Alcoholics Anonymous and Drug Addiction

[Aractus]

BW, they don't give a success rate - they don't even collect data so it would be impossible for them to do so.

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@smithers - the issue is that the 12-step program is not critically evaluated for improvement. If it was, it'd be expected to achieve better success than it presently does.

Telling all alcoholics that they have a "disease" in my view is not right. As noted by Dorian there might be underlying psychological issues and those are best dealt with directly with a qualified therapist or physician.

[Lao Shizi]

Just a few points:
The American Medical association classifies alcoholism/addiction as a disease. A chronic, progressive, and fatal disease.
Before AA, there were few options for addicts. Jail. Sanitarium. Death.
AA clearly states that you should "take what you need, and leave the rest."
I don't attend meetings very often anymore, but without the support of the people in AA/NA, I would not be here now.

[AceBoogie]

@smithers - the issue is that the 12-step program is not critically evaluated for improvement. If it was, it'd be expected to achieve better success than it presently does.

Telling all alcoholics that they have a "disease" in my view is not right. As noted by Dorian there might be underlying psychological issues and those are best dealt with directly with a qualified therapist or physician.

I do not disagree with that. I am simply saying that atheist or theist, many people HAVE found some merit in AA. It seems to have some merit to me. With that being said I agree that it is a deeply flawed program. Really the only parts of AA I agree with are the 'fellowship,' aka building a support group, and helping other addicts, doing the right thing, etc. Having people who share the same problem with you to talk about that problem is therapeutic and doing the right thing or helping other people will make you feel better about yourself which may possibly keep you from wanting to destroy yourself further.

Other than that I feel confident making the generalization that mostly everything else they claim is complete bullshit.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm trying to find a way to living my life without drink. It's a difficult road. I don't do group stuff very well, and where I live (way out in the sticks) there's really no support groups happening.

I've been clean about four weeks of the last five.

It's hard.

[vorlon13]

Passages Malibu is not 12 step oriented and runs only $90,000 a month. Betty Ford Center is 1/3 that.

[Aractus]

I do not disagree with that. I am simply saying that atheist or theist, many people HAVE found some merit in AA. It seems to have some merit to me. With that being said I agree that it is a deeply flawed program. Really the only parts of AA I agree with are the 'fellowship,' aka building a support group, and helping other addicts, doing the right thing, etc. Having people who share the same problem with you to talk about that problem is therapeutic and doing the right thing or helping other people will make you feel better about yourself which may possibly keep you from wanting to destroy yourself further.

Other than that I feel confident making the generalization that mostly everything else they claim is complete bullshit.

I think what you're saying is that there is some aspects to the 12-step program that some AA members find helpful in staying sober. This is obviously true or there wouldn't be anyone who'd say AA worked for them.

But as I said before, it's approach as a "disease" rather than an "addiction" can well be called into question.

Also group therapy is not always the best. Did you know that anorexics for instance usually face group-based intervention programs; but some researchers are finding that individual in-home (i.e. not institutional) therapy is more effective in treating the disorder. And it is a recognised disease.

[Chas]

I do not disagree with that. I am simply saying that atheist or theist, many people HAVE found some merit in AA. It seems to have some merit to me. With that being said I agree that it is a deeply flawed program. Really the only parts of AA I agree with are the 'fellowship,' aka building a support group, and helping other addicts, doing the right thing, etc. Having people who share the same problem with you to talk about that problem is therapeutic and doing the right thing or helping other people will make you feel better about yourself which may possibly keep you from wanting to destroy yourself further.

Other than that I feel confident making the generalization that mostly everything else they claim is complete bullshit.

I think what you're saying is that there is some aspects to the 12-step program that some AA members find helpful in staying sober. This is obviously true or there wouldn't be anyone who'd say AA worked for them.

But as I said before, it's approach as a "disease" rather than an "addiction" can well be called into question.

Also group therapy is not always the best. Did you know that anorexics for instance usually face group-based intervention programs; but some researchers are finding that individual in-home (i.e. not institutional) therapy is more effective in treating the disorder. And it is a recognised disease.

You can question it, but the AMA calls it a disease.

Alcoholism or alcohol dependence is defined by the American Medical Association (AMA) as "a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations."

