Challenging Alcoholic's Anonymous As The Leading Form Of Addiction Treatment

Opposing Views ^ | 02/13/2014 | By Will Hagle

[Responsibility2nd]

Alcoholics Anonymous and its related groups for other substances are undeniably the de facto standard for addiction treatment. The AA meeting is so prevalent throughout society that it has become a cliché in cinema and television. To many, it seems like the only solution. 

Pacific Standard recently ran a piece with the headline “After 75 Years of Alcoholics Anonymous, It’s Time to Admit We Have a Problem.” According to the article, “90 percent of American addiction treatment programs employed the 12-step approach” by the year 2000." The article argues that although it is the dominant form of addiction treatment, Alcoholic’s Anonymous’ religious-based, 12-step approach might not be the best option.

In his new anti-AA book Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy, former director of Harvard's substance abuse treatment unit Dr. Lance Dodes writes the following: “Alcoholic’s Anonymous was proclaimed the correct treatment for alcoholism over seventy-five years ago despite the absence of any scientific evidence of the approach’s efficacy. And we have been on the wrong path ever since.”

In fact, several alternatives to AA do exist. HAMS, for instance, is a harm reduction program that encourages addicts to complete small, realistic goals such as slowly reducing alcohol or drug use. There is also the Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a method that emphasizes participants need not submit to a higher power as AA requires them to do. There are many other addiction recovery options.  

None of these options, however, have taken over AA’s spot as the most prominent pathway to ending addiction. The difficulty in establishing an effective treatment program is that many of the programs require mental and behavioral therapy rather than medical treatment. SMART Recovery, the first result returned on Google after a search for “alternatives to Alcoholic’s Anonymous,” refers to addiction as a “bad habit” rather than a disease, emphasizing the “motivation” to quit. 

The ways in which American society treats nicotine addiction has always differed from the ways in which it treats alcohol and other drugs. There are nicotine patches, gum, and now electronic cigarettes that purport to lead to smoking cessation.  Medication in the form of a pill even exists. Varenicline, most commonly known as the brand Chantix, reduces an individual’s urge to smoke and even causes cigarettes to taste worse.  

There are also pharmaceutical drugs on the market that help reduce the urge to drink alcohol or other drugs (methadone being a common example for use in drug detoxification). But, of course, using medication to curb the problem is simply introducing a to which an addict’s body and mind becomes accustomed. 

As Pacific Standard notes, addiction is a multifactorial disease about which we still know extremely little. Treatment programs such as AA might be beneficial to a certain degree, but it’s time to increase the collective effort to discover better treatment options. 

Get More: addiction | Alcohol and Drugs | alcoholics anonymous |

[Responsibility2nd]

So. Alcoholic's Anonymous is under attack.

Why is that? (The answer is found within the article.)

[frogjerk]

Let me guess, could it be The Lord is relied upon heavily?

[frogjerk]

Lawsuit, if it hasn’t happened already: A court cannot order anyone to AA because of some imaginary “Separation of Church and State” clause in the Constitution.

[madmominct]

Yes - exactly what I was going to say - the “G” word. I love AA - it worked for me and has worked for lots of others.

[circlecity]

"In fact, several alternatives to AA do exist. HAMS, for instance, is a harm reduction program that encourages addicts to complete small, realistic goals such as slowly reducing alcohol or drug use. There is also the Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a method that emphasizes participants need not submit to a higher power as AA requires them to do. There are many other addiction recovery options."

And just what is the track recrod of these alternatives for producing long term sobriety?

[frogjerk]

May God Bless you and give you strength everyday.

[colorado tanker]

Why is that?

1. It is spiritually based. You have to believe in a higher power. That does not have to be religion based, but for most it is. They hate that.

2. It does not involve paying therapists. They really hate that.

[Kevmo]

Celebrate Recovery is Christ-based 12 steps; the CR program has been growing very fast. The problem with AA and the “secular” program is Step 3 and Step 10, where they talk about “God as we understood Him”. Members drive a truck through that loophole, so much so that if someone says that Jesus is God then they are very likely to get keyed up on for “bringing religion to the forum”.

[don-o]

I had an oldtimer (40 years sober) say that AA was “Christianity 101. Now, he did not claim to be a Christian, but he knew what he was talking about.

The AA program does not require a specific belief in a deity; only in a “power greater than ourselves.”

I’m sure that even that concept repels many in this darkening world.

[circlecity]

"Why is that? (The answer is found within the article.)"

Certainly religion is a major reason. But I think money is another. I'm sure the medical/counseling industry sees every free AA meeting as the loss of a paid counseling session.

[Dalberg-Acton]

AA is for alcoholics, not drug addicts. The power to remove the mental obsession of the first drink comes from God.

[frogjerk]

And just what is the track recrod of these alternatives for producing long term sobriety?

Who cares? As long as God is not a part of it, then it must be better according to the modernists.

[don-o]

ping

[GOP Poet]

EGO--Edging God Out. That summarizes the article for me. Clearly mid way through the article you can tell these people have never been drunks and drug addicts. Theory and practice are lethal lines for an alcoholic and drug addict. It is very true that even when one is sober and does all the spiritual and psychological and physical work necessary for a healthy holistic recovery the disease is doing push ups.

AA has and does work for me and my husband. Thank God.

[GOP Poet]

exactly.

[Responsibility2nd]

Yeppers. That "Higher Powers" POV.

The (liberal) answer is obvious:

Pass laws that prohibit any AA chapter from from acknowledging reliance on a higher power.

And who needs 12 steps? Eleven will do.

[GOP Poet]

Many ‘drug addicts’ when they break it down to the beginning realize they were alcoholics first before they ever picked up the drug.

[Responsibility2nd]

AA under attack Ping.

In your opinion, do you see a day when AA (and NA) will be compelled to remove 1 of the 12 steps? (Reliance on a higher power)

[Mears]

bfl

[Responsibility2nd]

WOW. I had no idea that so many of the steps had to do with God, religion, higher power and so on.

__________________________________________________________

Twelve Steps These are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:

1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3.Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4.Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5.Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6.Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7.Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8.Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9.Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10.Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.