It’s sorta outlined at the beginning of every meeting: read carefully.
All we do is share our experience, strength and hope: Some listena nd stick around, and maybe put a little work into it and gradually heal and stay away from the drink.
Others hear one mention of God [which is not mentioned in the preamble] and bolt.
The primary purpose is to stay sober…period. Kalhoun is right, it is a blanket type group therapy…that works for some and statistics would say only a select few…
But don’t confuse that select few it works for to mean that meetings around the country are not chuck full of people trying to figure out how to stay away from a drink…Because many, many - if not all meetings are full to the brim! People fall off all the time, and come back, some sadly die whilst drunk. This is not a reflection that AA doesn’t work but a sad fact of being human, not all of us can beat our demons. I truly feel like shit that people have died from this disease, that some people have tried AA and it didn’t work… I hurt for those people. I wish the statistics were different, and perhaps now they are…I do not know how old the stats are, or where the survey was done or what the parameters were. I’d like to see a new set of stats…
I do not see it as a disease. I do see it as an addiction. When you encounter an alcoholic that is running his life into a hole and can’t stop. the power it has over some is obvious. If you do not have or see the problem it is hard to relate to. I have had a few friends die young and screw themselves up badly. Apparently the pull was greater than the fear of the consequences . That to me is addiction.
I have seen people lose everything over gambling. I have have friends destroy themselves with what others could do recreationally ,cocaine. For some it is too powerful. I put alcohol in that class.
Problem is you don’t know if it is you until it is too late.
People use ‘disease’, I think, as shorthand for ‘not a choice’. And that’s valid. We are hunks of meat with flawed operating systems. In some folks, the tissue south of the neck ceases to function normally. Most people understand how that works - you can see diseases or you can see their effects on people.
Issues north of the neck were harder to study before so we didn’t understand them. Now we’re seeing how much our physiology affects our minds in every regard (although women who get to ‘enjoy’ PMS have always had very good personal experience of exactly how this works).
One of the really interesting developments in neuroscience is the ability to study the brain in terms of how ‘recreational’ drugs affect it. And what we’re seeing is that they can affect it a lot. Here’s one study: http://www.nida.nih.gov/whatsnew/meetings/frontiers2005/mGluR.html
There’s many more. And if you Google ‘alcohol self-medicate mental disorder’ you’ll find dozens of results showing that alcohol is often used by people with disorders in an attempt to self- medicate.
Bottom line is that the chemistry of our brains affects what we do and some people’s brains respond to ingested chemicals in a way that makes them crave those chemicals or need those chemicals to mitigate other issues.
This is a very good discovery. Why? Because it doesn’t absolve people of ‘personal responsibility’ (I’ll get to that more later) but shows there may be a cure available once we sort out how all these mechanisms work and figure out how to repair them.
It seems most of the other posters are hard at this one so I’ll let them have at it. For every anecdote that they work there’ll be anecdotes they don’t. My take is it’s worth a try at least.
Many of the people who started out in life believing, as everyone used to, that any ailment above the neck was ‘all in your mind’, continue to firmly believe that. Science has moved very far along in the past 10-15 years. We can observe and study the brain now in ways we never could before. And what we’ve found out is - surprise! - the brain is a hunk of meat. It’s just an organ. Put me under on the operating table, take your probe and stick it in one bit of my brain and I’ll laugh. Stick it in another and I won’t be able to speak. We can feed someone a drug and watch them act insane because the drug has changed the way their brains work.
And as I said before, any woman who has snapped at someone while in the throes of PMS, even while another part of her own brain is telling her ‘you’re being a bitch’ understands that certain reactions seem uncontrollable. That’s because we are still, despite the (relatively recent) development of our frontal lobes (the bit that does the reasoning, planning, etc.) animals and our bodies default to automatic circuitry.
Take out or damage a person’s frontal lobe and you remove their brakes. They will not be able to restrain their actions even if they want to. There is only a tiny bit of our brains that is tasked with controlling our behaviour and if something has affected that tiny bit, that is not repairable by force of will.
