Posted on 03/17/2015 9:25:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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The 12 steps are so deeply ingrained in the United States that many people, including doctors and therapists, believe attending meetings, earning one’s sobriety chips, and never taking another sip of alcohol is the only way to get better. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and rehab centers use the 12 steps as the basis for treatment. But although few people seem to realize it, there are alternatives, including prescription drugs and therapies that aim to help patients learn to drink in moderation. Unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, these methods are based on modern science and have been proved, in randomized, controlled studies, to work.
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The debate over the efficacy of 12-step programs has been quietly bubbling for decades among addiction specialists. But it has taken on new urgency with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which requires all insurers and state Medicaid programs to pay for alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment, extending coverage to 32 million Americans who did not previously have it and providing a higher level of coverage for an additional 30 million.
Nowhere in the field of medicine is treatment less grounded in modern science. A 2012 report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University compared the current state of addiction medicine to general medicine in the early 1900s, when quacks worked alongside graduates of leading medical schools. The American Medical Association estimates that out of nearly 1 million doctors in the United States, only 582 identify themselves as addiction specialists. (The Columbia report notes that there may be additional doctors who have a subspecialty in addiction.) Most treatment providers carry the credential of addiction counselor or substance-abuse counselor, for which many states require little more than a high-school diploma or a GED. Many counselors are in recovery themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
There is a difference bewteen a heavy drinker/problem drinker a bonafide alcoholic.
My experience has been heavy /problem drinkers and dyed in the wool alcoholics. The latter is addicted both physically and mentally. They cannot function without some level of alcohol in their system usally a minimun of .1 or better. Many long time drunks need significantly higher. They experience blackouts, severe insomnia, dramatic mood swings, and delusions when drinking particularly heavy.
Heavy/problem drinkers haven’t crossed the line into raging alcoholism but continued unabated they often do.
Binge drinkers are the exception. They are considered alcoholics because they possess many of the same characteristics of an “all the time” drunk but only drink for shorter durations 2-4 days. They do however tend to drink heavier during these periods often consuming in 3 days what a “Maintenance” alcoholic would in a week. Both types of alcoholics will definately destroy their life as they know it or likely die if some intervention is not initiated (By self or otherwise)
There’s often a fine line between problem/heavy drinker and an alcoholic. The only person who really knows is the person involved whether they are willing to admit it or not. Which makes a definitive diagnosis troublesome. My personal opinion is that there are fewer true alcoholics and more problem/heavy drinkers than generally accepted.
Perhaps.
Oftentimes I’ve noticed alcoholics tend to have large egos combined with an inferiority complex. Sounds like an impossible combination but it most definately exists.
Feel free to search it yourself. documented many places.
One link would be plenty if you have one.
As all the “reputable research I’ve see states a range for AA of 30-40% year over year.
“In 1992 the United States Census Bureau and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) conducted the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey pegged AA at 31% so I’m interested to see your source(s).
BTW, the 3 articles I found that support your conjecture.....2 from the Atlantic, 1 from Salon.
See a pattern there?
Very true, and I forgot about that part. For a good friend of mine, he realized that certain triggers would lead to him drinking (going to a certain place, seeing certain people, etc). Removing those triggers removed much of the issue.
I honestly suspect that addiction has more to do with how your brain is wired than anything else. My friend has an addictive personality. Once it engages, it is scary. Right now he is turned “on” by Game of War. He spends 30 hours a week on it. It used to be smoking, booze, or sex.
For starters, what youngsters fail to understand is what a physician's diagnosis of "dypsomania" meant for anyone before 1935. For most patients, no all but certainly most, it was a sentence of death. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, with the Oxford Group developed a way that works. It's a way that worked for many millions of people who otherwise faced death, prison or institutionalization as their only choice.
More importantly perhaps in the context of this unnecessary thesis, Bill Wilson could not have been more clear about alternative treatments and methods. In his "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" he insisted their Fellowship should never be critical of any alternative treatment methods, then or in the future, and he never, never claimed an exclusive working method.
It's unfortunate that the strong admonition "rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path" added to the zeal passed on to newcomers to pursue a new life devoted to "rigorous honesty" is often either misinterpreted or misunderstood.
There are also many who really believe there is no other paths, an opinion which is a departure from the path passed along by Bill W. and Dr. Bob., "one drunk helping another stay sober, one day at a time."
