A really beautiful and serious thing

[xenophon]

People do exit. Not very many people stay in AA.

There are competent alternatives to AA: LifeRing; SOS; SMART Recovery; WFS. Those are goups for those who wish to be involved in a group. One need not be involved in a formal group.

There is Rational Recovery for those who do not wish to join a group. RR is a variant of quit on your own.

Some folks, for their own good reasons, decide that participation in a group is the correct way for them.

A problem is that for people in distress, making informed choices is unlikely and/or difficult.

[Abbadun]

Hi Suzi

Threr is a lot wrong in AA Doctrine and some of it can not and should not be ignored. Each of those "errors" in AA Doctrine takes away from the overall merit of the program. At some point you have to stop and accept that there are a lot of mistakes, contradictions and lies in the Foundations of AA.

AB

Hi Claire,

Welcome. If you read my posts you will know that I have not gone to AA in years. Also, none of those programs existed when I got sober. I do not know how I missed the problems with the rhetoric--but I did. I don't mean it wasn't there--I just didn't care. Still don't. I just plain got tired of the focus on what was no longer a problem for me.

So, what type of tools are used in the programs you mentioned ? That is what I mean about other programs. Have you been ? How has it helped? What is different? I know the names--I just don't know what they offer. I know Rational Emotive Therapy because I took a course in it and all the counselors used it when doing counseling, but AA was the only actual program available to refer them to back then. And there were no treatment programs My therapist did not suggest I go to AA. But I was already sober.

Maybe I just think differently from other people. And if that is the case, then it has little to do with AA or any other program. If something doesn't make sense to me---I just ignore it. I, and I alone, am responsible for maintaining my sobriety. When I was a counselor, years ago, my groups were based on individual responsibility--for your sobriety--for your actions--for your reactions--for your happiness. NO program will keep you sober unless you wish to stay sober. NO program can dictate how to live your life or what to believe in and if you let it ---then that is your choice---not theirs. If you do not like what is available in one program---go look for another. It is your responsibility to determine the course of your life. I got sober and I started reading books about alcohol and about therapy and how to books and some were great and some were nonsense. Going to AA did not stop me from doing anything I wanted to do, but it did remind me that drinking was not a good idea. Dogma was not popular in LA in the 60's and politically correct was not even heard of--so maybe AA is different today. I know what the "book" says but most of us just ignored a lot of it and it was ok. Guess I'm just out of tune--but I kinda know that. Getting old is a bitch.

SuziQ

[SuziQ]

Hi Abbadun

I, frankly, do not see that I EVER said that AA or any other program was perfect.

So, if you feel that you will win some sort of debate by my saying it is not perfect---fine. You won---now what?

I am not and will not be in some sort of contest to see who is right and who is wrong. I cannot say for sure and will not research it---but, most, if not all, literature has inconsistancies and contradictions. So What?

I have stated my personal beliefs and my personal experiences and, even there, there may be inconsistancies. So I am not perfect either. Big deal. I knew that a long time ago.

SuziQ

[Nightwatch]

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Edited December 13, 2011 by Nightwatch

[SuziQ]

Claire,

AA started back in the 30's. I have no idea how it became so popular, but suspect it was by word of mouth. People are strange. Some like one TV show, some like another. As a disease, treatment can be covered by insurance. As for treatment centers, they were not, as such, known much when I got sober. Abuses cannot be addressed as the whole thing is set up as individual groups with no one in charge. I think TV and the internet have a lot to do with the hype of almost anything. Therapy is very popular today. Some therapists are great, some are lousy and some are abusive. Religion can be abusive and many don't agree with it, but it still persists. It can be healing for some, destructive for others.

Write a book about the abuses of AA, get it published, hope it becomes a bestseller and MAYBE then there will be a shift in public perception. ( This is not meant for you, specifically, just as a suggestion)

There is so much out there that I do not agree with--a pill if you are unhappy, a war I personally did not believe in, outpatient treatment for people with extreme mental illnesses, and on and on. Disagreement on idealogies has gone on for centuries, even before mass media.

Nothing said on this entire post shocks me, surprises me, or is contrary to things I saw when I got sober.

Alcohol gets people drunk and it is popular and legal. And people will abuse it. Prohibition didn't work so it remains popular and legal today.

AA is "the treatment of choice" today, but it will one day lose it's status and another equally controversial program will take its place.

Because my experience in AA is different from your (collectively meant) experience in AA does not not negate or validate anything. We all respond differently to stimuli.

How many angels dance can dance on the head of a pin? First, are there angels?

SuziQ

[Nightwatch]

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Edited December 13, 2011 by Nightwatch

[SuziQ]

Hi Claire,

My point was exactly what yours was---you did talk about how AA became popular and what to do that could change the perception that it should be the treatment of choice.

