AA/NA never claims to be the cure for addiction. Find it in the literature and show me where they say, "you will no longer be an addict if you work the steps." In fact, they say the exact opposite. There is no cure. You will always be an addict. It is absolutely a disease. A life threatening disease, with no cure. Hence the phrase "one day at a time."
Addictions are in the DSM, they are shown to affect the brain in fMRI's, they have measurable, demonstrable effects on people.
People have bad experiences with AA/NA. Sometimes you have an overtly religious group, sometimes you have an abusive group. People are encouraged to shop groups until they find a connection. In my experience (I ran several groups when I was in the Navy), there is great benefit for addicts in the group experience.
So, why does the process fail? Why does it bug you that the people in the group are held accountable for themselves and each other? When someone relapses, there are several reasons. Maybe they haven't hit their rock bottom yet and aren't really ready to get clean. Maybe they actually didn't take it seriously enough. Maybe they really didn't go to enough meetings, call their sponsor when they were in trouble, take enough personal responsibility for their own recovery. The reason that AA/NA don't get held responsible for people's relapses is because it's just a set of guidelines. What good would it do anyone to blame the guidelines? Really, no one should be blamed per se. Addicts relapse, that's part of the disease. It is going to happen.
Addictions are in the DSM, they are shown to affect the brain in fMRI's, they have measurable, demonstrable effects on people.
People have bad experiences with AA/NA. Sometimes you have an overtly religious group, sometimes you have an abusive group. People are encouraged to shop groups until they find a connection. In my experience (I ran several groups when I was in the Navy), there is great benefit for addicts in the group experience.
So, why does the process fail? Why does it bug you that the people in the group are held accountable for themselves and each other? When someone relapses, there are several reasons. Maybe they haven't hit their rock bottom yet and aren't really ready to get clean. Maybe they actually didn't take it seriously enough. Maybe they really didn't go to enough meetings, call their sponsor when they were in trouble, take enough personal responsibility for their own recovery. The reason that AA/NA don't get held responsible for people's relapses is because it's just a set of guidelines. What good would it do anyone to blame the guidelines? Really, no one should be blamed per se. Addicts relapse, that's part of the disease. It is going to happen.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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