Now. Not all drinkers are that way because of irreversible mental ailment. Some self-medicate for conditions like depression that may be treatable through CBT and with other drugs - but they first have to accept that things like depression are illnesses (see the first part of my post) and secondly accept treatment. And not all can and not all will.
And this is a classic fallacy of thinking. You are not everyone and everyone is not you. You have evidence of this every single day in that your tastes, behaviour, attitudes, etc. are different. So, too, are your abilities, talents, flaws. So just because you needed an ‘ass-kicking’ to solve your problem does not mean that every other human would benefit from one. Their problems are as individual as everything else about them and therfore what will work for one person won’t work for another.
And, frankly, it’s unfair to think it would. Unfortunately, an awful lot of people fall into this kind of fallacious thinking.
Bottom line is that your father is a broken person. For whatever reason, he turned to alcohol to solve some sort of pain. Perhaps he could have solved that problem a different way, but when he was younger, men weren’t supposed to feel bad, people were supposed to be ‘personally responsible’ and ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ and in general not feel miserable. The accepted way for a man to deal with whatever bothered him was to fight or shoot stuff or drink. Your dad drank. And then the chemistry took over. Or it didn’t.
All I know is that what I’ve heard from a lot of people with addictions is that living life naked and unprotected from its harshness by a blanket of chemically-induced fuzz is very hard and painful. And unless you can find a way to mitigate that, they’ll often go back to their fuzzy safe shelter from the world.
You can hate people for this if you like (not you specifically, OP). I think it’s very sad. When I was younger I bought into the myth that people are tough and strong but as I’ve matured and learned I’ve discovered that practically every person you look at is wounded somehow. Some soldier on better than others - they’re blessed with more strength. The ones who bluster about how tough and strong they are usually aren’t. And we all could do better by affording each other a lot more compassion and understanding because censure pretty much never helps.
The deal with A.A. is that a couple drunks found a way to stop drinking that worked for them. Then they passed it on. And I never said that anyone in A.A. is treating the underlying genetic issue. I said that there appears to be an underlying genetic component to alcoholism and that A.A. can help with the problem of alcoholism. I never said that it A.A. is the only way, that it is a cure or that it treats the underlying genetic disorder. As far as I know, there is no treatment that cures any genetic disorder*.
Also, what ‘sweeping generalzations’ did I make? I cited a study, one of many I might add, that shows that there is a genetic component to alcoholism and made the observation that A.A. can help. I never made any stronger claim.
As far as qualified medical professionals and A.A. almost all treatment centers, including The Meadows** and Betty Ford, use A.A as part of the treatment program. There are certainly qualified medical professionals at those centers. The Meadows uses A.A as the base of their treatment program for alcoholics. I know, I was there.
Since I have been kind enough to back up my assertions with cites, can you provide cites showing that A.A is ‘dangerous and misleading’?
Slee
*Unless there has been a major breakthrough that I am unaware of, there is no cure for any genetic disorder.
** The Meadows, for those who do not know, is one of the countries highest rated recovery centers.
Well, Quiddity, that was quite a very much helpful response. You’re looking to become one of my favorites.
Certainly I could not argue with this. As a sufferer of PTSD and someone endlessly fascinated with the science of how the mind works, I don’t argue against the physiological nature of alcoholism (or PMS, since you mentioned it… and man did you nail that one.) What I’m curious about, though, is to what extent our brains are responsible for our behavior, and to what extent we have moral imperatives that override those brain impulses. For example, I can’t control what happens to my body when I have a PTSD flashback, but I can control my behavior, to a reasonable extent, during the flashback. I can’t control the feelings of rage I have when I have PMS, but I can control, with a little “willful” mindfulness, what comes out of my mouth. I guess in a broader sense, this is the classic “free will” argument.
Makes plenty of sense to me. My uncle is severely schizoaffective, and probably smokes four packs a day. My relatives often chide him and try to get him to quit, but there have been lots of studies on how schizophrenics use nicotine to relieve their symptoms.