Those were serious ideas about anything that is popular and considered the "in thing"---not because I had a positive experience in AA.

Unless I misunderstood your post, I thought it was about how to change a perception that AA is best or should be the only available treatment. I was not being facetious about writing a bestseller---doing that, getting on talk shows, getting people to try something different, and letting the public somehow know--- is at least one route to changing a collective perception.

I was responding to the WHY that you asked. The answer is that it is a public perception and I was merely responding to how public perception might be changed.

I, too, believe that people should have choices. I, too, believe that one method does not work for everyone. And my response was NOT about you or me. I just had a difference of opinion by phone with someone in a treatment center concerning a different addiction because they started spouting the 12 step theory. I, actually, do not even see why there is an inpatient center concerning that addiction. I was only looking for information about someone else and how that addiction manifests itself in behaviors.

Since this last post was to me, I am responding to it. Frankly, I have NO CLUE how to change public perception and I have NO objection to anyone changing it--at least about AA. I do wish there were other alternatives--my last husband could not get sober with AA or treatment centers. He was a wonderful, bright, funny, caring man. I NEVER (although I was sober) demanded he go to AA or any other treatment--he tried his best because he wanted to be sober. It did not happen.

SuziQ

[Gene S.]

Hi Claire,

it should be the treatment of choice.

how to change a perception that AA is best or should be the only available treatment.

SuziQ

Sorry if I am interrupting your dialogs, but since when are 12 step peer support groups consider to be a treatment?

Second if you want to consider it a successful treatment, the results of such treatment should be run against the placebo effect. In case of 12 steps group it can not be done, because the effect of 12 steps participation is a "Placebo Effect" and obviously we can't compare placebo effects.

[Nightwatch]

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Edited December 13, 2011 by Nightwatch

[John Rutledge]

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Edited October 28, 2009 by John Rutledge

[xenophon]

I am not a mind reader. I do not know the motivation for acting as if 12 were the only method. I doubt that a honest answer from those dispensing the "medicine" will be forthcoming.

I suspect; but, cannot prove, that the best answer would be: "When your only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

[John Rutledge]

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Edited October 28, 2009 by John Rutledge

[Nightwatch]

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Edited December 13, 2011 by Nightwatch

[xenophon]

Treatment centers, etc, are doing what they know. Perhaps it is unfair to say that they should know better and do better. But, inertia is a problem.

I have thought for a while now that severity of the problem has lot to do with whether there is a solution. Not a profound thing to say; but, I think that severity has a lot to do with it. Also important are the processes driving the abuse. Sometimes, the drinking arises from peer pressure and youth. Sometimes, it is situational, such as job loss or grief. Sometimes, it arises from serious conditions, such as a personality disorder.

I think that these processes are important -- and, everyone has his own process. That complicates matters -- real people tend to refute stereotypes.

Whatever methods are used, the first thing that needs to be done is: stop using.

[peaceful1]

I've been to my share of meetings. It's easy to see how someone could fear that it is a cult. Salvation (from drinking) is offered and granted to those who are willing to surrender what they believe to be their "self." I am not an alcoholic, but have gone through a spiritual transformation that is similar to what members of AA experience, and what anyone who truly stops drinking must accomplish. I am not religious. What I have experienced can be communicated to another person in a philosophical way, or a religious way, and it truly matters not the path a person takes as long as the end result is the same. I have written to Christians about this transition into a new and joyful life, using the teachings of Jesus. I have talked about this topic with Atheists and Agnostics in a scientific language and a philosophical language. Like I said, it doesn't matter. So, I believe that AA can point a person toward the direction of Enlightenment, or the end of suffering, but can't take them there. Alcoholism itself can be seen as a path to enlightenment if someone can overcome it.

"Hitting rock bottom" is a point where someone can say, "I just can't live with myself anymore." At that point, it may strike the person that there is more than one "self" inside them, that in order to be fed up with yourself, there must be a part that loves itself enough to be fed up with misery. There is a great amount of fear associated with this. The false (miserable) self wants to keep existing, wants to go on suffering. Suffering is what it eats, and alcohol (for many) is how it cultivates that food. The alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, unless he becomes like the few enlightened people that have walked the earth and shed's his/her identity completely (people often think of buddha and Jesus, but there are others that have known this bliss). Forgetting the past, not worrying about the future and living in the only moment that truly exists--right now--is part of shedding the self. AA teaches "just for today" Surrender is extremely powerful. Who we think we are becomes transparent and the REAL being comes into view. The REAL being is connected and constantly showered in the lightness of peace and tranquility and bliss. Through surrender, it is possible to see that loneliness is an illusion. All suffering, including Alcoholism is an illusion. Some, who have been through AA have discovered this. The AA old timers have not shed the self, in my opinion, but modified it into a preacher, a helper, an encyclopedia of psychological struggle, and a condescending parent, and yes, a non-drinker. Those who have used AA as enlightenment don't drink because they no longer identify with the self that was an alcoholic, thus they have transcended AA and the rest of the manifested world. I think that fairly soon, we will all shed our identities during life (as opposed to the moment of our deaths) and transcend the suffering. Many are doing it right now. At this very moment. The moment your eyes glance at these words.

