Alternatives to AA

[Aractus]

AA takes credit for a lot of people that would have quit drinking on their own.

Well that much is bullshit. Alcoholics are often dependant like an addiction and thus unable to simply "quit on their own".

Moreso, I've met people with serious mental problems that were instructed by their AA sponsor to quit taking medically prescribed medication for those issues.

I'm pretty sure that's not the norm, I know people who've gone through AA and certainly didn't change the medication they were on whilst there.

And that's a huge problem. They set you up with some idiot in a position of authority over a person that is extremely vulnerable and use a cult mentality to brow beat them into going along with them.

You are mixing deceit with facts. Yes someone who's dependant on a substance can be seen as "vulnerable", and yes someone who is going to help this person, be it a doctor a counsellor a priest a policeman or a parent or whoever is put into a position of authority, but that in no way means that they are automatically likely to abuse their authority or prey on the vulnerable, AA is specifically set up to help alcoholics succeed at quitting drinking, and it works co-currently with other methods that patients may be using (medication, counselling, etc). A friend of mine was going to a 12-step program at the same time as seeing a psychologist about the same problem, so don't go saying that AA replaces medical therapy since that's not what it's designed to do, it's a support-group based program and support groups do not interfere with medical help.

In any other area of medicine, if your doctor told you that the cure for your disease involved surrendering to a “higher power,” praying to have your “defects of character” lifted, and accepting your “powerlessness,” as outlined in the original 12 steps, you’d probably seek a second opinion. But, even today, if you balk at these elements of the 12-step gospel, you’ll often get accused of being “in denial.” And if you should succeed in quitting drinking without 12-step support, you might get dismissed as a “dry drunk.”

Further bullshit - as I mentioned I've known more than one person that's gone to a 12-step program, hell I know one person that was ex-communicated from one! And I can attest that all of them were also receiving some form of medical advice as well, even if it was just antidepressants from their GP.

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Just a quick google search shows that two of the key points are admitting you have no control over your addiction (which isn't true) and the need for a higher power.

Who are you to say that it isn't true?

I look at substance dependence kind of like anorexia nervosa - which is a disease that patients are unable to control on their own. There have actually been a number of advances in the treatment of anorexia - for a very long time the norm is to wait for patients to suffer enough that their health is clearly impacted by their eating disorder, and then put them into forced therapy where they are taught how to eat, and then released back into their homes. I see AA as similar to this approach, in that it's got this therapeutic group mentality - but the problem with it is that it allows the people who are suffering from the disease to influence each other and to undo some of the important work. And furthermore, it doesn't change how people behave and respond in their every day lives - for instance with anorexia, patients view eating as a very private thing and typically have a great fear of eating in public - it's one thing to get them to eat together in a clinic, but it's another to get someone to go out on their own to the local mall, sit down and eat a meal in a busy food court surrounded by strangers. So there is now a new approach being researched from Germany that seems to have promise where therapists do not put patients into inpatient-care at all, nor give them forced-feeding, but instead only provide outpatient care (the counselling, advice and assistance directly to the patients in their daily lives) so that they can make the more meaningful changes (here's a link).

What AA does works, however as Rahul says their approach is getting dated because there are new ways to treat this kind of behaviour that are possibly more effective. But, AA is available to alcoholics now, and the in-home direct targeted outpatient approach isn't - the next best thing is simply to go see your psychologist. What I would expect to see in the future though is psychologists who specialize in substance abuse to offer the direct outpatient counselling and support 24 hours a day (this would forever replace the accountability system AA uses) to their patients in-home, without the patient ever needing to go to them for therapy, and I believe that is the way forward for alcoholism and other similar psychological problems.