Does anybody have any evidence that AA works at all?
I don’t dispute that addiction is a disease, that individuals have no control over it or that it’s exceedingly difficult to get sober without treatment and support. I have no trouble with the requirement to acknowledge being powerless. It just seems to me that admitting it to one’s self and to another person (or people) should be good enough to accomplish what that step is intended to accomplish.
I also think that shagnasty makes a very good point about the orgnizations reassuring ubiquity (and lack of pecuniary motive) for those who need somewhere to go and someone to talk to. There are some good things to say about AA. I don’t say the whole system is worthless and I don’t think I would call it a religion unto itself, only that I think it does contain a pretty clear element of (admittedly extremely ecumenical) faith.
Cite me an AA meeting that has refused to sign attendance slips or participate.
That’s a pretty ridiculous and, frankly, disingenuous argument. In what universe is “go do this or you go/stay in to jail” not forcing?
Thankfully, many courts have begun to rule against such programs: either there must be am equally available non-religious treatment alternative, or else the whole idea is unconstitutional. Here’s something from the New York Supreme Court ruling on the matter, which ruled that AA was a religious treatment program and hence could not be forced upon anyone for that reason: “The County argues further that the nonsectarian nature of the A.A. experience immunizes its use of religious symbolism and practices from Establishment Clause scrutiny. The argument is at the very least factually misleading, for the evidence showed that every meeting included at least one explicitly Christian Prayer. Furthermore, the claim that nonsectarian religious exercise falls outside the First Amendment’s scrutiny has been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court.”
When someone is a mess is not a good time to get free reign to sell your ideology, not even if that ideology were only one about addiction.
There is, of course, a rather huge difference between various AA chapters. Some are little more than vaguely connected with AA’s founding traditions and program. and are little different from support groups in general.
This is just one of many studies showing the same result: some, like The Outpatient Treatment of Alcoholism: A Review and Comparative Study, Baltimore: University Park Press, 1980 found that AA had worse outcomes than no treatment at all. Even pro-AA researchers like George Vaillant don’t deny that more people get over alcoholism without an AA program than with it, that less than 5% of attendees stick with AA regardless (making virtually all of its success stories self-selecting).
The real harm AA does for addiction recovery has been the high degree of irrationality and dogma its foisted and spread on treatment programs, all of it divorced from any real world understanding of whether what it’s doing is working well or not. I don’t think AA is bad in and of itself: for some people it fits what they need, and works for them (though, another dispiriting set of studies has shown that the concept of “fitting” a person to a treatment program doesn’t seem to have much helpful effect either). The problem is the way in which AA has come to dominate treatment as “the” approach, despite any evidence that it is particularly better than anything else, and oftentimes when its key dogmas (like it’s black/white vision of drinking and alcoholism and insistence that it is an uncurable lifelong disease) run directly against most science on the subject.
Penn and Teller went into this on their show BS and found that the answer was a strong “Not really”. If anyone out there has a way to find quotes from the show they had some seemingly strong evidence that it not only did not work very often but in fact had little effect in most cases.
NOTE: I really have no idea how reliable Penn and Teller are as sources I just enjoy the show.
It is when people are forced to go to it as part of some kind of court settlement.
Such as the belief that if someone had a problem with alcohol at one time in their life, they will never be able to be a social drinker without having that problem again. Many of us go through a period where alcohol has a negative effect on normal daily life and living up to responsiblities. Probably hundreds of thousands of college students do that every year, and then they go on to be normal social drinkers with functional lives.
Or they were forced into it because they were the one unlucky enough to get caught driving home after having three beers with their dinner.
Because he was forced to be there?
Being forced into AA would be punishment to me, and I’m not an alcoholic. Of course if I ever said that to anyone while being forced to go to an AA meeting, they would just beat at me about being ‘in denial’. That’s how it works right? It’s impossible for someone who’s at an AA meeting to not be an alcoholic, and if they say they aren’t, it’s just denial.
This is what I feared would happen to me, but it just didn’t play out that way. I came and said I wanted to find out if I were an alcoholic, and everybody said “Good for you, find out” and made sure to mention “maybe you aren’t” whenever it was appropriate. Of course, this is just one little group in one little city in one little country.
Talk to someone in AA that has been sober for 1, 2 even 3 decades after failing all other means of reaching sobriety. At least a level of sobriety that is defined by not having alcohol a factor in almost every life failure.
“Higher Power” is more a euphamism than anything as I’ve seen it in people. A higher power just means something that you acknowledge is bigger than yourself. Be it God, a tree, or the AA group you happen to be at during a meeting.
