Posted on 07/25/2006 10:52:10 PM PDT by neverdem
When Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are examined in controlled studies, a new review reports, scientists find no proof that they are superior to any other intervention in reducing alcohol dependence or alcohol-related problems.
The researchers, led by Marica Ferri of the Italian Agency for Public Health in Rome, found little to suggest that 12-step programs reduced the severity of addiction any more than any other intervention. And no data showed that 12-step interventions were any more — or any less — successful in increasing the number of people who stayed in treatment or reducing the number who relapsed after being sober.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a self-help group that offers emotional support for alcohol abstinence and holds that alcoholism is a spiritual and a medical disease.
In some of the studies reviewed, A.A. was compared with other psychological treatments including cognitive-behavioral therapy, which encourages the conscious identification of high-risk situations for alcohol use; motivational enhancement therapy, based on principles of social and cognitive psychology; and relapse prevention therapy, a variation on the cognitive-behavioral approach. It was also compared with other spiritual and nonspiritual 12-step programs.
One study compared brief advice to attend A.A. meetings to motivational methods for encouraging 12-step involvement. Another evaluated the effectiveness of hospital-based 12-step programs, compared with community-based 12-step efforts.
The paper was published last week in The Cochrane Library, a journal devoted to systematic reviews of health care interventions. In all, the researchers examined eight trials involving 3,417 men and women ages 18 and older.
None of the studies compared A.A. with no treatment at all, and the researchers said that made it more difficult to draw conclusions about effectiveness. About one-fifth of alcoholics achieve long-term sobriety without treatment.
There is no single known cause of alcoholism, but the researchers wrote that...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
some people can't drink in moderation once they've become addicted. One leads to two and so on, they get a false sense of confidence that they can handle it. Don't know of many alcoholics that can drink just a little!
Admitting one's alcoholism is not a step. After making that admission, a drunk can go on drinking or he or she can choose recovery. For me, it wasn't a matter of drunk or sober; it was a matter of life or death.
You listed the NA twelve steps, not AA.
Alcholism, like most addictions, is very like sneezing into a handkerchef to which you're alergic. Moderation doesn't exist for those of us who struggle with it.
Being afraid of flying
and being addicted to a substance such as alcohol
are not comparable items.
well, the most recent source is my nephew, 24, he drank, got totally wasted, public drunkeness charge and at his next meeting he was told not to worry, it happens. He's on probation for a previous DUI so AA is court ordered.
I know all about alcoholics being liars, 3 drinking siblings myself. And my brother-in-law never said he read it in any literature to blame anyone for his alcoholism, it was what he would say after being in rehabs and AA meetings. Whether it was his interpretation of what he heard or his messed up way of thinking. His main problem outside of drinking was that he never learned how to live in the real world, and once he was sober for any brief period and life would be hard he would turn right back to drinking without hesitation. Has pancreatitis from it, and had a heart attack about 5 mos. ago, recovered, went drinking and drove somebody's truck, totaled it, DUI charges pending, hasn't had a license to drive in about 10 yrs. or so and still owes about $25,000 in back child support..he's only 46. Nothing is never enough to wake him up. Might be sober now, hopefully still is, lives a few states away now so it's hard to tell over the phone.
You wrote, "...admitting you are powerless...rather than taking control of your life."
Achieving sobriety isn't about taking control of anything, at all. Drunks are huge on taking control, or rather, the illusion of control. It's about surrender to a Power greater than alcohol and greater than oneself. It's about achieving a measure of humility. It's about doing a few simple things and making sobriety one's single greatest priority on any given day. Control doesn't enter into it.
"Achieving sobriety isn't about taking control of anything, at all. Drunks are huge on taking control, or rather, the illusion of control. It's about surrender to a Power greater than alcohol and greater than oneself. It's about achieving a measure of humility. It's about doing a few simple things and making sobriety one's single greatest priority on any given day. Control doesn't enter into it."
Excellent post.
I see it as taking control of yourself, your actions. My husband quit on his own after 24 years of drinking, he was from a family of alcoholics. He said it took about two years for the fog to clear, his words, to change his way of thinking.
Bingo, peggybac! "BZ" !
Well said.
A.A. S.D. 10/10/86
Piece is about 12-Step Programs, and these are from www.12step.org. They are, word-for-word, exactly the same as AA's, except "our addiction" replaces "alcohol" in Step 1.
"quiting drinking is easy, I've done it a thousand times"
Odd to hear criticism here of a program that's main purpose is to help the individual seek God. The true alcoholic is beyond humanm aide. Nowadays alot of neurotics hang out in AA as therapy. But for the true alcoholic, the problem is not quiting drinking but finding a satisfying way of life that precludes drinking again. This can be achieved by turning one's life and will over to the care of God. the article is more atheistic european crap.
By the grace of God and the 12 Steps of AA, I have a little over 15 years of sobriety.
Congratulations!
Bad advice is rife at some AA meetings, but generally those are meetings where there isn't much sobriety; that is, those meetings with not many people in attendance with over a year of continuous sobriety. In meetings like that, newly recovering folks tend to reinforce bad ideas.
I keep it simple, myself. I pray, go to meetings, try to do the next right thing over the course of the day, and figure if I don't put drugs or alcohol in my body, then I won't get high or drunk. Yeah, I know. I'm a college graduate, and it took years to figure that one out.
Thank you!!
AA isn't necessarily for all is my point, with my husband as an example. He was up against having to face his problems, anger and alcoholism, per a domestic violence incident. He was court ordered to abstain from alcohol, which I thought would never happen. But he made a decision to stop drinking, went to a court ordered anger program called DECIDE (which I am in debt to for life!) after 12 yrs. of hell, he got his life and his wife and children back. He was court ordered to go to AA, but refused having tried that years before and couldn't relate his drinking beer from a can with all the 'bottle' talk at meetings, just where his mind was at then.
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