You know, now despite your disclaimer it looks like you are picking a fight. AA was founded by at least one minister (my program knowledge is not to be relied on) and was based on a religious program. It thus bears those artifacts - like our pledge, words on money, opening prayers in Congress. Yup God and religion are there - I'm not sure what you are trying to prove with this?

There are atheists in the program - I don't know how they reconcile these passages, but I assume not everyone takes it so dogmatically as it is written (though certainly some do).

But if you feel so strongly about this, you can always choose jail time on your next DUI. Perhaps recovery statistics for doing time have a better sobriety success than AA.

OK,
I had a long response to many points that once I hit submit, it kept asking me to log in (even though I was) so I am taking it as a hint from a higher power (even if that is a SQL database) that I am not supposed to respond to Alex point by point. (I lost the post twice)


Bottom line is this:
It looks like you think treatment centers and court ordered programs to be AA. They are not. Read AA's traditions:
"An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose."
You call AA a "farce" yet you have know personally many people whom it has helped who would not have a chance had it not been for AA.
If you consider something that has saved many of your personal friends lives a farce, than that seems like a slap in the face of those friends.
It looks t me like you are picking a fight based on closed mindedness and misinformation, and I for one do take it personally.

Well, I suggest you go to an open meeting and see if you can corner someone there after the meeting is over. I'm sure they will want to spend their time talking to someone who doesn't have an alcohol problem because, that really would be worth their time. People go to meetings to get and stay sober. Period. The book has some great suggestions for doing that and the people that actually want to get sober in AA are usually in such a desperate state that the will accept help and suggestions. People don't usually go to AA meetings for fun and pleasure - at least at first. It's not a religious environment - but you surely can make it out to be one if that's the excuse you need to continue drinking.

You're not going to convince me that it is a religious program. You can try and convince someone who needs to get sober and doesn't want to that that's a good reason to say away, though. That will be really helpful.

Actually it was founded by a stockbroker/ con-artist (Bill Wilson) and a doctor (Dr. Bob). It was based off of the Oxford Group which did have religious connotation but was changed to be open to anyone. Also instrumental in helping/influencing those 2 with the start of the program were Dr. Silkworth, Carl Jung, and Emmet Fox.

I'm fairly open about my experiences here on LoT but I never have shared what a very serious struggle getting sober was for me and how it took me over 10 years to get to where I'm at now. I'm not inclined to do that here because, frankly, if you haven't been through it you wouldn't understand. That's where AA meetings are so helpful. You don't have to "prove your point" first, you can just concentrate on getting and staying sober. It saved my ass and literally my life.

The end.

Well when six people you know who tried do do it on their own have died within the last year of overdoses, suicides, accidents, and let's not forget my dear friend Beverly who was strangled to death by her boyfriend when they both decided to do it on their own and relapsed (funny things happen when you're on meth, tee hee)(oh yeah, and he's in jail permanently) then you sort of get a skewed view of how well "doing it on your own" works.

I know not one person who has been able to maintain sobriety for an extended period of time on their own. NOT ONE. Some people are able to come back into the program, and some of those people are dead or in prison due to their using.

When you go through a facility where over 60% of the people who have been through it are sober FIVE YEARS LATER, and the 12-step program is an integral part of that program, then yeah, you tend to have a little faith. (When you come back from the dead it also tends to give you a little perspective, but I digress).

If we're all just a bunch of meaningless molecules spinning through space, then how bleak and pointless getting up in the morning becomes.

So yeah, it is a personal issue because it is something I have to deal with every motherf*cking day for the rest of my life and how DARE you call it a farce.

I'm going to sleep. :mad:

Thanks, I knew there was someone out there to help get past my own laziness to do some research.

Hey, I have to wonder if I'm sorry I brought this up. I know several people here have struggled with addiction, and I had hoped we could have a reasoned discussion about it ... although I assumed passions would come to fore.

I myself have always been fascinated with the subject. I have friends and family members who have sufferered terribly from it ... and my own seeming immunity has boggled my mind at times.


I can see both sides of the coin here ... and I don't see the harm in going so far as to say AA is no more helpful than any other program, or indeed no more helpful than no program at all (if Alex is correct that just as many people stay sober through their own efforts as do via participation in a program).