Yeah, classic stuff-- lots of studies on sociopaths (those creepy people who completely lack empathy with others and feel nothing in the face of seeing the suffering of their fellow man) have revealed that they have completely abnormal activity going on in the frontal lobe. And that’s where it become clear to a certain extent people can’t control their actions given certain conditions in their brain. I am of a firm belief that there’s nothing to human behavior or consciousness that exists outside of the physical reality of the brain… it’s literally all in our heads. But what I’m wondering is for a given condition – in this case, alcoholism – at what point does a physical condition become overridden by a moral imperative? Sociopaths may not be able to control their behavior but we still put them in jail or execute them. And no, I’m not saying alcoholism is anywhere near severe or dehumanizing condition as sociopathology, but I’m trying to understand to what extent I must be held morally accountable for what I do when I have PMS, and to what extent others must be held morally accountable for what they do when they are alcoholics. Does that make any sense at all?
I can imagine it would be very painful. As I have mentioned before, I do have some inclination to drink, and as a result I’ve chosen a lifestyle that’s almost completely alcohol free. At no point did I really face serious addiction, because I didn’t really have friends who drank on a regular basis or situations in my environment where I would be likely to drink to escape the stress of my life. But supposing I did, what would have happened? I can’t answer that question. I just have to keep it in mind in case my environment ever does change. That said, I can’t really imagine what true addiction is like, but your words here have really helped me, in a big way, to get a better sense of what’s going on.
Fair enough. I still hold some very strong opinions about the way we (by “we” I mean the U.S., where I live) as a culture address behavioral or for lack of a better word “psychological” problems (I know psychology is not outside of the physical realm, but I’m trying to make a distinction between something like depression and something like a broken arm.) Those opinions are based on my interest in psychology and in scientifically supported treatments. By and large the research I run across says that things that are commonly accepted in mainstream society (and mainstream psychology, for that matter), such as “talk therapy” (psychodynamic) or many other forms of treatment, work just about as well as placebo. Your doctor would not hesitate to send you to a psychodynamic therapist, even though the research is just not there to show that it works very well at all. So even though I have great empathy for these issues, and acknowledge that I am emotionally invested in them as well, I still am trying to be objective as I can manage–and the science just isn’t there. I have run into a lot of problems explaining this to people on the Dope. They think I’m just throwing out irrational and emotion-based opinions. There is emotional bias to my opinions and how deeply I feel about them, but the science I am using to back them up is not emotionally biased.
best Dustin Hoffman accentQuiddity Glomfuster… are you… are you trying to seduce me?
Well, that’s just beautiful. For the record, I’m not personally the hating type. Sometimes I feel a little angry at my Dad, because if he hadn’t lost custody of me maybe he could have prevented all the horrible stuff from happening to me that subsequently did (no, I wasn’t put in foster care, I was living with my Mom… but he wasn’t ever there to protect me from her or her husband, and that does hurt me.) In that respect I see him as having been neglectful. But I have a relationship with him again, after 12 years of separation. I’m not mad at him. I’m not even mad at my Mom. I just have clarity now that I didn’t before.
And to refer to all the venom that came off the in the OP the attack of “whiny victimology” – it’s not an attack on the “victim” at all, not an assessment of that person’s moral worth. I’m attacking that as a mode of treatment because I’ve never seen any evidence that it successfully changes behavior or helps people. My most grievous error was in overgeneralizing that phenomenon by applying it to AA’s treatment of alcoholism. I still have my reservations about AA (again with the science), but I see that it is not an organization that encourages the shirking of responsibility. In that sense it has a lot more going for it than many other kinds of “treatment.” So again… wasn’t attacking the “victim” but the treatment itself. Wasn’t attacking myself for wasting 6 years-- myself was working my mo-fo ass off doing everything conceivable to help myself… therapy was a freakin’ extracurricular activity for me, sometimes it seemed like a full-time job. I was attacking the system that thought “talk therapy” was the best way to treat me, and me wasting all that time trusting they knew best. It’s a different kind of outrage, more systemic. I just wanted to make the distinction clear.
I’m sorry, I have no choice but to respond with THIS!