I understand it’s controversial, but some people seem to think that, shocker, addicts like to think they’re in control of everything. Including consumption of whatever they like to get high with. However, rare is the person in control of the substance that ends up in AA.
Religion? Maybe. It seems to have a Christian bent, though it isn’t required from what I know of it. Even with groups that recite the Lord’s Prayer, it isn’t required. It may have been formed on that basis, but certainly it isn’t a demand to be a member.
I would be upset about it if there were a proven alternative that is as effective. And there may be some programs that are as effective. On the level of AA? Haven’t seen any. It seems the basis is psychological. Letting go and letting God as some may say. But I’d say it’s more of letting go of the pseudo-control and realizing alcohol isn’t the brace some think it is.
Religion? Who cares? Deny God in an AA meeting and guess what happens? Fellowship amongst drunks trying to keep each other sober. I know of two atheists that have been sober thanks to AA for over a decade each.
If someone wants to gain sobriety, and they find something that works, who are any of us to say it’s wrong?
Are those that hate religion so much to question something that works worth more than those that find something that finally works after a lifetime of searching?
I say whatever works for them trumps those that dismiss them. Just saying.
Who has said it is wrong?
I have never attended an AA meeting that had a leader. There were some people who appeared to initiate the discussion more often than others, and there are old timers who others often defer to, but there are no formal officers or leaders. I was required to get someone at the meeting to initial my list of meetings I attended, but it could be anyone in attendance, and since it is an “anonymous” group, they never used their last names. It was pretty much on the honor system. I suppose there could be AA groups that do not adhere to this model, but they would be the exception, not the rule. Was this in a jail setting, or was it outside of a jail or mandatory rehab clinic?
There are lots of judges who just don’t get AA either. They think it is a rehab program offenders will be cured at if they are forced to attend. I would say the outcome for such involuntary particpation is not as positive as for those who attend of their own free will, though I was required to attend, and I now have 9 years of sobriety. I have yet to complete the 12 steps. And I consider myself an atheist.
This one. That’s what “probation” is all about.
You are hitting on a problem but it isn’t specific to AA by any means. The failure rate for all alcohol and some kind of drug addictions is miserable. If someone is expecting AA to come in with a 75% success rate then you aren’t going to find it. In fact, a 20% success rate for any first-try treatment would be a revolution in addiction science. All treatments have a first-year relapse rate above 80% and usually over 90% (hard to measure exactly because people misreport).
Testing AA’s efficacy is rather difficult. One way would be to match AA treatment against some type of appropriate controls. This is harder than it sounds because AA is built around regularly attending meetings and most people just don’t do it. You would need to match groups according to there level of motivation at getting better and this, of course, is difficult.
A more realistic way would be to look at AA members who have long-term sobriety against those who also had it and stopped going. This approach has problems as well but you would expect to see a bigger relapse rate for those that stopped if AA is really effective.
These terrible failure rates for all treatments makes measuring any of them all that much harder especially since it is hard to get reliable data. AA only has to be successful for a small group of people and not harmful to the others for it to be a success. Most (around 66%) do get better with repeated attempts but it may take a while. If AA fills only one niche then that is all that is needed from it.
Our GP, OR Saturday night Fairgrounds 8pm meeting refuses to sign “court slips”. I’m sure there are others.
By the way, if someone wants to get a court slip signed, they can have anyone sign them, really. They shouldn’t actually need to attend a meeting…
Personally, I think court-ordered attendance is a bad thing, because it forces folks to go who don’t want sobriety, and doesn’t add anything to the meetings. (Now, I’m selfish. Never said I wasn’t.)
But there is no policing of this by those of us in AA. Shoot. Someone can even come in, toss their attendance slip in the basket, leave the meeting, and come back at the end to pick up a signed slip. We don’t care. At least, I don’t care.
I have to agree that my experience of Al-Anon* was way too ‘spiritual’ to sit with my atheist view-point. I admit i went only once but i was clear the format was the same every week and it reminded me very much of bible class when i was a kid.
To be clear on my stance here though, same as for religion, if it works for you and it doesn’t affect me then no problems, knock yourself out, it’s just not for me thats all.
Anyway, a few questions that maybe some people here can answer:
-
Is the current ‘higher power’ thing just a modern replacement for what used to be ‘God’ when AA started out? I don’t know the history at all so i’m just asking, did AA start as a Christian thing but diversify when western society became so much more multi-cultural?
-
Question for AA members of a religious nature - How does AA fit with your religious belief? Can you easily substitute ‘higher power’ for the name of your particular god?
-
Does the concept of absolute abstinence, aka once an alcoholic always an alcoholic, have any history prior to AA? Is the idea something that was popular before AA started to teach it that way?
