AA Propaganda?

Yes, try "Clean and Sober" with Michael Keaton and "When a Man Loves a Woman" with Meg Ryan. They are both very good. Also, if you want to scare yourself to death of NEVER doing drugs try "Requiem For a Dream."

Also for TV movies, Shattered Spirits starring Martin Sheen is pretty good, Darkness Before Dawn starring Meredith Baxter is really gritty, not sugar-coated for dramatized at all. There's also Torchlight with Pamela Sue Martin which is dull. Life of the Party with Carol Burnett is good but much older

Leaving Las Vegas

My Name is Bill W.

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." - Aldous Huxley

Oh yeah- for a really good look at late stage alcoholism try David Sperling's video "Drunk In Public".

http://www.furiouslove.com/id8.html


This should be shown annually at every public school in the U.S. Kind of a "Scared Straight" for potential alcoholics.

This movie does have an agenda, not nearly as much as when a man loves a woman, but all the same....

What makes me sad is that people in AA dont realise that it is actually damaging (it hurts people, in ways that I dont need to specify just yet), not to mention the appalling recovery rate (less than the average spontaneous recovery rate, or at best equal to). What works for some people can be very damaging to the huge majority, and that is why I can say which methods are BS and which are not.

And AA claims to be the "only way" anyway (which it clearly isn't), so why can I not say that AA is the best way to relapse? At lease I am talking the truth....

Yes, all of these facts make me very sad, which is why I leave negative messages warning people of the dangers of AA.

The only studies that I would ever consider valid on the subject of "addiction treatment success rates" are "Randomised, longitudinal, controlled studies". If the ones that you looked into where not exactly that (which they almost certainly where not), then you should pretty much discount what they said. As you quite rightly point out, stats can be massaged to say almost anything that you want (especially if you have an outcome that you are looking for).

Please dont think that you are the only person who has had their lives blighted by the "chronic relapsing medical condition" (as our brit doctors refer to it) of addiction. As an ex addict, who has seen several of my friends die, more still affected by drugs and a few get clean (almost all without NA or AA), and further more as an addiction treatment professional, I feel that my views are no more or less valid than anyone else's.

To say that "In your experience, NA or AA are the only things that work", I have to ask what other experience you have. For example, have you seen any of the other treatment programs that are available? SMART, SOS, WFS, RR? All of these claim some excellent success stories. How can you possibly imply that AA is the only thing that works? That is a logical fallacy that is so easily disproven, I have to wonder why you bothered to type the sentence....

I can judge the program by having read the literiture, attended meetings every day for 6 months, speaking to people online (both pro and anti AA). Trust me, whilst the extent to which they are brainwashed varies slightly (for the "very brainwashed" to the "fanatical"), the program is the same worldwide. Very few exceptions exist.

It can seem cult like, because it is. If you do some research into what actually makes a cult, and then compare it to AA, you will find this to be true.

I will say this about the "what works for one person...." thing: If a bunch of people want to sit in a church basement talking about God, and convincing themselves that it keeps them sober, then more power to them. What I am concerned about is the prevalence of AA in the treatment services worldwide. In the US, they have infiltrated the courts to do some coercive recruitment for them, the have managed to convince the AMA that alcoholism is a disease, they run 95% of rehabs. They also lie to members to recruit them ("AA is the only way" "Do the steps or die" "Sober without AA? You're just a dry drunk!"). If AA could stick by the "different things for different people approach", then I think that everyone would leave them alone.

Glad you can see some of what people object to, anyway. Try looking into it a bit more, you may find yourself seeing a lot that you dont like.

Sorry to appear melodramatic. But I dont think that I am the only one who feels this way. In fact, I am most certainly not. Check out some of the letters on the Orange Papers (there are nearly 80 pages of them) for many others who agree, more or less, with some of these valid criticisms of AA.

Sure there are differing levels of pressure to conform with the program, but you can attend meetings around the world, where you will hear slogans such as "work the steps of die" and "It's a program of suggestions, in the way that it is suggested that you open your parachute before jumping out of a plane", or passages in approved literature such as:

A.A. is not a plan for recovery that can be finished and done with. It is a way of life, and the challenge contained in its principles is great enough to keep any human being striving for as long as he lives. We do not, cannot, out-grow this plan.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, anon., The Keys Of The Kingdom, page 311.

or

... you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
...
At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life -- or else.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 44.

or

Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the foundering vessel he has become.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 35.

