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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.
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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.
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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?
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