And that’s all AA’s, fault, right?
Look, I hear you-my godmother and favorite aunt died of the effects of the disease roughly about five months or so after she finally got sober. She was going through AA and doing so well. Unfortunately, her body had yet to recover from the years and years of abuse, and she caught an infection and it killed her.
But that wasn’t the fault of AA-which was helping her.
AA and anything of its type has a close analogy in Churchill’s famous saying: “Democracy is the worst for of government except for all others.” The same thing goes for support groups.
What do you have to compete against that type of thing?
Individual therapy - crap for this purpose and lots of related things that people blindly recommend it for. Don’t believe me" Check out the research yourself.
Detox - medically necessary but doesn’t exclude AA after it is finished in 3 - 5 days. By itself, horrible relapse rate.
Modern medicine - there are some drugs like Naltrexone that show promise but no magic bullet. The doctors still tell you to go to AA.
Long-term rehab - not that much different than regular AA meetings and they almost always have AA meetings as part of the rehab. Costs $$$$ and its over when its over.
In short, pretend you or a close relation has a drinking problem. What do you tell them to do based on either the above or any other thing in the world you can think of? Unfortunately, people always think there must be something better when, in fact, there isn’t. It isn’t logical to attack the best we have just because it isn’t perfect and the stats still seem miserable.
No one is looking anywhere else because AA has a stranglehold on the industry. 99.99+% of treatment centers are AA based. They are staffed by hardcore AA members and proponents. Every doctor I have ever seen in and out of treatment centers knows about 12 step treatment EXCLUSIVELY. It is absolutely ridiculous how ignorant they are about any other option. There ARE other treatments available. Good luck finding any professional who knows anything about them though. Also good luck if you need help and you don’t believe in the supernatural. 12 step programs are a backwards step in the treatment of substance abuse as far as I am concerned, akin to telling a schizophrenic to go to church and pray for the voices to go away.
Heh. Yep, I gots the joy.
Fascinating, really 
What it should have taught us by now is that what we think we know today may all be changed by the discoveries made tomorrow. It happens all the time to the point that I don’t understand people who stand on science as absolute. It’s clear it’s dynamic. And that’s exciting IMHO. You never know in the morning what new and wonderful piece of information may have been discovered by evening.
Thanks much. It’s about peace of mind. Have a read of Albert Ellis if you haven’t already. Then read some Buddhism. A lot of the same concepts
You’re going to be a therapist? Excellent!
Okay, this is really too much. I’m a huge fan of Ellis and I’m a Zen Buddhist.
Hey, I’ve got to hand it to you. This is an incredibly diplomatic response to something that came off as an (albeit unintentionally) very inflammatory OP. I don’t know if you read that far, but I was able to rephrase things in a much more appropriate way. But good on you for assuming the best about me. It’s a sign of good character. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
With these two sentences, the amount that you need to learn is obvious.
*::: shakes head and wanders away. ::: *
Please enlighten me. I am curious about how you plan contradict my actual experiences.
Well VarlosZ, you talked about losing weight
It ties in with my view that alcoholism is a symptom, and it makes a lot more sense finding the cause, rather than treating the symptom and ignoring the root problem.
Same thing with weight, one might be comfort eating, it could be a lousy diet or it could be a glandular disorder.
At the extreme, if you hear a rattle in the car’s engine, do you check out the engine or buy earplugs ?
@All,
I’m a bit surprized that nobody has brought up the other thing that I understand the AA does - provide a telephone hot line mentoring system. That does sound pretty useful to me.
Who said anything about fault? I said “it” doesn’t work. A small percentage of people attribute their sobriety to it. Obviously there’s no way to prove that it didn’t work. But seriously…do you really think putting your aunt’s unfortunate situation up as an example of AA’s effectiveness is helping your argument? :rolleyes:
“I said “it” doesn’t work. A small percentage of people attribute their sobriety to it.”
:blink:
Well, several million members might disagree and maybe several millon is a small percentage but that is still a lot of folks living a lot better than they would without it.
Now tell me why again that you think it is such a waste of time for EVERYBODY?
Or do you just like to tell everybody that in YOUR opinion and limitted experience that it does not work.
