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Well it sure seems to work for people who want it to work. Like most things.

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AA is a bunch of bullshit. Telling people they are not capable of handling themselves and they must submit to something else for strength isn't empowering, it's a transaction where they try to trade one crutch for another. Im so tired of victimization in all its forms, especially AfuckingA.

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Sorry, alcoholism can't be a disease if the cure is going to meetings in order to have a spiritual awakening.  Imagine if we gave someone some treatment for cancer and when it failed we told them it was because they just didn't want it bad enough.

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AA is a bunch of bullshit. Telling people they are not capable of handling themselves and they must submit to something else for strength isn't empowering, it's a transaction where they try to trade one crutch for another. Im so tired of victimization in all its forms, especially AfuckingA.

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Golf clap.

Addicts need to learn some discipline and self control.  The rest of us can have a few beers act like a normal person.  For an addict, alcohol, drugs, whatever their crutch of the month, is just an excuse to unleash their unchecked narcissism.

THEN be free from the consequences......."it's not me, it's the alcohol"

Addicts / Narcissists / Borderlines are all weak people looking to shirk responsibility for their actions.

Then can stop any time they want, they just choose not too.  

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man, I get that you want people to be responsible for them selves, to be held resonsible, but we know a lot abought the actual brain chemistry involved in real alcoholosm, same as other addictions, ther is a real phisoliogical component that presents very specific challenges to the whole process where by a normal man is said to make a deliberate rational decision.  The whole situation that they have themseves in is a choice that they are responsible for, but getting out of the situation isn't as simple as deciding to have chicken rather than steak for dinner.  

The problem w/ AA is that it sort of undertands alcoholism as a disease, whatever they mean by that exactly, but they don't chose to have any reference to the understanding and treatments that have come from research in the last many decades or even address it in a medical fashion.  THey are a fundementally conservative organization, as in resistent to progress in its respective field, which doesn't admit for input from scientific research, nor do they admit that there are a spectrum of appropiate treatments for a spectrum of different forms/levels of alcohol abuse.

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So, from the AA theory side of the house, the higher power doesn't have to be god, and certainly not the Judeo-Christian one.  A lot of people end up with that, because it's what they know, or what their sponsors know.  I knew a guy who decided that trees and nature were his higher power.  That said, you're not likely to find a lot of sympathetic ears if you don't toe Bill's line about God.

On the legal side, it's not so much forced as offered as an "alternative" to jail.  You can go to the Gray Bar Hotel or you can go to meetings.  You can opt out of AA and do something like Rational Recovery, but since most people know about AA, they end up in AA.   Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found it unconstitutional I believe, but if you're standing before a judge, good luck springing that on him and not ending up in jail.

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Here's the problem with "addicts", they all share most of the following negative personality traits:

Lack of self discipline
Lack of giving a fuck of hurting those around them that love them, with their wreckless, self destructive narcissism.
Moral weakness
If it wasn't the booze it would be drugs, gambling, women, etc.
Self destructiveness
Self loathing
An amazing ability to always abrogate responsibility for their actions

It ain't the booze that's the problem.

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What exactly is the point of this thread.  Does the OP think that because there may be better options for the treatment of alcoholism that AA should go away?  It's free and it works for many people.  How can anyone have a problem with that?  I've never been to AA but I go to NA meetings regularly.  I've been clean for 2 months tomorrow.  That may not seem like long to people who've never dealt with an addiction, but for me it's huge.  While I don't agree with every aspect of the NA program I can say that it's the only thing I've found that works for me.  I've tried dealing with it alone, turned to my wife for help, talked to close friend, sought help through my church and none of it helped very much at all.  I can't afford treatment centers.  NA has probably saved my life.  To me the best thing about NA and AA is that it's one addict helping another.  I find that more helpful than seeking help from a Dr. that doesn't know shit about how actually feels to be an addict.

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With all due respect, you don't know much about AA or the wide spectrum that is problem drinking. Which is kind of nice, for you. But what do you accomplish if you convince a drunk to not bother with AA, when it could have helped him? Don't do that. Let people try it, see if it works or doesn't. Let them use it for what it can do for them, maybe in conjunction with psychotherapy or CBT. People respect you and listen to you, you know?