[Lao Shizi]

[quote='smithers' pid='780336' dateline='1414071969']I do not disagree with that. I am simply saying that atheist or theist, many people HAVE found some merit in AA. It seems to have some merit to me. With that being said I agree that it is a deeply flawed program. Really the only parts of AA I agree with are the 'fellowship,' aka building a support group, and helping other addicts, doing the right thing, etc. Having people who share the same problem with you to talk about that problem is therapeutic and doing the right thing or helping other people will make you feel better about yourself which may possibly keep you from wanting to destroy yourself further.

Other than that I feel confident making the generalization that mostly everything else they claim is complete bullshit.

I think what you're saying is that there is some aspects to the 12-step program that some AA members find helpful in staying sober. This is obviously true or there wouldn't be anyone who'd say AA worked for them.

But as I said before, it's approach as a "disease" rather than an "addiction" can well be called into question.

Also group therapy is not always the best. Did you know that anorexics for instance usually face group-based intervention programs; but some researchers are finding that individual in-home (i.e. not institutional) therapy is more effective in treating the disorder. And it is a recognised disease.
[/quote


The American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American Medical Association both maintain extensive policy regarding alcoholism. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes the existence of "alcoholism" as the equivalent of alcohol dependence. The American Hospital Association, the American Public Health Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American College of Physicians classify "alcoholism" as a disease.
In the US, the National Institutes of Health has a specific institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), concerned with the support and conduct of biomedical and behavioral research on the causes, consequences, treatment, and prevention of alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. It funds approximately 90 percent of all such research in the United States. The official NIAAA position is that "alcoholism is a disease. The craving that an alcoholic feels for alcohol can be as strong as the need for food or water. An alcoholic will continue to drink despite serious family, health, or legal problems. Like many other diseases, alcoholism is chronic, meaning that it lasts a person's lifetime; it usually follows a predictable course; and it has symptoms. The risk for developing alcoholism is influenced both by a person's genes and by his or her lifestyle

[Dorian Gray]

I disagree when you say AA is a waste of time when you don't believe in god. There are plenty of people who have found a way to make AA make sense for them despite the whole god thing.

http://aaagnostica.org/wp-content/upload...-09-21.pdf

^This book was written by an atheist AA member. He talks all about how he made sense of AA without any of the god bullshit. The whole higher power concept in AA, whether people will admit it or not, is about ego deflation. Which can be a GOOD thing for people like addicts, to SOME extent.

Don't let 'god' scare you away from AA if there are parts of it that make sense to you. Take what you can and leave the rest, as they would say lol

AA has a lot of silliness in it. It really does, which usually comes more so from people's interpretations of how things should be in AA rather than what the Big Book actually says. And even the Big Book is not looked at in a logical rational way, it's more seen as the BIBLE of sobriety. When you have a question, people will answer with some quote from the big book just like they would quote you scripture. So there IS a lot of BS you'd have to deal with as an atheist in AA. But I have several atheist friends who are in AA and they find a way to make it work for them.

I suppose it depends on how important your sobriety is to you and what you think makes sense for you.

It's not about how important your sobriety is to you. Of course sobriety is important. If someone gives you a pill for say, depression and you find that it's not working, or that the side effects are worse than dealing with the depression, and you try all the other pills and they still don't work, one can't very well say if your depression was important to you, you would somehow "make the pill work."

I spent a long time in a Christian rehab, and their whole idea behind sobriety in a nutshell was that if you believe in an invisible presence in the sky and believe you will go to hell for sins, this belief will somehow make you lead a moral life because Big Brother is not only watching you, but knows your thoughts as well. Peripherally, you learn things to not curse, covet women, steal, smoke, or do whatever Christians are supposed to not do. I already know these things, and don't have to believe in god to be moral. In fact, I would say I'm a more moral person than most Christians.

The point of this is that the main ingredient for their method of sobriety is pointless to me, and anything peripherally learned are things I already know. The same is true with AA. I honestly don't know why anyone who is an atheist would take the time to try to fit an obviously Christian-based paradigm (which AA is, no matter what people say) and work it into an atheist format. It would be like atheists taking the Bible and making an atheist church based on whatever good moral lessons are applicable from the biblical fables. It would be like taking a Ford Pinto and trying to turn it into a race car. The body style is all wrong, aerodynamically incorrect, the engine compartment way too small, and the frame and brake systems way too fragile to handle any amount of speed. It's basic design needs to be scrapped in favor of something better. Would you go to church and put up with all the bullshit just to get a moral lesson every Sunday but realize you have to check your brain at the door just to intellectually compromise yourself into glossing over all the absurdities? I guess some people do. Now, if AA actually had a modicum of success, then by all means keep it in place, but if AA really worked, why are there still alcoholics? I saw people drop out constantly and go back to drinking, even after working the steps. The people that stay there year after year use it as a sort of club, or just become addicted to the meetings themselves.