And you as a professional knows what will work I assume. There is excellent evidence that almost all of psychotherapy does jack shit (with the exception of some cognitive behavioral therapies) yet people still get recommended to speak it and some report that it works. What should one do if you have such a problem"
I was in a Harvard medical school study 2 years ago that was interested in combining the most cutting edge treatment for both mental illness and substance abuse. We had educational classes and support groups but one of the main anchors to the class was tracking our attendance and progress at AA (or a similar group). These researchers are at the cutting edge and that is the best that they had. I am of the mind that you shouldn’t criticize an approach like AA unless you have something better and on one can. When come back, bring better idea.
AA can work for a very simple reason. The meetings are everywhere all the time. There are over 3000 meetings a week in the Boston area alone. It doesn’t matter exactly what they do as long as it is marginally supportive. Nothing else can match the accessibility. In addition, someone who is new to recovery can have as much free support as needed in the early stages at least. You would have to be brain dead to see that significant time spent ion AA meetings during the very hard first weeks of recovery is better than sitting at home (or the street) alone thinking that this cannot be done.
You are correct in that. All support groups for this type of thing, including AA don’t let people wallow in excuses. AA has been criticized for almost being the opposite in this regard. Every meeting shows you people that have made it regardless of how terrible things were. People point out that you can have it too as long as you want it bad enough, keep coming back, and have the determination to work the steps. You are welcome to talk about the bad things that brought you to that point but it actually has little bearing on what is suggested that you do next.
Do you have any facts to dispute the findings of the A.M.A. that alcoholism isn’t a disease or just your own personal opinions that A.A. is bullshit?
Alcoholism has been studied since the 1800’s and physicians with medical degrees as fine as you own have determined it’s a disease. Do you have any scientific proof that it isn’t? Anything to dispute the genetic testing being done?
Do you have any facts at all to back up your assertions that it isn’t a disease? I think it’s pretty insulting to the members here who suffer from alcholism or have family members that do without some factual basis for you opinions to cite besides an episode of South Park.
Here, I’ll try to explain this concisely since there’s a lot to wade through in this thread. My original OP was a piece of shit that neither explained my motivations, inquiries, or lack on knowledge on the subject at hand. It came off as 100,000 times more offensive than I intended it to, and it also confused the hell out of people what i wanted to know. So, I retracted the OP and rephrased the question.
Try this and see if you like it better:
Basically I got plenty of information regarding the “disease” model of alcoholism. There’s also some stuff on page 3 of the thread that explains my anger is not directed at sufferers of alcoholism, it’s directed at universal or systemic acceptance of treatments that haven’t been proven to work. That anger comes from a direct interest in seeing people be able to get the help they deserve when they are brave enough to take responsibility for themselves in the first place, it seems only fair that they would be offered treatment options that have been proven to work.
If you still are really pissed off at me, I don’t think I can change your mind.
Yep. Not only the ‘majors’ like schizophrenia and bipolar but people medicate for disorders like depression and anxiety, too.
Exactly.
Just because we do doesn’t mean we should. I think executing criminals is wrong, particularly given the studies showing the extremely high rates of illiteracy, learning disorders, and general disorders in the prison population. Lock them up to protect society, yes, but do so to help them.
Yes but the answer is clearly not simple because every person is different. I get good results in controlling my PMS with vitamin E. It seems to really help the mood swings. Others get no results and others need much stronger medicines to manage.
Now, if you know for certain there’s a PMS drug that you could take perfectly safely and that would take away all your bad behaviours and you had no disorders of thought that prevented you from accepting that they’re safe, and you just flat refused to take them, you’re responsible IMHO because you’ve got the chance to change and you refuse it. Or if you know you’re grumpy, rather than denying it, you can absent yourself from others or else warn them that you’re moody. In short, I think ‘accepting responsibilty’ can extend fairly to acknowledging that you have a condition and trying to deal with it.
But then some people with disorders are in denial as part of the disorder so you can’t blame them for their thinking. It’s useless to do so anyway. What you have to do is figure out what will work to convince them to get the help they need. And, as you know, some people just never will be able to.
