they could not receive hospital treatment without it, they would be quickly stopped. Why the insistence on "evidence based" medicine in all other areas, and "faith based" in this one area?
Another group to help alcoholics and addicts recover without the religion is Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) http://www.cfiwest.org/sos/index.htm to read about it and maybe find one in your area. If the doctor or counselor you're seeing is interested, perhaps you could help facilitate the start of a SOS or Recovery, Inc group. http://www.lowselfhelpsystems.org/
Good luck in any event.
I know that you haven't been court ordered to these meetings, but you have been ordered by the doctor/program from which you're getting the medications to help you off of the opiate addiction with the medications being held hostage. I don't know of a court case which involves that so much as there are district court decisions in which a person cannot be mandated to attend 12-step meetings with their religious overtones as a condition for other things because it violates the establishment clause. See http://www.webcitation.org/5lyGIFiqE "But the appeals court said Nanamori should have known in 2001 that coerced participation in a religion-based program was unconstitutional because eight state and federal courts had ruled on the issue by then and all had agreed that a parolee has a right to be assigned to a secular treatment program." Although you are not on parole, withholding or threating to withhold medications amounts to coercion And, http://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I96_0137.htm In a case which came short of declaring 12-step programs a religion, it did say that there were enough religious components to it to make coerced attendance a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
These groups on their own claim about a 5% recovery rate. If someone with a 5% recovery rate were touting their methods which are only slightly better than faith healing, http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/wirthstudy.html has a long discussion of faith healing. If someone were touting a method of faith healing as a method of recovering from diabetes or heart problems or cancer and requiring a faith-healing augmentation to their medication therapy, they would be laughed away, and certainly no government or insurance would pay for such a treatment.
Now, 12-step groups, 12-step recovery is so ingrained into the medical community now as a whole, that it is accepted as "the only way that works" to "save the lives" of "millions of alcoholics/drug addicts" that it's accepted in hospitals accepting government funds (including Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and many others). There are even 12-step chemical addiction recovery programs in Veterans Administration hospitals and Bureau of Indian Affairs hospitals. In any other field, if "Billy Sunday" tried to convince them that patients could be healed, and only healed, if they attended his church services, no government, insurance, or other 3rd party payer would accept it. They wouldn't even accept it in any other area which cannot be directly measured, such as mental health. Alcoholics Anonymous, and by extension other 12-step groups have done their sales and outreach very well to people in charge of these things. If hospitals receiving any government funds or government-run hospitals required some faith based program to help heart patients, cancer patients, diabetics, and told them they could not receive hospital treatment without it, they would be quickly stopped. Why the insistence on "evidence based" medicine in all other areas, and "faith based" in this one area?
Another group to help alcoholics and addicts recover without the religion is Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) http://www.cfiwest.org/sos/index.htm to read about it and maybe find one in your area. If the doctor or counselor you're seeing is interested, perhaps you could help facilitate the start of a SOS or Recovery, Inc group. http://www.lowselfhelpsystems.org/
Good luck in any event.
