RE: Go to Jail
October 16, 2014 at 10:39 am
(This post was last modified: October 16, 2014 at 10:41 am by Dorian Gray.)
(October 15, 2014 at 6:00 pm)Beccs Wrote: http://www.sossobriety.org/12steps.htm
They exist, I'm just not sure courts will recognise them.
I've run across this before and these secular 12 steps interested me for a moment, but as an actual atheist alcoholic who has "worked the steps," I found the whole idea of basing a program that hinges on belief in a higher power to fit into the 12-step paradigm to be a little absurd.
I believe the founders of AA essentially created a Christian program that is watered down and softened so that theists and people of other religions could deal with their vision of recovery. There are supposedly 12 steps because Jesus had 12 disciples. How 12 people corresponds to 12 steps, I don't know. Every meeting ends in the Lords Prayer. Prayer is a huge part of "working the program." To simply transfer the steps into a secular version is silly because it takes out the main element that is supposed to be what makes AA successful - a higher power.
Trying to emulate a system like AA which has extremely dubious success rates is also just dumb. AA's success rate is the same as spontaneous remission - which means that people that attend AA are just as likely to quit drinking (or not) as people that just decide to quit (or not).
I would be more interested in programs like Rational Recovery, but sadly, there aren't any meetings in the city where I live.