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Where did the drunkard touch you?

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I think it was more of "Hey, look, here's an interesting tidbit", especially with the whole Bill W taking belladona and the current research into things like treating addiction and PTSD with hallucinogens and MDMA.  I don't think he was crapping on AA per se.

AA works for some people.  To The Penguin's point, others might need to figure out the underlying issues.

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With all due respect, you don't know much about AA or the wide spectrum that is problem drinking. Which is kind of nice, for you. But what do you accomplish if you convince a drunk to not bother with AA, when it could have helped him? Don't do that. Let people try it, see if it works or doesn't. Let them use it for what it can do for them, maybe in conjunction with psychotherapy or CBT. People respect you and listen to you, you know?

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...Not only does AA provide help for at least some of the people that try it, but it also does it without any outside contribution from taxpayers or society at large. I would much rather have alcoholics go to meetings to help them stay sober than go in and out of expensive medical treatment programs that Obamacare has mandated insurance companies pay for.

Ever wonder why alcoholics and problem drinkers drink so much? It’s because alcohol produces in them a pleasure greater than all others — an unspoken pleasure far greater than the normal survival drives of sex, eating, family life, the desire to succeed in life, and physical safety. The resulting drive to repeat that pleasure is proportionately stronger than normal survival drives. Alcohol is a synthetic, man-made substance, among a group of synthetic drugs that produce pleasure greater than evolution has prepared us to manage, a disorienting pleasure that causes one's moral compass to point south toward death rather than toward true north and life.

For a glimpse of how treatment works elsewhere, I traveled to Finland, a country that shares with the United States a history of prohibition (inspired by the American temperance movement, the Finns outlawed alcohol from 1919 to 1932) and a culture of heavy drinking.



Finland’s treatment model is based in large part on the work of an American neuroscientist named John David Sinclair...he experimented with rats that had been given alcohol for an extended period. Sinclair expected that after several weeks without booze, the rats would lose their desire for it. Instead, when he gave them alcohol again, they went on week-long benders, drinking far more than they ever had before—more, he says, than any rat had ever been shown to drink.



Sinclair called this the alcohol-deprivation effect, and his laboratory results, which have since been confirmed by many other studies, suggested a fundamental flaw in abstinence-based treatment: going cold turkey only intensifies cravings. This discovery helped explain why relapses are common...



Sinclair came to believe that people develop drinking problems through a chemical process: each time they drink, the endorphins released in the brain strengthen certain synapses. The stronger these synapses grow, the more likely the person is to think about, and eventually crave, alcohol—until almost anything can trigger a thirst for booze, and drinking becomes compulsive.



Sinclair theorized that if you could stop the endorphins from reaching their target, the brain’s opiate receptors, you could gradually weaken the synapses, and the cravings would subside.  ...he administered opioid antagonists—drugs that block opiate receptors—to the specially bred alcohol-loving rats. He found that if the rats took the medication each time they were given alcohol, they gradually drank less and less. He published his findings in peer-reviewed journals beginning in the 1980s.





Subsequent studies found that an opioid antagonist called naltrexone was safe and effective for humans, and Sinclair began working with clinicians in Finland. He suggested prescribing naltrexone for patients to take an hour before drinking. As their cravings subsided, they could then learn to control their consumption. Numerous clinical trials have confirmed that the method is effective, and in 2001 Sinclair published a paper in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism reporting a 78 percent success rate in helping patients reduce their drinking to about 10 drinks a week. Some stopped drinking entirely.

Ever wonder why alcoholics and problem drinkers drink so much? It’s because alcohol produces in them a pleasure greater than all others — an unspoken pleasure far greater than the normal survival drives of sex, eating, family life, the desire to succeed in life, and physical safety. The resulting drive to repeat that pleasure is proportionately stronger than normal survival drives. Alcohol is a synthetic, man-made substance, among a group of synthetic drugs that produce pleasure greater than evolution has prepared us to manage, a disorienting pleasure that causes one's moral compass to point south toward death rather than toward true north and life.

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Sorry Aimless, but like so many other people in this thread you just don't understand jack shit about AA.