AA and other 12 Step Groups

American health care policies are driven by personal testimony rather than by science.  In the case of alcoholism, such testimony is invariably from alcoholics who have recovered through AA.  There are many, many such people.  But they are still a tiny minority of those who experience alcohol problems, including those who recover on their own, those who are harmed by AA or 12-step treatment, and others for whom the 12 steps are ineffective or offensive.

Three studies compared AA combined with other interventions against other treatments and found few differences in the amount of drinks and percentage of drinking days. No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.

For 200 years religion, medical science, and psychology have been involved in an intricate, shifting alliance in response to addiction. With recent studies calling core principles of AA into question—like the admission of powerlessness, for example—is AA still the best we’ve got for addressing addiction, or would a different theological model work better?

The rigid abstinence preached by Alcoholics Anonymous makes the problem of alcoholism worse, according to rival group Moderation Management. "My belief is, actually, the abstinence world of AA has caused alcoholism to get worse," said Marc Kern, a California psychologist and board member of Moderation Management. "People are told in an AA meeting 'If you don't buy us 100 per cent, go out there and drink and when you hit bottom come back.' "

From the Eclectic Recovery blog. I'd like to share more from Martin Nicolaus' book, "Empowering Your Sober Self." This book is helping me articulate and understand my own experience and I believe that will help me move forward in my recovery. After six years of working the 12 steps, I felt so bad about myself inside that I didn't feel I deserved sobriety, or much of anything good in my life.

J. Scott Tonigan, Ph.D., and his associates at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, found that many one-time AA participants rarely or never attend meetings and may not place much stock in a higher power's role in their recovery, yet continue to read AA literature and believe that the organization helps them stay sober.

“It’s a cult!”  The justification many newcomers to 12 step programs exhort when family and friends inquire as to why their loved one stops attending “meetings” to assist them in their effort to stop drinking and drugging. Those unfamiliar with the untreated mind of an alcoholic/addict will often spend countless hours pleading, arguing, screaming, and/or withdrawing from the alcoholic/addict in an effort to make them see the error of their ways.

I believe that nothing is as effective for cutting through the self-centered, narcissistic ego of the addict as the 12 Step program. As I discuss in the 12-Step Buddhist, however, a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to recovery, which includes individual and group therapy, possibly medication, physical activities, meditation and regular community based service work has been more effective than the 12 Steps alone.

By Steven Orma, Examiner.com. According to the National Institutes of Health, an estimated 17.6 million American adults meet standard diagnostic criteria for an alcohol use disorder. The most widely known option in the world for people who want to quit drinking is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), with an estimated membership of over 2,000,000 people in 180 countries. However, is AA the best and only option for recovery from an alcohol problem?

Penn: "It worked because he wanted it to work and he made it work."