There is also always the unfortunate tendency of all institutions to drift from their primary objective, their "reason for being" becoming, over time, displaced by self-continuity. The capacity for direct personal gain from AA is slight to none, so this latter hardening of tradition into dusty orthodoxy is rare with "the program," but it there, nonetheless, most especially when unauthorized mercenary purposes presume an affiliation.
Nevertheless, the notion that AA is in competition with other methods is specious. The Traditions of this simple and originally novel rehabilitation program, which has never claimed to be a "cure," make clear that any method that interrupts the "cunning, baffling, powerful" compulsion to drink oneself to death is not just welcome but encouraged.
I have two primary addictions:
I crave food and can never get enough air.
Seriously, the vast majority of Americans are addicted to something.
Food (in excess), work, sex, alcohol, drugs, thrill seeking, internet, shopping, gambling you name it.
With my wife it’s diet Coke.
Basically there are positive addictions which often lead to noteworthy accomplishment and the negative ones which lead to self destruction and death.
The key for those with a “negative” addiction is to replace it with either a positive or at least a benign one.
I think some people just like to disagree, and feel it necessary to try to prove others wrong. We see it in politics, sports, business, etc. Just human nature, I suppose.
As you mentioned, the Traditions should be a firm guide as to how AA approaches outside opinions or controversies. Yet, I think the Traditions are an under utilized facet of the program. Unfortunate, really, as it contains useful instructions on how to live comfortably in the world around us.
AA service was critical in helping me develop a way for me to live with responsibility and without anger, and as my sponsor would remind me, how to disagree without being disagreeable. I don't know that I always achieve that goal, but it is a constant desire.
Thank you for this post. I have tried explaining these facts to people but the AA method is so entrenched I am met with outright skepticism. Yes AA does work for some but it is not the cure all it is depicted to be. This should be of concern especially to the court system that often mandate AA and other 12 step programs as a condition of meeting probation. Sending people to a program with a high failure rate is just bad policy and other programs need to be optioned.
“Yes AA does work for some but it is not the cure all it is depicted to be”
Please iilustrate where anyone depicts AA to be a “cure all”
On this forum or any anywhere else for that matter.
Sometimes I really have to scratch my head and wonder what could possibly be the motivation or agenda that would lead people to chastize a program that costs the taxpayers (or anyone else) nothing, is completely voluntary, is totally apolitical, turns NO one away, and has helped and continues to help millions recover from what often used to be considered a death sentence.
AA certainly is not a “cure all” and absolutely has never represented itself as such. It does however offer a relatively good opportunity for a recovering alcoholic to maintain long term sobriety.
It has arguably proven to be as effective as most and more so than some programs aiding in the recovery from substance abuse. Most reputable estimates put year over year success rates between 30-40%.
I am sure there are other programs out there that can boast of similar rates of outcome, maybe even better. I applaud those acheivements.
But what truely is dangerous are the multitude of schemes that have been around for years that tend to cost a lot of money and promise cures. If anyone had a “cure” there sucess rate would be 100% and presently there is NO program at any cost that can honestly boast anything remotely close to that.
Yes, spirtuality (God) is a an integral part of the AA progaram and that is offputting to some. If so, there are plenty of secular alternatives.
The bottom line is this and AA believes it wholeheartedly....”whatever works for you”.
Sounds like we're on similar paths. May you find your trail as agreeable. It's amazing how these small statements which are heard more or less constantly in Discussion Meetings can slip the mind, like "how to disagree" or, similarly, "don't sweat the small stuff..." Meanwhile, something I heard one of "the old-timers" say nearly forty years ago in a meeting still has me chewing over it.
The topic was How Are Things Different Today, or words to that effect. And the guy who's name I can't remember, God knows, said, simply, "there aren't any big deals, anymore."
Can't say I agreed completely even now, but I think I understood what he meant.
One of the things that has helped me, over and over, is reading (and re-reading) Psalm 27.
I still haven't "resigned from the debating society," as Bill Wilson recommended in "the Twelve and Twelve," but seeing less and less civilized debate, the use of hatred and anger as a unifying agent in mass movements and its use as a deliberate distraction in tactics of war has left very damn few opportunities for productive debate.
Grace and Peace...
The people in this forum certainly have not done so and have been very forthright with how AA has worked for them and not for others.
However AA is still largely promoted as being the only game in town for dealing with alcohol addiction and drinking problems by many social service agencies, courts, counselors and others who may not be aware that AA and other such programs are not going to work for every alcoholic.
Not everybody who has a drinking problem has it for the same reason and it is important to treat addiction as the multi faceted problem that it is. AA plays a very important and successful role in that treatment but for some it is not enough.
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