So, at the very least, you can see how someone may feel HUGE pressure to do what is "suggested". When this is coupled with the complete lunatics who regurgitate such garbage in practically every meeting, and deriding those who fail to work a "strong program", the newcomer may begin to see less and less options available to him.

No, I don't put too much faith in any individual studies. I am well aware that their are many different studies available about AA, some of which show huge success rates. Needless to say, 99% of these studies suffer from significant flaws in their methodology. There are, however, several very good studies (randomised, long term, controlled studies), which show AA to have no effect whatsoever. I just site the Valliant one because it is such a good example of a, the ineffectiveness of AA, and b, the damage that the powerless doctrine can do to people who relapse.

I don't see that motivation is neccesarily an important factor in a study, especially if it is randomised. Also, measuring a treatment candidates motivation is a very difficult (impossible?) task. Alcoholics can and do lie about their levels of motivation, these levels change regularly, fluctuating wildly depending on personal circumstances. I would contend that the only effective way of testing motivation is to see who succedes in getting clean/sober.

Indeed, many of these studies measure overall clean time over a period of years, and do not rely solely on abstinance, but on a percentage of the total time spent sober (so someone who has been dry for 6 of 8 years may be counted as a success). They also can take account of those who have not abstained, but have significantly reduced their drinking.

I am a recovereing heroin addict. Yeah, basically, I attended NA, with a bit of AA, for 18 months +. Read the orange papers one day and realised that I had personally witnessed many of the things that he talks about. When it hit home that it is a completely ineffective program, I decided that I would no longer attend, and would devote a bit of my time to getting an "anti 12 step message" out there, so contribute to a few boards, and have also set up a myspace group devoted to this. It's been nearly 2 years now, and I have it mostly out of my system, but I still believe pretty much everything that i did when I firast left the program....

Well, it isn't neccesarily true to say that it is better than nothing. One of the most authoritative studies on AA, carried out by George Valliant (an AA board member) showed that AA had "completely failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism. And what's more, our death rate of 3% a year was appalling" (his words, not mine). Basically, his study showed that treatment outcomes for AA were exactly the same as those who recieved no treatment, and actually had a higher death rate. I partly agree on the support network thing, but AA is so much more than that, you would have to agree. Whether you think the more is a "good more" or a "bad more" is quite another thing...

The idea that having to "confess" before the group is a good motivator is somewhat floored. Having to face judgement and loss of standing is simply going to put a lot of people off of returning for further help. This is not the way of effective treatment.

The idea that a "strict regimen" is needed is also not true, and it is certainly goes against the idea that it is a "program of suggestions". People don't want or need a tyrant/sponsor to run their lives for them, order them about, interogate them about their devotion to the program. They need understanding and support, the freedom to make mistakes. The idea of "tough love" invites certain people to abuse the sponser position and victimises some who have already suffered enough. It can be as bad as thirteenth stepping.

As someone who has suffered from addiction problems (severe heroin addiction, including jail time, overdoses, homelessness etc) I understand perfectly that not everyone needs this. I also saw many many people in AA who, to put it simply, did not have a problem with drugs or alcohol, and they flourished.

There is a good reason why it is tough to give up your control, and that is because we need it. Humans rely on being self-sufficient. Now, granted, the serenity prayer makes sense, but people often tend to forget about the "courage to change the things I can" part, and simply try to stop controlling anything. This is no good. Powerlessness as a philosophy is self-defeating.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "people who have questions about their own substance issues that they are hesitant to voice". I know a whole lot of people who have issues with the 12 steps, and are at various stages in their recovery. A truth is a truth, and it doesn't matter if it is spoken by a drunk or a self-righteous 20year sober recovering 12 stepper. I, for example, am 5 years clean. Does that make anything that I have said any more true or false?

You'd be right about the last part. Nothing works with every person. AA just doesn't seem to work with any people, as discussed in my first paragraph.

I don't believe it has helped anyone, thats the thing. I think it has killed more than it has helped and that it is a sick and twisted little cult which foists phoney quack cures for alcoholism on vunerable people who would be better off seeking proffessional help, but cant get it because AA has that market sown up.

I also find it an arrogant organisation, populated by arrogant people who are unwilling to listen to any views other than their own (70 year old) ones that come from a book founded in superstition.

I hope that answers your question....