Posted on 03/17/2015 9:25:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[SNIP]
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 ...
Yes, if Ms Gabrielle Glazer heard about this program, her head, like liberal heads all over, would explode!
u r right.
but first and foremost, it’s the drink that will kill one before their time.
I don’t care what it takes, AA; Antabuse; Religion; Rational Recovery; tied to a tree; it’s still first about saving my life.
These claims, that AA claims to be the only way but now there’s a new miracle cure, crop up every few years.
I’ll stick with what works for me.
Best wishes to anyone trying to quit drinking, whatever works for them.
That depends upon how you define "irrational." Seems to me that an irrational program could include any program that hasn't undergone a long-term, result-oriented study that uses control groups based upon age, race, ethnicity, wealth, family structure, and other demographics. Indeed, by that definition, Common Core is about as irrational as a program can get.
Maybe the author thinks that other options will be taken seriously if she first tries to demolish AA. Kind of like Obama and the fact that every tedious lecture begins with demolishing a straw man.
Same result, the author ends up looking petty for making a take-down of AA look like her prime motive, rather than providing objective info on other options.
"Normal" for us may be a bottle of Jim Beam in one sitting - I wanted to drink "normally" - all day every day!
"The only solution is to help alcoholics rid themselves of the desire to drink."
"But there is one who has all power, that one is God, may you find Him now...."
Let them try. They will fail. This is one liberal hack's statement. I think I'll detach on this sad woman's opinion.
To a person, each one that have used both inpatient and outpatient "treatment and addiction" centers (might I mention, these are quite expensive) each person have gone at least once and are now yet again "addicted" or at the very least, either using drugs or using alcohol as much as ever!
I think that part of the stigma with AA (at least those I know who've chosen to go the expensive treatment center routes) is that because it's "FREE, there are lots of folks there that aren't in my same socio-economic status."
In other words, "I'm special and they are really average and homeless shelter types!"
Of course, I know and have family members who went the AA route that fell "off the wagon" and some never made it back on because they never wanted to admit (as well as many of their other friends and family) that they simply could not ever again consume adult beverages - ever!
I know one guy who quit for over 20 years then gradually began drinking again, now he's back to being over indulged most days!!! So sad but it's that self-lie that you've "recovered" not "recovering."
You have to admit, AA does play "heads I win, tails you lose" quite a bit.
It's like being "saved." If you stick with it, you are. If you fall away, you never were.
The only thing beyond question to devotees is the validity of the salvation "formula" to which they subscribe.
I hear you.
You sir don’t know what you are talking about and I say that based on extensive personal experience.
I am an alcoholic and I went into a 30 day program when I was twenty nine. I came out of treatment and never touched a drink for 18 years.I lived a wonderful sober life with my wife of 26 years and two beautiful twin boys (which were conceived shortly after I sobered up)
Four years ago I developed some coronary heart blockage issues and began a regimen of every healthy lifestyle change in the books to do to minimize the disease.
One of these was (2) 4 oz glasses of wine per day. I was convinced that after 18 years of sobriety I COULD control my behavior. I made a personaly committment to adhere to this rigidly. I was dead wrong. It worked for about two weeks. Within4 months I was drinking 1 1/2 bottles of wine a day and 6 months after that switched to Vodka (my old booze of choice).
After 2 years I had just about managed to lose my family, my business and my health was failing badly. I knew I was killing myself but at that point i was beyond caring.
Then a moment of clarity. With the help of a wonderful parish priest my Higher Power and some good old fashioned willpower. I managed to stop for a week and dry out. (it was horrible. I didn’t have the option for treatment this time because my business could not have survived me being away for 30 days.
I began going to AA again, working the steps and Thank God, have been sober now for going on 3 years.
My story is not atypical. I have seen many alcoholics over the years do exactly what I did and many of them did not straighten out. Lives destroyed or dead they thought too that they could control alcohol. It’s an arrogance that no alcoholic can survive.
I know I can never drink again and survive for I don’t believe I have another “sober struggle” left in me.
AA is not the Holy Grail of sobiety but it does work for a lot of people, some , not so much. But one thing is absolutely irrefutable and anyone who says different is either ignorant or has ulterior motives.... “if you are a true alcoholic you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT ever return to controlled drinking.....EVER.”
My Father, who turns 92 tomorrow BTW, goes to his AA Meetings a few times a week at a minimum.
He drank for 60 Years and quit Cold Turkey at age 78.
I go with him to his “birthday” Meeting every year. I sit there and listen to People “sharing”, and I’m happy the Program works for them.
The one thing that drives me crazy is how people call Alcoholism a Disease, most blaming their Alcoholic Parents and dysfunctional Families for their plight.
That is where I draw the line. Alcoholism, just like Chain Smoking is a choice IMHO. Both my Brother and I grew up with a Father who drank like a Fish and a Mother who smoked like a Chimney. Both of us made a decision to do neither.
Of course, I do not share my Opinion with those attending those AA Meetings. If blaming others or using the excuse that their Drinking Problem is some sort of a Disease keeps them Sober, so be it.
It’s worked for my Father who would become Defensive and Rude whenever we suggested he quit drinking. We always got the standard Alcoholic line from him, “I can quit anytime I want to”. It took him falling on his Face Drunk one too many times for him to finally see the light.
Now that's just asinine.
You've never heard of "closed" meetings?
"Treatment Centers" are for those who want to be babied through their struggles.
AA may be lacking many things, but rich and powerful members ain't one of them.
“I thought AA had achieved a great deal of success.”
Not if you are trying to make money off people not drinking.
People attending my Father’s AA Meetings are from every socio-economic status.
Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, you name it, they are there.
I’m amazed that those same people have achieved so much while living as Alcoholics. I had a hard enough time getting where I am in Life without having that problem.
These are very intelligent people who had a Vice they just couldn’t shake on their own. There is no stereotype.
AA helped save my father and gave him back to our family.
I have nothing but respect for AA. As many have said, it isn’t for everyone, but if it helps one person, it is worth it to me.
It did, and that person was my father, thank God. We got 14 sober years at the end of his life from a wonderful man, who even though he was a great person, father, naval officer and provider, was a drunk nearly his whole adult life.
AA helped him quit. Once he quit, he took to AA with a vengeance, running meetings, attending as many as five nights a week, helping guys in AA find jobs or hiring them for things he needed.
And as he became sober, our whole family saw a side of him we had never seen, a funny side, a talkative side. He had been a quiet drunk his whole life, NEVER abusive, NEVER violent or mean. He just got drunk. And when he wasn’t drunk, he just didn’t talk much. Like a lot of guys of his generation. But when he got sober, man, was he a different person in some respects.
God Bless AA.
If I may say, I think you may have misunderstood his post...I did when I first read it.
I think he is saying that is the perception of some people who look down on AA.
Apparently you don’t know what “non-disprovable” means.
Your “experience” is no more dispositive than my experience with breathing allows me to judge how long someone else can hold their breath.
In the meetings I go to, if you blame others the members will tell you that your parents or whoever it is you’re blaming, did the best that they could, just like the havoc you may have created in your own family or life with your drinking. It is one of the few places left that I’m aware holds the individual and their actions accountable to them and no one else. I would suggest they find another meeting.
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