[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
I mean’t Bob. 
Many come to AA from rehab, why do rehabs across the country send people to AA? Private rehabs, non governmental rehabs? Why oh why do they send so many people to AA when they are done with their 13 day stint???
[/QUOTE]
Because it’s goddy. Surely you don’t actually believe there’s a separation of church and state in THIS country.
[QUOTE=Apos]
My main beef with AA is the way it irrationally dominates the field of addiction recovery, despite not being able to demonstrate results over and above anything else, and despite many of the key traditions and teachings being inflexible and out of whack with medical science.
[/QUOTE]
Irrationally dominates the field of addiction?
Do you find the many thousands of people AA has helped to recover irrational? If so why? I suppose I could answer this myself by reading and rereading your posts, but I still must shake my head in bewilderment as to what it is exactly you don’t get…
You don’t understand how people in aa can recover?
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
Because it works.
[/QUOTE]
It doesn’t work. It appears to work sometimes, for some people, usually after many “slips” and failures. Just like any other abstinence plan, except without the science. Which makes it little more than luck.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
Irrationally dominates the field of addiction?
Do you find the many thousands of people AA has helped to recover irrational? If so why? I suppose I could answer this myself by reading and rereading your posts, but I still must shake my head in bewilderment as to what it is exactly you don’t get…
You don’t understand how people in aa can recover?
[/QUOTE]
I find their attributing recovery to a higher power to be extremely irrational. Don’t you?
[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
By the way, for a one month treatment, the cost is $23,000
Thats a huge hit. And if it doesn’t work you can pay more for a longer stay. That much for religious mumbo jumbo ? How long can an honest person like Betty Ford get away with that. Or if Fear Itself is right then she is dishonest and a thief and her.husband recently eulagized is an accomplice. Give me a break.
[/QUOTE]
A 12-step program in the Betty Ford Centre is not the same as an AA group. You are confusing two different things. I have no doubt that treatment centres copy a lot of AA methods and ideas, (because they have been shown to work with many people) but that does not make them the same as AA. Do you know how much I have been charged to belong to AA for 16 years? NOTHING! Not one bloody cent. Never, ever.
All that ever happens at an AA meeting is that they pass around a hat or a bag or a basket. You can put in a cent, five cents a dollar or NOTHING if you like. Nobody cares. We have NO lists of who gave what. We only know your first name. Our group uses a bag, so that you cannot even see what the person is putting in.
I also sometimes bring a bag of cookies, VOLUNTARILY, on my own initiative, just to be nice. As I recall they cost a little less then $23,000. One guy even brings a box of Buffalo Wings now and then. Not exactly $23,000 a month, is it? 
I VOLUNTARILY contribute, on my own, about $1 a meeting. I go to about 4 or 6 meetings a month, so I guess the difference between AA and the Betty Ford is that AA gets about $6 a month from me, and Betty Ford demands $23,000 before they will let you in.
Besides, I probably drink a coffee and eat a cookie at every meeting, so the real net cost to me per meeting is more like 25 cents!
Do you notice a difference there.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
I find their attributing recovery to a higher power to be extremely irrational. Don’t you?
[/QUOTE]
Yes I do.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
It doesn’t work. It appears to work sometimes, for some people, usually after many “slips” and failures.
[/quote]
WOW - were you in the program at one point and slighted so bad thatyou feel you need to say something like that? You Kalhoun, are not usually that wrong. So I can only think that someone close to you has tried and failed and you are pissed off at AA. That I can understand. If not, and this is what you believe, then I’m sorry, because this is one man who has seen it work more often than not. And I was the skeptics skeptic when I walked into the rooms. But you know what, it was another man in academia, where I was working at the time, who broght me to my first meeting all those years ago. I rolled my eyes for wuite a while, until I heard another man tell my story in a meeting…That and to see the transformation people make after successfully beating their own demons, that’s all I need.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
A 12-step program in the Betty Ford Centre is not the same as an AA group.