That's NOT to say AA is not helpful. It may not be as helpful as anything else, but it's obviously helpful and we have first-person "testimony" right here on the LoT to demonstrate that.


I also don't care that it's got religious undertones or doctrine. Um, has it been around for more than 50 years? If so ... almost anthing in the country that's been around for more than 50 years has got religious undertones or doctrine. I don't see what the big deal is.

Yes, the criminal justice system coerces people to participate. As pointed out, it's cheap and easy, and the government makes you do it. Yes, it's not the most fair and just thing on earth. Can we just accept that and stop railing about it. There are tiny injustices everywhere.

Perhaps this one isn't exactly "tiny." Frankly, it was beyond stupid for Mr. "Some" to be forced into AA. It was a waste of his time. It was also, by the way, not experienced by Mr. "Some" as a religious program.

But being that there are thousands of independent AA meetings every hour in this country, I'm sure their are religious ones ... and political ones, and medical ones, and pizza-eating ones, etc., etc.


* * * * *

Personally, I think the more interesting discussion is not an argument about whether AA is effective or religious ... but rather why it is effective (to whatever degree it is). Why is acceptance of a power beyond yourself useful to combat addiction and relapse.


As I've pointed out before ... there's the obvious of not being able to trust yourself or rely on yourself as a basic condition of addiction. While I would hope that addicted persons could call up extraordinary resources within themselves to combat their addiction, I don't see why they should have to. Employing the idea of an outside "power" (whether it be fiction or truth) seems to be a reasonable tactic for potential success.


* * * *

For myself, though I'm not an addict, I've been pummeled by brain chemistry quite a bit (not surprising, considering all the things I've ingested that mess with brain chemistry). I've been fortunate in that in simply gaining the knowledge about particular brain chemistry functions and reactions was also gaining the power to combat them. Just knowing that feelings or cravings or emotions were the result of unusual brain chemistry that would normalize over time - enabled me to override or ride things out.

I didn't much like the thought of being at the mercy of my chemistry. And I was able to find inner resources to battle that ... resources that I might never have sought if I thought, as addicts must have for eons, that my depressions and cravings and crazy emotions were "real."

Of course, it's unlikely things ever progressed far enough to impair my basic cognitive abilities. If they had, then perhaps I would not have been able to put up a fight or would not have thought of doing so.

From what I've read recently and over time, it's the impairment of basic cognitive abilities that really fux addicts over. But - for those who don't become addicts via their cognitive disabilitie - these abilities mostly return over time ... perhaps a year or more. That's why those who don't relapse for a year or so end up with better results - - and why the longer you go between relapsing, the more successful your sobriety or abstinence will be.

If AA helps to go that important year or more without relapsing, who cares if it's got god in the mix? Who really cares if it's applied a little unfairly by the DUI system, or if it doesn't work any better than anything else?

This is all my opinion as someone on the periphery of the program, but I think what makes that useful is the acknowledgment that you, the alcoholic, are not in control of the things you think you are. That enables you to focus on what you can control - getting to a meeting (i.e. doing something other than drinking). A lot of people (and not just alcoholics) mess themselves up projecting far in the future worrying about things they have very little control over. In that respect the od thing could be seen as a thought experiment to keep you in the now, and keep you focused on recovery.

I think there are a lot of great tools that can be learned from AA (again, not just for alcoholics or other addictions). Perhaps it's all sympathetic magic - stuff people could do without AA - but it seems enough people lack those tools that they are a revelation to many who enter the program.

Alex has repeatedly used the 5% statistic to show that AA is ineffective, but without more information about that number (or any number), it's practically meaningless. Without knowing what constituted success in that study, or who was in the sample group, or the other variables that went into it, you are (ironically) just accepting it on faith. (The line about lies, damn lies and statistics comes to mind here)

There are many people I love, on this board and off, who have gone through AA and gotten better, and just looking at the Wikipedia page for AA just now revealed several studies that demonstrated AA's effectiveness. Until I can determine why/whether the figure cited above is so accurate, then I give at least as much weight to these other studies and our anecdotal evidence.

Besides, even if AA only represents a path to sobriety for those who have already chosen to get there, that makes it much more than a fraud, and I am grateful for it in any case.