In conclusion, AA can be the start of looking at oneself in spiritual/metaphysical terms, not as a diseased body and mind, but a living force that is NOT sick, and needs no cure other than to wake up from a nightmare. And of course we can all see haw it can fall drastically short of the goal.

Edited August 26, 2008 by peaceful1

[Ray Smith]

"I'm not saying that AA is practiced secularly; I'm just saying it could be."

But then it wouldn't be AA. AA requires turning your will over to God. If a person attempts to work AA as a secular program, they are met with open hostility. Of course some people do it and don't say anything, but that defeats the concept of rigorous honesty, or at least it does in my mind.

Many, if not most of the people do not work the program as presented in the Big Book and the 12 & 12. Most never bother reading the second book. (Some groups tell newcomers not to read the 12 & 12 until they've been in the program for awhile.) It details the bait and switch methods they use, how to soft pedal the religious aspects of the program until the convert is ready. It reads like an indoctrination handbook. Most rely on others interpreting the literature for them, the way that most Christians allow their priests and preachers to tell them what the Bible says. Some people find peer support in the rooms without getting to involved what the program is or does. They often leave after they've gotten what they've needed, but that is also contrary to the program.

Most of the people in the rooms relapse and each time they are told they didn't "work the program hard enough"; they are shamed. Some redouble their efforts, some give up. For people that used alcohol to cover up mental health symptoms such as anxiety or depression, do they really need ego deflation?

I was diagnosed with depression in the early 70s, before I started drinking. Ten years later I had a severe addiction to alcohol and went to detox where I was told I must go to AA or I would drink again. So I went.

When I told people I wanted to know how I, as an atheist, could work the program, I was told I needed to got out and do some more "research" (drinking) and come back when I was "teachable" (broken down bad enough to convert). I left several times, did lots of "research", but it never proved anything about God to me.

During my times in the rooms, whenever I talked about being diagnosed with depression, it was dismissed as "being on the pity pot". I was told that if I took medication, I wasn't really sober and that if I worked the steps properly, God would restore me to sanity, I didn't need therapy. I was taught that I had a disease, that I was powerless, that it wasn't my fault: all great excuses to continue drinking. After all, if only God could help me, and I didn't believe in God, I was helpless.

One of the things that soured me on AA was the way people in the rooms talked about the suicides that occurred. "At least he died sober", or if he drank first, "He just couldn't get this simple program". Now wait one minute! Since when is the program more important that the individual they claim to exist for? "Some must die so that others might live" may be fine on a battlefield, but since when is that appropriate in suburbia? They claim these deaths as some sort of proof that the program works!

After bouncing in and out of the rooms for years, never achieving more than a few months of sobriety at a time, in 2001, I finally got a decent therapist who listened and didn't look at my objections towards AA as me wanting to go back to drinking. He helped me to empower myself, and I was able to stay stopped.

Because of my trials and tribulations in the rooms, I was asked by a local ACT program to tell my story to a group of dual diagnosis clients, all of whom had experienced problems in AA. That evolved in my co-chairing a weekly group, and them my becoming a peer advocate. I saw many people who were not alcoholics forced into 12step treatment where their mental health needs were not met. They invariably got worse in the rooms.

I now work for an ACT program in a different state and own or moderate several recovery and recovery from AA groups.

It doesn't matter if AA is a cult or whether it's religious, what really matters is whether AA works or not. AA has fared poorly in study after study, where are all the studies that live up to AA's claims? There aren't any. (OK, the laughable Moos study that showed the longer a person is in AA, the more likely it is that they are sober, but has nothing to do with cause and effect.)

Kathleen Scaicca claims that the success rate for people with a dual diagnosis in traditional 12step groups is "too small to be accurately measured". That has certainly been my personal experience, and now it's my professional experience as well.

[xenophon]

What did I see in AA? Not very much.

It is a place that an offender is sent. The offender gets his attendance sheet signed. A significant number of attendees may be mandated. Their demeanor and behavior was all over the map.

I saw old timers. Most of these old timers spoke a few cliches -- What they said was predictable.

There were those who were -- clearly -- struggling; struggling with drink and/or state of mind. And, making no progress.

There were those who came as a form of insurance -- an amulet if you will -- against drinking. None of those had much to say Perhaps many of those had no good way of explaining why they left to friends and family. Perhaps, they had neither. That does happen to heavy drinkers.

I did not see: practical advice; real support which builds confidence; straight talk about living a regular life [ with all that entails]; real active listening.