[/QUOTE]
I know that ! I’ve been group treasurer many times.But the whole argument against AA is centred on the percieved religiousity of the 12 step program. I think that argument is uninformed. Normally I wouldn’t care what the OP thinks, but if his argument has any merit then I fear for those armed forces and/or government 12 step programs being attacked because they are not constitutional
[QUOTE=Valteron]
I was powerless. Note the past tense. I was powerless by myself, on my own resources. I tried and tried and tried and I could not stop. And you are right, Bobo. I DID give up. What I gave up was trying to beat it on my own because I could not. So I faced two options. I could accept that I would never beat it alone and drink myself to death, or I could try a method that was discovered by two drunks who bumped into each other in Akron Ohio in 1935. They found that two drunks, both of whom had despaired of beating it alone, could beat it if they helped each other.
It’s that simple, really.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, but you see, you were no more powerless than the farmer with the rock. Maybe the farmer (and you) were unable to do it without help, but you weren’t and aren’t powerless. You, I believe, needed a support structure of some kind, and with some support you quit drinking. Magical Trevor didn’t quit you drinking, God didn’t step in and change you so that you wouldn’t drink, you quit drinking. Stand up for yourself, fer crying out loud. You managed to fight a hell of a battle against a serious problem and are keeping things under control - sure, with help from people that have been in the same boat, but it’s all you buddy. You went to the meetings, you went a day without a drink.
Maybe being insulted and diminished helped you, some people need that I guess.
It can be, and has been, done without AA. Doesn’t mean AA is bad, but they certainly seem to have an agenda that goes beyond helping some people in need.
No, that’s possibly not be true - some people I’ve met that quit through AA have agendas, are dismissive of anyone that quit without the program, and redefine alcoholism as they see fit. They’re like fundamentalist AA, and are far less rational than this thread has been.
Then again, no one told me there’d be buffalo wings 
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Ah, but you see, you were no more powerless than the farmer with the rock. Maybe the farmer (and you) were unable to do it without help, but you weren’t and aren’t powerless. You, I believe, needed a support structure of some kind, and with some support you quit drinking. Magical Trevor didn’t quit you drinking, God didn’t step in and change you so that you wouldn’t drink, you quit drinking. Stand up for yourself, fer crying out loud. You managed to fight a hell of a battle against a serious problem and are keeping things under control - sure, with help from people that have been in the same boat, but it’s all you buddy. You went to the meetings, you went a day without a drink.
Maybe being insulted and diminished helped you, some people need that I guess.
It can be, and has been, done without AA. Doesn’t mean AA is bad, but they certainly seem to have an agenda that goes beyond helping some people in need.
No, that’s possibly not be true - some people I’ve met that quit through AA have agendas, are dismissive of anyone that quit without the program, and redefine alcoholism as they see fit. They’re like fundamentalist AA, and are far less rational than this thread has been.
Then again, no one told me there’d be buffalo wings
[/QUOTE]
My sentiments exactly.
The other programs people are talking about…surly most opponants to AA will recognize that they are not nearly as public and easy to find as AA… It’s not like every community around the country has a program B for people who do not agree with AA. But every community sure does have an AA group, I wonder why.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
The other programs people are talking about…surly most opponants to AA will recognize that they are not nearly as public and easy to find as AA… It’s not like every community around the country has a program B for people who do not agree with AA. But every community sure does have an AA group, I wonder why.
[/QUOTE]
Obviously because it’s free and they can do whatever they want at a given meeting. They don’t have a sanctioning body or all the meetings would be the same. Again…there’s a difference between The Program and A Bunch Of Ex-Drinkers Getting Together. Surely in your 4 or 5 years with AA you’ve been to meetings that looked nothing at all like the one you attend regularly. Do you feel that’s a strength or a weakness of AA? Do you feel you will get the correct support for your brand of sobriety at just any meeting? Do you feel that other ex-drinkers could move seamlessly from one meeting to another? If so, why?
