Ditto here, 'cept I’m a Druid. For me it was the Druid Chronicles, which was written by the founding members of the RDNA, although the last thing they were trying to do was recruit members.
I assume you mean a cite for the secular programs. I already addressed AA.
Treatment programs well-supported by scientific evidence tend to reinforce the belief that alcoholics are not powerless. Among the most popular secular programs : Moderation Management, Women for Sobriety, and SMART Recovery. See Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches: Effective Alternatives (Second Edition) by Hester, Reid, and William Miller (eds.).
Exactly. After almost 80 years of AA, those are the only controlled studies out there. When AA wants to trumpet their claims, they just point to anecdotal evidence. Wonder why?
Again, read what I said about spontaneous recovery. If a person really had the desire to quit, they wouldn’t need AA. One meta-analysis of spontaneous recovery studies showed that between 3.7% and 7.4% of alcoholics spontaneously recover in any given year.
A 1991 analysis of the previous 5 triennial AA membership surveys showed that 95% of attendees dropped out in the first year. That other 5% would fit just perfectly into the spontaneous recovery category.
Well, the official AA page still says god, not “higher power,” so that’s what I’m going by.
In the AA “Big Book,” co-founder Bill Wilson says “Remember that we deal with alcohol - cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power - that one is God. May you find Him now!” He also goes on to attack atheists and agnostics as “prejudice[d] or crazy.” Wilson’s book contains over 200 references to God in the space of 164 pages.
AA’s second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is just as saturated with religion as the first. Wilson tells the reader that “Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine.”
Regarding the origin of the twelve steps, Wilson said in a letter to Oxford Group Movement (a Protestant evangelical group) leader Rev. Shoemaker :
“The Twelve Steps of AA simply represented an attempt to state in more detail, breadth, and depth, what we had been taught - primarly by you [Rev. Shoemaker]. Without this, there could have been nothing - nothing at all.”
The religious nature of AA is so thinly veiled that four appeal-level courts have ruled that forced AA treatment is unconstitutional. (Those courts would be The Second and Seventh Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal and the state high courts of New York and Tennessee.) Unfortunately, this issue has yet to be put before the Supreme Court.
And if you have no god? Or if you think praying to a crystal or anything for that matter is downright silly?
The “as we understood him” part is merely a means to get more people in the door. It’s also a nice way to keep getting government and insurance money. Treatment is a $10 billion a year industry, and 12-step programs account for 93% of treatment facilities. If they came right out and said “PRAISE JESUS” they wouldn’t get a cent.
Oh, goody.
Besides GD (“What’s the true effaciacy of AA/NA?”), the Pit (“Non-Christians hate me and make fun of me”), ATMB (“Can the moderators split threads?”), and the original MPSIMS, now we have IMHO (“How did you find YOUR religion?”).
Anyone wanna go for GQ, CCC, or CSR?
My older brother has been saved, and as a Born again Christian, he has made it his duty to save me.
I don’t think I like this new person very much.
I want my brother back.
Clarification:
Actually the word I meant to use was “coerced,” not “forced.” As in “Go to AA or go to jail for 90 days - your choice,” not “you’re going to AA and that’s that.”
Shodan, upon rereading your post, I see you also quoted my allegation that AA makes participants more likely to binge drink. If you were looking for a cite for that too, I can oblige.
In a study conducted in Kentucky in the mid 1970s (see Outpatient Treatment of Alcoholism: A Review and Comparative Study by Brandsma, JM, MC Maultsby, & RJ Welsh [1980]), court offenders were divided into several groups.
The study reports:
“The mean number of binges was significantly greater for the AA grup (2.37 in the past 3 months) in contrast to both the control (0.56) and lay-RBT group (0.26).”
The control group received no treatment. Lay-RBT is Rational Behavior Therapy as conducted by a non-professional (layman).
Holy crap, that made my stomach drop. That line would have set of my DANGER WILL ROBINSON! alarm and had me out the door so fast his Jesus meter would break. What kind of remark is that?
I probably would have said “It’s OK- I’m armed to the teeth.”
What a weirdo.
I’ve heard it before in more than one situation. I’ve been associated with conservative Christians and I had to be extremely careful not to allow myself to be in a closed room alone with a man. (FTR, I’m not stating that all conservative Christians believe that women and men should not be alone together.) You would think that they would be more into mercy when they’re wanting me to do work but I’m being distracted because it’s too loud outside. Then there’s other situations when I was in a room talking with a man but we couldn’t close the door, even though it was rather hot outside, because then a woman and a man would be alone together in a room.
I wish that Rysdad would have posted option C earlier so I could have used it in these situations (with proper credit given, of course)!