-
How come it is so commonly accepted to refer to alcoholism as a disease? Isn’t there some kind of proper definition of a disease that requires physical presense of um, sorry not a bioligist, um pathogens (?) or something i dunno? I never hear any mental illnesses being referred to as diseases and it would seem to me that alcoholism is more akin to a mental illness than a disease.
*In case this doesn’t mean anything to you Al-Anon is the AA but for families of alcoholics rather than alcoholics themselves. It does however follow the exact same 12 step program and from conversation it seems their meetings are almost exactly the same as AA. And yes, unenlightened as i may be, the other problem i had with the group was the fact that it was all about fixing me. Sorry, i ain’t perfect but frankly i don’t want to find peace in living with alcoholism, i think being really pissed off with it is perfectly fucking natural. I went there to learn how to help my partner, not to learn how to live with her drinking. Again, each to their own, whatever works for you etc, just not what i was looking for.
I think your brother might be mistaking some court-ordered treatment program with AA. As far as I know, AA doesn’t manage any treatment centers! Some folks do take AA meetings into treatment centers, and some businesses take busloads of residents to AA meetings. And many treatment centers follow the twelve-step model, and even use the Big Book… Perhaps that confused him?
Or perhaps he’s just angry and resentful and stretches the truth, claiming that AA has wronged him, and that’s why he can’t quit driving drunk.
The letter you mention is absurd. We don’t have leaders. We do have secretaries and treasurers of most meetings, and a chairperson is usually chosen to lead each meeting. We’re not organized, except that someone needs to unlock the room, make the coffee, pay the space rental… we don’t collect much money, collect maybe an average of fifty cents per attendee, barely enough to pay rent and buy crappy coffee.
Even if someone’s on supervised probation, I doubt their probation officer (who is likely the person required to collect the signed slips) knows any of the signers of the court slips.
This is a debate on its own but diseases don’t need pathogens. There are plenty of endogenous diseases like diabetes, some kinds of heart disease, and many others. It is rather hard to build a comprehensive model of disease that excludes alcoholism but includes all of the things that most people would acknowledge are “diseases”. Alcoholism can be progressive, partially irreversible, and then fatal if untreated. There is strong evidence today that there is a genetic component for some alcoholics and good indications that brain activity for some future alcoholics differs from others at a very young age. I am very surprised that you have never heard of mental illness as a disease. I have both academic and personal experience with that and it is often referred to as a disease which many of them are.
I drove him to a few meetings and they definitely had “Alcoholics Anonymous room ?” written on a small sign on the door. (It was at a local school) I don’t know if other treatment programs would be aloud to use that name.
I would say he is definitely resentful of the entire incident. This is why I don’t go into his views on the usefulness of AA. I think he is surely biased. Per the OP I was only trying to relate that here we had one example of an AA meeting where the participants were required to acknowledge a “higher power.” The other aspects of this are just off topic diversions.
I did try to make it clear that when he said “leader” these were his words and did not want to imply that AA has a leader at the meetings. I would assume that in his case there was someone at the meeting whose responsibility is was to acknowledge his attendance. And at least according to him also had to in some way indicate he was complying with the 12 steps.
Again this is a case I would assume is not the norm for AA in that it was a court ordered participation so how it works at voluntary meetings I have no idea.
I don’t need to since I never said that meetings refuse to sign. However there is one poster here who does say that. Talk to him or her.
If you say so. I’m willing to admit that I have little patience for those who avoid jail time and then whine about what enabled them to do that.
More power to them. I’m for an end to the practice of making AA a condition of probation and I don’t care if the courts end it for the wrong reason.
Those that look out among the people that have gained sobriety in AA and tell them they are wrong for gaining sobriety through an organization that is so obviously religious in nature?
Even if religion had little to do with them becoming sober?
Not sure who (read the OP and many responses) said it was wrong, but it wasn’t me.
Whatever works. I’ll support it. I trust you do as well.
I would like to reiterate that the reason for the example was to give one instance where an AA meeting expressed that a religious concept of a “higher power” was required as part of the treatment. I in no way stated that the punishment was unjust or unworthy or that anyone had a right to complain about it. I would say from a personal standpoint that I advocate stronger punishments including jail time for DUI/DWI offenders. But the topic was about AA being a religious organization. I think this example does demonstrate that there is at least a religious component to the AA organization.
Absolutely true, but it’s on a “take it or leave it” basis. There is no way whatever for someone who says, “Screw that.” to be forced out of AA. That makes it the damndest religion I ever heard of.
I suppose ostracism would have an effect, but as has been said there are meetings all over the place.
I believe the OP’s point was that AA is a religion as evidenced by the summation at the end of the post.