My granddad was an alcoholic, an aunt was quite the lush for a long time, and rumour has it that my mom was into the sauce but quit after I was born (though she would drink and stop at a couple so I guess she wasn’t a classic addict). I have never been drunk and don’t care to be because I worry that there might be a prediliction buried someplace in my wiring. Although I may take after my dad, who couldn’t drink, because I don’t enjoy the ‘buzz’ you get on the second drink (and I drink one drink an hour) so never get farther than that. Still, I’m always wary of addiction and avoid potentially addicting behaviours. I’ve never tried drugs and never will.
Exactly.
Well, a lot of this science is pretty new and so hasn’t really percolated into mainstream thinking yet. Those of us who are interested and keep up need to educate those who aren’t and don’t
Maybe. Only if you’re a boy, though
Wasn’t pointing fingers.
Sounds like you’re one of those lucky people who can take a balanced view to things which affected you in the past. I am, too. I don’t think that means I’m stronger than others. I think it’s a gift, and I’m grateful.
True, because AA’s ‘treatment’ is much more involved with the patient than is your classic ‘talk therapy’. It will and can work on people who may drink for emotional reasons only.
(Aside: whew - my system got ‘dangerously low in resources’ and froze for fifteen minutes and I thought I’d lost all the above :eek: . A pox on memory leaks).
Ah yes, well there’s a lot of education to be done - not only of the public but of medical professionals, too. Remember, most of the ones working today graduated before all this stuff happened and they may not be keeping up with it. There’s so much going on in medicine these days.
Its a shame you were dragged through all that, but they were doing the best they knew how. On the flip side, isn’t it grand how rapidly new discoveries are being made these days? I have a hope that people like serial killers and murderers can one day be diagnosed and treated before they do harm to others or themselves.
I know many doctors who are doing just fine staying sober in AA and staying clean in NA and CA.
I know a couple of ‘shrinks’ in the program too.
I guess tha they think it is good for what ails them, be it a ‘real’ disease or not.
I have been sober 15+ years by doing the ‘whole’ program of AA.
I tried willpower, religion, incarsaration, sitting on a stump humming, work, exercise, greed, and a lot of other things. AA seems to be working for me and IMO, because I do it all, even the part that says that to not drink. What a concept.
How to do that?
For me, AA is the difference between drinking and not drinking and the doctors and proffesional people and all those smarter than I telling me how they do it when I talk to them at a meeting.
I do not listen to non-pilots tell me how to fly and I do not listen to non-addicts or addicts that are practicing their addiction tell me how to stay clean and sober.
If science develops a pill for this disease, I’m not sure I would take it because I like my life as I live it now. Going back to drinking in moderation will gain me nothing that I want. I would have to have a complete mind rebuild without all my memories to ever make that attractive again.
So, IMO, weither or not it is really a disease or not is imaterial.
I went to a shrink a few years ago and it was silly because everything I was told, every question, I had already been asked, every suggestion I had already been given in my years of AA meetings. I went for a non related issure andat anothers request and the big surprise was that the ‘shrink’ could not have me do anything I was not already doing. This was kind of a dissapointment to the other party buit I was at least willing to try. I was not ‘broken’ after all.
If I die sober after continous soberity, I’ll know the program worked on my ailment or problem or disease or what ever it is.
That is the only way to know if any treatment was a conplete success, you die of something else. If it reoccurs, that is proof that it did not work ‘for you’ and that is all that matters.
FWIW, I completely agree with you. I’m quite set against capital punishment or imprisonment as a form of punishment, not only based on what I know about the way the brain works, but because there’s so much evidence that punishment doesn’t deter behavior anyways. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I believe in free will at all. But I acknowledge that we in the very least FEEL like we have free will, so it’s almost a moot point when it comes to holding people accountable for their decisions. When it comes to egregious crimes like murder I tend to be in favor of imprisonment-as-rehabilitation, or, if it’s clear rehabilitation is not possible, some other kind of non-revenge based treatment. The ultimate goal as I see it is keeping these people from hurting themselves or others. I don’t see how treating them harshly in any way works toward that goal.