AA is not, really, very much of anything. I have come to think that AA exists because it exists. It has little to do with drinking; it has little to do with anything at all.

People do quit or cut back on their own. It does not matter whether that is believed or not. No one actually needs to believe that, at the end of the day, everyone quits or cuts back on their own.

[Ray Smith]

I also was not aware that AA was supposed to help with mental illness--QUOTE]

It doesn't, they're not a mental health service so they should quit pretending that they are a cure-all for everything.

About half of all alcoholics have a mental illness according the NIMH. The anti-medication/anti-therapy faction of AA does a lot of harm. Some folks in the rooms interpret "restore us to sanity" as meaning if you do the steps properly, God will fix your mental health while He's at it.

If I brought up that I suffered from clinical depression, I was accused of being on the 'pity pot'. In what way is that the least bit helpful to someone who is suicidal? "Take the cotton out of your ears and stuff it in your mouth" is another fine thing to tell people when they come in desperate for help and have questions.

Many with mental health issues are fooled by the 'love-bombing' that occurs when they are new. At the first hint of mental illness, whether through self-disclosure or by their actions, the good folks who will 'love you until you can love yourself' withdraw. It can be very confusing for those in early recovery. They end up hanging out with the only folks in the rooms who will talk to them, the chronic relapsers and the predators.

In the rooms people are told that as long as they do not drink, they are fine. Some believe it and ignore their mental health. They see the people in the rooms on a weekly, maybe daily basis. A therapist who see them for a 50-minute hour once or twice a month doesn't have the kind of influence the people in the rooms have. A hundred of your 'friends' telling you that you are powerless and a therapist trying to empower you, who are you going to believe?

[xenophon]

The blind leading the blind.

Practising medicine without a licence is a felony. And, this anti medication cabal in aa is doing just that.

The best reason to go to AA is to get out of the house. It offers nothing on how to actually stop drinking. It offers no practical advice on doing that. IT offers little "moral support" ; it does offer puerile bromides such as "let go and get god". Etc.

The best reason to attend aa is to get out of the house. That is about all the good that aa does: it gets you out of the house.

[Nightwatch]

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[xenophon]

Claire, I agree.

Very little is really devoted to mental illness and substance abuse. And, they are linked. It is a matter of "charisma". Neither one has any glamor; and, "crazies" and "drunkards" are not respected. Nor, are either really worthty of help. Compare "lunacy" and "alcoholism" with cancer or heart disease.

[Abbadun]

Hi

Thinking about my sobriety I realize that the AA reading material after the "honeymoon" period of Sobriety has had more of a negative effect on my Sobriety than anything else.

I do like talking to other people with my problem, so I go to topic, speaker meetings and sometimes a "As Bill Sees It" meeting. Mostly it is the defeat and success of other addicted people that teachs me.

At this point I get much more reading benefit from books like:

"Don't Sweat the Hard Stuff"

"Seven Secrets of Highly Effective People"

"Taming the Monkey Mind" and other Buddhist Writings

Text Books for School

Human Resources, Team Management and Change Management

AA Literature tries to do some of the stuff the above Literature does, but AA Literature is tainted with the Authors' narrow-minded (zero diversity) mindset.

Anyone who think a slogan contains the solution to the diversity of addiction is crazy

Abbadun

[effectivehelp]

"I only wish that there were more secular and science-based self-help programs out there for alcoholics and other addicts. "

There is a completely secular rehab out there, it's called Narconon. It teaches life skills and gives power back to the addict.

I've never been to AA or NA but I have heard about the steps, the religious nature of it, and proclaiming yourself powerless. This never seemed right for me and never made sense.

Narconon teaches being responsible and accountable for your own actions and makes you aware of what you are doing and of your environment. It's amazing.

I hate to sound like an advertisement but the program works...

Edited December 10, 2008 by Mark
removed live link to a Narconon website

[effectivehelp]

In further reading the messages in this discussion I have quite a few things to say. I agree that AA does not work for MOST people for the reasons mentioned above. It doesn't give you any solutions, it tells you that you are a victim to yourself and that you should succumb to that, learn to cope with it, and be miserably sober. This kind of lifestyle does not work for most people, then again it does work for some. The statistics are so low that they are not publicized however I would say it's less than 10%.

Furthermore, when it comes to bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses, these are grossly over diagnosed. Most people are just sad or stressed out and have absolutely no solution on how to deal with their problems, hence the moodiness and acting out in strange ways. Teach them some skills, give them constructive ways of dealing with their emotions. They will stop.

Again, I truly believe in the validity and strength of the Narconon Program and believe one day it will replace AA in our judicial system. It works.

Edited December 10, 2008 by Mark
removed live link to a Narconon website

[John Rutledge]

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Edited October 28, 2009 by John Rutledge