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
Obviously because it’s free and they can do whatever they want at a given meeting. They don’t have a sanctioning body or all the meetings would be the same. Again…there’s a difference between The Program and A Bunch Of Ex-Drinkers Getting Together. Surely in your 4 or 5 years with AA you’ve been to meetings that looked nothing at all like the one you attend regularly. Do you feel that’s a strength or a weakness of AA? Do you feel you will get the correct support for your brand of sobriety at just any meeting? Do you feel that other ex-drinkers could move seamlessly from one meeting to another? If so, why?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t travel as much around the country as I once did, but I can say this: From Phoenix to Connecticut the meetings were the different, but the clientel were the same. It’s comforting to know that as a complete stranger I can walk into a meeting in Phoenix, AZ and feel as comfortable as the ones I walk into here in CT. Case in point, I was in Boston recently and I went to a meeting in Acton, just outside Concord MA. I walked up to the basement of some church where I read online that there was going to be a meeting. Some guy greeted me at the door and said, " welcome, are you here for the meeting?" I said “Yup” and he directed me inside to a hot cup of coffee and a donut. I was greeted by no less than a dozen other complete strangers who didn’t need to ask why I was there, but with a smile and a handshake they said welcome. The meeting was of a format I was not used to but “speaker meeting” but the jist was there.
You see everyone in AA has a story, osme of them I can relate to others I cannot. I cannot relate to the under the bridge alky as much as I can the functional alcoholic with a wife two kids and two cars…
I’m very much an alacarte AA-er. I take and leave what fits my needs… But by in large I am a much better man then when I was active.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
I don’t travel as much around the country as I once did, but I can say this: From Phoenix to Connecticut the meetings were the different, but the clientel were the same. It’s comforting to know that as a complete stranger I can walk into a meeting in Phoenix, AZ and feel as comfortable as the ones I walk into here in CT. Case in point, I was in Boston recently and I went to a meeting in Acton, just outside Concord MA. I walked up to the basement of some church where I read online that there was going to be a meeting. Some guy greeted me at the door and said, " welcome, are you here for the meeting?" I said “Yup” and he directed me inside to a hot cup of coffee and a donut. I was greeted by no less than a dozen other complete strangers who didn’t need to ask why I was there, but with a smile and a handshake they said welcome. The meeting was of a format I was not used to but “speaker meeting” but the jist was there.
You see everyone in AA has a story, osme of them I can relate to others I cannot. I cannot relate to the under the bridge alky as much as I can the functional alcoholic with a wife two kids and two cars…
I’m very much an alacarte AA-er. I take and leave what fits my needs… But by in large I am a much better man then when I was active.
[/QUOTE]
I’d imagine people who rely on the religious aspects of AA would have a difficult time adjusting to an atheist meeting, and vice versa. A person who is on assignment in a strange town for any length of time could be hard-pressed to find the support they’re seeking.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
I’d imagine people who rely on the religious aspects of AA would have a difficult time adjusting to an atheist meeting, and vice versa. A person who is on assignment in a strange town for any length of time could be hard-pressed to find the support they’re seeking.
[/QUOTE]
In my tenure I cannot recall one person who relys on a religious aspect of AA. Not one. Even friends in the program who are devout Christians do not want to bring their teachings into meetings for fear of scaring people off who may need the program but who have no religious faith. That is why AA requires no (zero) faith to join meetings. Just because a higher power and God are mentioned in the steps, doesn’t mean one needs to believe in a christian/muslim/hindu God to follow them.
And in the end, the AA program is just a guide… You may be able to tell, I do not live breath and bleed AA. But I go because I enjoy it, and it gives me the opportunity ot help others…for free.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
In my tenure I cannot recall one person who relys on a religious aspect of AA. Not one. Even friends in the program who are devout Christians do not want to bring their teachings into meetings for fear of scaring people off who may need the program but who have no religious faith. That is why AA requires no (zero) faith to join meetings. Just because a higher power and God are mentioned in the steps, doesn’t mean one needs to believe in a christian/muslim/hindu God to follow them.
And in the end, the AA program is just a guide… You may be able to tell, I do not live breath and bleed AA. But I go because I enjoy it, and it gives me the opportunity ot help others…for free.
[/QUOTE]
Nor does one have to follow any of the steps. I guess that’s the part that confuses me. It’s like going to a painting class with a potter’s wheel and a hunk of clay. Also, why do they bother saying the religious aspect is part of the process when it isn’t? It’s contradictory and always has been. Why does it appear, ad nauseum, if it isn’t part of the Program?
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
Nor does one have to follow any of the steps. I guess that’s the part that confuses me. It’s like going to a painting class with a potter’s wheel and a hunk of clay. Also, why do they bother saying the religious aspect is part of the process when it isn’t? It’s contradictory and always has been. Why does it appear, ad nauseum, if it isn’t part of the Program?