I should have KNOWN you were a woman! :smack: You just understood PMS far too well.
It’s just as well. My husband wouldn’t like it.
That’s for sure. I think one of the greatest challenges facing neuroscience and psychology today is how little we do actually know about the brain. Why people behave the way they do is so mysterious in so many ways. And it could be one reason for one person and another entirely different reason for another person acting out the exact same behavior. Stunning.
That’s a good point. Also, what’s “well-established” in one field may not be “well-established” in mainstream society or even a different field of research. It seems fair to say that for many concepts to enter mainstream consciousness a lot of time is required before those ideas are accepted as legitimate. Unfortunately, many things get accepted as legitimate simply because they’ve been around a long time. It’s a puzzle, and it’s continuously amazing to me how open and uncertain and dynamic science can be. It’s constantly up for challenges and rewriting and new information and re-interpretations of old information. I think that’s pretty cool.
I really do love your attitude. I’m working on being more optimistic about these sorts of things, in general. I just started CBT myself… it’s pretty awesome. I think it will probably be my method of choice when I become a therapist.
As a rational human being - not a professional - I can see the evidence all shows that AA does not help at all or has very little effect. I can say you should smell a pile of dogshit when you want to take a drink and it will cure your craving. Does that have any provable validity? I doubt it, but no one can totally disproved it ( Just like AA )! So even if there are 3000 steaming piles of dogshit in my area for smelling access it doesn’t mean it is a good option for chronic substance abusers.
Maybe it’s not great but it’s one of the most successful programs out there at this time. It has helped people, it’s helped people here on this board.
Medications and or treatments to quit smoking arent that high either. Should we label them steaming piles of dogshit and not offer treatment because they aren’t 100% effective?
I am an alcoholic who drank for 20 years. I have been in AA for the past 16 years, and I have been sober 16 years.
Olive, your OP makes me feel that you just need to learn a little more about what AA really says. Maybe you are a bit sharp about the subject because of your alcoholic Dad and how that scarred you.
The disease concept is really just a way of looking at it. Take “disease” to mean “there was something wrong with me”. You will notice I just talk about myself. That is because NO AA member can judge anyone else or decide for them if they are alcoholic.
One big misunderstanding is that AA tells people “it is a disease over which you are powerless, so just go ahead and do anything you want, and it is not your fault”.
I assure you that nobody in AA has ever said anything like that to anyone. If someone did they were crazy.
What I found was that I was powerless over this thing that was wrong with me (i.e. disease for short) and that 20 years of trying on my own could not free me. But as soon as I joined with others who had also admitted they could not lick it alone, we found we could lick it together. I cannot “cure” it. If I were “cured” then I could go back to drinking and drink reasonably. Over 75 years of experience has shown that AA members who start drinking again find that the “thing that was wrong with them” is still there, when they attempt to drink reasonably.
But I don’t care about that because here is the BIG SECRET about AA. It is not really about not drinking. It is necessary not to drink, but I found it quite easy to stop as soon as I entered the program. But I will now spend the rest of my life going to meetings once or twice a week (two hours a week, big deal) and doing my daily meditation, because the more I work my program, the happier my life gets.
Go to the AA site and look at the 12 steps, Olive. Do you notice something odd? Alcohol is only mentioned once in the first part of the first step! Does that not seem odd for an outfit called Alcoholics Anonymous? But if you read all the rest, you will note that it is all about a 12-step program to help change from the person I was to the person I was meant to be. It is a program for living not just for sitting there and saying “Geez, I wish I had a cold beer!”
That is my personal story. AA does not cost you a cent of your tax money and nobody is obliged to go (except for a few court-ordered people, something we do not approve of but we cannot refuse them if they ask to come in).
Nicotine patches ( unlike AA ) are actually fairly effective.
No, I think that treatment besides AA should be offered - like behavior modification treatment. A treatment that isn’t based on superstition and the supernatural is a good start.