It makes more sense to design something from the ground up.

AA's "Big Book" offers absolutely no information on the advancement of neuroscience, proper diet, or how a lack of glucose stores in the body can cause "decision fatigue," or any of that. These things may seem piddly to many alcoholics, but after turning to AA, god, and any sort of spiritual help to be the utter bullshit that it is, trying to carve out the square peg of AA to fit into a round hole is, ironically, just what AA considers the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I've also always been ambivalent about the "disease" model of alcoholism as well, and this coming from a very heavy drinker. The only way I see it as a disease is that the very definition of "disease" is DIS-ease. And, drinking over a period of time can actually permanently change your brain neurons in such a way that you will always crave alcohol forever. Neurologists have discovered there is actually a sort of on-off switch in certain neurons that will actually just turn on one day after years or months of binge or heavy drinking, turning you into an alcoholic even if you were just a heavy drinker before, so because of this physical change, the disease model would apply. But this is all water under the bridge to me. Alcoholism and drug addiction, whether or not you call it a disease it is still a big problem.

Since I found nothing to really work for my sobriety, accept myself, I am actually turning back to an extremely unpopular point of view that has been discarded long ago by the addiction culture: willpower and self-control. It has become simply accepted that willpower does nothing and has no effect on any addictive behavior, when in fact self-control is a major ingredient in most successful endeavors. Why not for addiction recovery? Advancements in neuroscience are just now beginning to make psychologists rethink treatment methods for many things. Most addicts need to realize that there is nothing unusual about ending up where you are: jobless, broke, jail, prison, homeless, or whatever. The particular brew of brain chemicals and combination of life circumstances has put you where you are with no degree of surprise. And it's no surprise that willpower and self control failed people. Somewhere somehow someone is working on mindfullness methods or a pill that will increase self-control and willpower, so we can all take our lives back and not be slaves to our own biochemicals, free from meetings and churches and grasping at straw methods to overcome the seemingly impossible. Ha! Maybe I'm delusional....

[AceBoogie]

I do not disagree with that. I am simply saying that atheist or theist, many people HAVE found some merit in AA. It seems to have some merit to me. With that being said I agree that it is a deeply flawed program. Really the only parts of AA I agree with are the 'fellowship,' aka building a support group, and helping other addicts, doing the right thing, etc. Having people who share the same problem with you to talk about that problem is therapeutic and doing the right thing or helping other people will make you feel better about yourself which may possibly keep you from wanting to destroy yourself further.

Other than that I feel confident making the generalization that mostly everything else they claim is complete bullshit.

I think what you're saying is that there is some aspects to the 12-step program that some AA members find helpful in staying sober. This is obviously true or there wouldn't be anyone who'd say AA worked for them.

But as I said before, it's approach as a "disease" rather than an "addiction" can well be called into question.

Also group therapy is not always the best. Did you know that anorexics for instance usually face group-based intervention programs; but some researchers are finding that individual in-home (i.e. not institutional) therapy is more effective in treating the disorder. And it is a recognised disease.

Yes AA obviously does work for some people. I don't think there's any disagreement there not sure what you're getting at.

And I'm not sure where I stand on the disease thing. Is being a bad driver a disease simply because you have learned certain behaviors and that certain 'symptoms' can be found in all those that drive poorly? I don't know about that.

I suppose whether or not group therapy is effective for someone is up to that individual. Everyone is different.

And Dorian I see where you're coming from and I suppose it is all dependent upon what is important to the individual. If someone finds a group therapy/meeting type setting for them to be cathartic or therapeutic they have that available in AA. I know some atheists, as I've said, that have made AA work for them with absolutely no issue. But I suppose that also depends on the individual.

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AA clearly states that you should "take what you need, and leave the rest."

AA also clearly states that you need to turn yourself over entirely to their simple program, which doesn't quite match up with 'take what you need and leave the rest.'

There are many more contradictory ideas in AA and in the Big Book and it's a little silly how obvious that is to everyone except people in AA. Like I said it obviously serves some purpose because there is SOMETHING working for some people that are able to stay sober using AA, but I would argue that having a support group and helping other people more than anything, is what helps people stay sober, regardless of the steps.