Nobody speaks for AA and if someone says that AA is the ‘be all end all’, even if it is said in the media, that is wrong, wrong, wrong. “AA” does not say that or anything else like that.
Any way you can live a better life that does not include any problem that harms you, addiction to anything, is heartly endorsed by right thinking people, even those who use the AA way.
Live better any way you can. If one does not work for you try another, hopefully one will work.
AA does say in a general way that if you have tried a lot of other ways and they don’t work, try the AA way.
One of the first 100 was a hard nosed athiest. It worked for him and he did not have any truck with the ‘god’ stuff.
Lots of athiest are in AA, NA, and CA.
*:: I have heard that the human brain wants only two things.
To survive.
To be right.
The problem is that if it (the brain) is constitutionally incapable of being honest with it self, it will often give up life to prove itself right. :::*
One of many unproven cultish AA nonsensical brainwash mantras.
“Let go and let God!” Gus for we are the unwashed who could never understand how the Lord has made such a difference in the lives of many a hopeless alcoholic.
…nor can we understand why he was able to abandon the rest.
If “it” worked, I’d think your numbers would be higher than 5%. Everyone does their own thing. Everyone is free to pick and choose what sounds good to them and discard the rest. No two “programs” (uugggh…I hate that term) are alike. How can you say “it” works when no one is required to adhere to any particular piece of it? The only thing that is required is a desire to quit drinking. Hell…anyone in any other program or those who choose *no program at all * can agree on that. It’s certainly not unique to AA. Refresh me…what exactly is “it” that “works” again?
You like your groups and prayers and meetings? Fine! You got sober while doing that? More “higher power” to ya. I fail to see how that proves that AA and sobriety are linked.
[sup]Oh jeez - I hit the reply with quote tabby again in this thread! [/sup]
AA and sobriety are of course independent of each other. Millions have been helped, and I brought up this very topic at a meeting recently. The whole 5% retention rate, and most everyone in the meeting was shocked, and I saw people have [reasonably so] a little angst about the statistic. The reason they could not believe it was simple, becasue AA was such a valuable part of their life, and the pathway to which they found a means ot stay away from a drink. People do it so many different ways, some white knuckle it and try to stay away on their own [sadly many of them fail] and some select few quit on their own and are able to stay away forever. Others still think they can moderate their drinking and try as they can, in my experience they usually fail miserably. That rational recovery site what was linked to up thread scares the shit out of me, it puts the entire recovery process on an individual with zero help from other people, therapists, doctors…I have seen very few people do this an succeed. As I write this I can think of no one, and I have been around many, many alcoholics for a good long time.
Of course the process is easy, show up at meeting and don’t drink. Well why not just stop drinking and not go to meetings? Well the last person I saw try this, a soccer mom who was hiding vodka in her kids gaterade bottles, tried on her own to stop. She showed up to a few meetings and then called bullshit on them and left. 1 month later, 30 days, her husband was filing divorce papers and she was in an extensive rehab. Her children visited her for 3 weeks as she sobered up. The divorce is still happening.
The program of AA is and only can be an individual thing…But the support from others going through the same thing cannot be found anywhere else, I mean seriously how could anyone else quit for you? I am simply saying: and Kalhoun knows this, that the blanket group therapy effect does work for some [quit a few] but trying to listen to someone help you quit drinking when they themselves do not have a problem, is foolhearty. That is the very reason AA helps so amny people. Yes, yes the 5% thing again… I am taking that with a very large grain of salt, because I know waaaay too many people who are living examples across the country of the efficacy of AA.
That 5% number is also very suspect. I have heard from doctors (psychiatrists) it is closer to 2% but I guess nobody has numbers that are proven.
To contrast that you know many successes, I know way too many failures, so I tend to believe the lower numbers.
Ok, and that’s unfortunate. I hope the people you know do well wherever they seek help, I don’t care if it’s AA or the Easter Bunny, as long as they get the help they need. Period. That’s what this is all about you know.
I remember reading a statistic that said that only 5% of the people who seek to lose significant amounts of weight do so and keep it off.
That doesn’t mean a program like Weight Watchers doesn’t work. It means that the problem of weight is a very difficult and complex one.
Why can’t we accept that the same might be true of alcoholism?