[/QUOTE]
Because for many thousands of people it does help them. For those who chose to use the God aspect of it that is. I think the part that may be difficult to understand is that it is a choice, and not shoved down ones throat.
For instance, I admitted to myself I was - WAS - powerless over alcohol… So I tweeked that step a little bit. It still worked for me the same way as if I said I admitted to God. It’s not really like taking a hunk of clay to a painting class…it’s like drawing clothes on a subject in a Nude painting class.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
Because for many thousands of people it does help them. For those who chose to use the God aspect of it that is. I think the part that may be difficult to understand is that it is a choice, and not shoved down ones throat.
For instance, I admitted to myself I was - WAS - powerless over alcohol… So I tweeked that step a little bit. It still worked for me the same way as if I said I admitted to God. It’s not really like taking a hunk of clay to a painting class…it’s like drawing clothes on a subject in a Nude painting class.
[/QUOTE]
But for thousands, it doesn’t. Do you see what I mean? The assumption of religion, coupled with the glurge in the big book and the steps, sends a clear message that the writers of the literature don’t think you can achieve sobriety without it, regardless of what you hear at the meetings or read in other parts of the book. Doesn’t it seem a little silly to include something in the Program that isn’t an integral part of the program?
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
But for thousands, it doesn’t. Do you see what I mean?
[/QUOTE]
I guess I don’t. Why is it necessary to work for everyone to be a valid treatment? With that standard, you must have a hard time getting medical treatment of any kind.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
But for thousands, it doesn’t. Do you see what I mean? The assumption of religion, coupled with the glurge in the big book and the steps, sends a clear message that the writers of the literature don’t think you can achieve sobriety without it, regardless of what you hear at the meetings or read in other parts of the book. Doesn’t it seem a little silly to include something in the Program that isn’t an integral part of the program?
[/QUOTE]
Yes of course I see what you mean. Don’t forget the big book was written in the 30’s - and has been revised with additional stories 4 times since. I take meetings and the literature as a huge Unitarian Universalist type approach - basically they accept everyone.
I agree some of the glurge in the big book is overwhleming, but if I let that get to me I’d have missed the point. The point being: overall the system works. I know, I know people leave AA all the time, and slip and slide down the slippery slope of quitting drinking, but in my experience by and large people like the way they feel when they go to meetings, and by in large it simply works for some people. Of course not everyone will like AA, and AA will not work for everyone…But psychologically, it is like attending a weekly group therapy session, which is proven to work.
And let us not forget that when one initially quits drinking it f*cking sucks. Withdrawls in some cases, DT’s in bad ones, a sense of being alone, anxiety, depression etc..etc… A helpful group of people who understand exactly what you are going through - because they ahev gone through the same thing - seems better than trying to figure it all out on your own. I tell newcomers that they are the most important people in the room when they first step foot in a meeting. Because I know the courage it takes to walk through the door. Some stay some leave, some have never been told they were important, others don’t want to be spoken to, and some still just want to take what they can and do the rest on their own.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
Yes of course I see what you mean. Don’t forget the big book was written in the 30’s - and has been revised with additional stories 4 times since. I take meetings and the literature as a huge Unitarian Universalist type approach - basically they accept everyone.
I agree some of the glurge in the big book is overwhleming, but if I let that get to me I’d have missed the point. The point being: overall the system works. I know, I know people leave AA all the time, and slip and slide down the slippery slope of quitting drinking, but in my experience by and large people like the way they feel when they go to meetings, and by in large it simply works for some people. Of course not everyone will like AA, and AA will not work for everyone…But psychologically, it is like attending a weekly group therapy session, which is proven to work.
And let us not forget that when one initially quits drinking it f*cking sucks. Withdrawls in some cases, DT’s in bad ones, a sense of being alone, anxiety, depression etc..etc… A helpful group of people who understand exactly what you are going through - because they ahev gone through the same thing - seems better than trying to figure it all out on your own. I tell newcomers that they are the most important people in the room when they first step foot in a meeting. Because I know the courage it takes to walk through the door. Some stay some leave, some have never been told they were important, others don’t want to be spoken to, and some still just want to take what they can and do the rest on their own.
[/QUOTE]
How many of the 12 steps did you “leave?”