I regret that my father never tried to get help. And now he’s gone. His trying AA would have meant that he was trying something. I would have cherished that.
I wish I could see details of your statistic for weight loss so I could make a better comparison. The difference is someone who wants to lose weight with Weight Watchers can do things rooted in reality. You can take real actions not based in the supernatural. For instance choose to eat better foods, count calories, eat pre-packaged meals and exersize a lot or a little. These are things that can help with a weight problem.
Today if someone asks for professional help for a substance abuse problem 99% of the time them will be advised to use AA. This is like going to Weight Watchers and instead of the real solutions listed above they just tell you to go Overeaters Anonymous meetings and hope God takes away your desire to eat too much. And if God doesn’t help and you stay fat well that must mean that you are “constitutional incapable of being honest with yourself” or some other nonsense.
The thing is, people quit without talking to others about it all the time. I realize this is contrary to AA’s “we’re all in this together” attitude, but it doesn’t change the fact that talk therapy is not a necessary component of sobriety.
Very interesting thread, and so many points to address.
I live in a country where 12-step programs are generally poorly regarded as somewhat ‘cultish’, and even worse, non-professional ! Unfortunately, the fact that obvious weaknesses of the 12-step program are widely recognized hasn’t driven us to develop any more efficient alternatives.
I think one of the problems with the “success” statistics of 12 step programs is that we’re comparing apples with oranges.
You might think of a gym as an analogy. 100 people sign up at the gym on Jan 1 in a fit of good intentions. By March, 75% have stopped coming, and most of the 25% remaining only show up irregularly. Some of those who do show up don’t make much of an effort, they hang around eating energy bars and talking the good talk. Come December we do some recovery rate and strength gain tests, and it comes as no surprise that only 10% of the 100 members have made any appreciable gains. You’d probably agree though, that this doesn’t prove that gyms are an ineffective way to improve fitness ! And this only addresses people who took out a membership - I couldn’t even count the number of people who showed up once or twice, then moved on to another gym, or decided it wasn’ t for them. I should also mention that many of the dropouts may come back two or three years later, and successfully improve their fitness levels - these people will not be included in our success rate.
When you do statistics on most treatment protocols, one of the basic assumptions is that the treatment has actually been followed. In the case of 12 step groups, and to a lesser degree talk therapies, this is a highly questionable assumption.
Specifically regarding the ‘disease’ model of addiction, I think it can be misleading. As several posters have pointed out, framing addiction as a disease can lead to a victim mentality, and hopelessness. OTOH, most of the addicts I’ve met already suffer from this… I believe the original purpose of framing addiction as a disease was political - the idea being to shift addiction from being a public order / penal issue, to being a public health issue. This mindset seems to have extended to alcoholism and other addictions. It also seems to help some addicts to stop fighting the facts, and get focussed on finding solutions. Some people seem to be less ashamed if they can say they ‘have a disease’.
I’ve been a patchy attender at a 12 step program for a number of years, and my observation is that this program is a success for some number of people, and the biggest success factor is wanting it (nothing too surprising there). I also volunteer at a methadone clinic and a free syringe program, and in their limited goals, these are successful too. The aim of the methadone program is to ‘stabilize’ addicts, reduce crime and enable them to hold down a steady job while continuing to be addicted. The aim of the syringe program is to reduce the incidence of needle sharing, and slow the spread of AIDS and hepatitis.
I lost my brother to an overdose some years ago, and lost a close friend to AIDS contracted from IV drug use. If one of the syringes I hand out saves someone from AIDS, that’s a success. If using methadone saves someone from an OD, that’s a success. Best of all, if somebody somebody kicks their addiction, builds a life, starts a family, whatever their dream is - this is something I’ve mostly (though not exclusively) seen in 12-step programs. In some sense, I think of complete abstinence as the long-shot : mostly doesn’t work out, but the rewards are infinitely richer.
I really hope I don’t come off sanctimonious here, but to the people who seem to be hostile to AA (Kalhoun ?), I think your ire is misplaced. Whether or not you accept that AA works, I’ve never seen any indication that it causes harm. And for my personal experience - I believe AA is a highly flawed program, but there’s something right somewhere in the mix. It does work for some people, and that’s all it needs to do.