That's just silly.

The 12 steps from AA's own website:

THE TWELVE STEPS OF 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.

And people claim it's not religion, specifically Christianity? That's a lot of 'God' and 'Him'.

It's actually the most helpful thing anyone could ever do for an "addict".  

Tell them the unvarnished, cold and inescapable truth.  They are the problem.  Their character flaws, moral weakness and selfishness are the cause of their problems in life.  NOT the booze or whatever the crutch of the week is.

Once an addict can be see that they are their own worst enemy, then they can take action to correct those flaws.  

With a lot of hard work, discipline and self inspection they too can one day be a normal adult and have a beer, or go to the casino like the rest of us responsible adults.

Calling alcohol / the crutch the problem, is just simply ignoring the root problem.  It's cowardly and in the end hurts everyone, especially the "addict".

Saying alcohol is the problem is giving a man a fish for a day.

Saying I am the problem and must change, is teaching a man how to fish for the rest of his life.

The road to recovery and happiness in life starts with being honest with yourself.  Only then can you be honest with those around you.

It's a long road fixing the flaws / "addiction", but it can be done, you just have to want it bad enough.

If you can be honest with yourself and work everyday to become a better person you can give yourself the greatest gift anyone can give themselves:

BEING HAPPY WITH YOURSELF

The road to recovery starts at your absolute rock bottom.  Once you have your own personal Israel moment and say to yourself "NEVER AGAIN", you will give yourself the will power to succeed.

Those that don't change don't want it bad enough.

That's a fine theory, and in this post you've stated your theory much more softly than in the others, to the point that it sounds like a different one than you were promoting before. This new theory also isn't incompatible with AA.

How much experience do you have putting these theories (the earlier 'you're scum' one, and this 'take responsibility and change' one) to work? How much experience do you have with AA?

Because IME, drunks have a lot of Isreal moments and they don't stick. That's what's self esteem-destroying, and sucks your will power so much. Being so sure that you "ought" to be able to snap out of it, but you keep fucking up.

As for "rock bottom", that's been pretty much debunked. Lots of folks get help and quit before getting fired and getting DUIs or divorces.

It seems like you've thought about this a lot, and like you're a fine theoretician. You or a friend may even have been one if the lucky ones that 'snapped out' something. But it really sounds like your experience is limited, or at least your willingness to consider other data outside of what fits your theory.


Eta: after your other posts, telling people to be happy with themselves is insane. You can't tear people the fuck apart and then expect them to gratefully rebuild themselves as a better person with self esteem, willpower and the skills to do right. Only a few, confident weirdos do well with being told "you suck! Fix yourself!"

 

I can see the logic of this.


Many of the participants don't control these variables.  

 




This is one of those "you don't have to like it, you just have to do it" moments in life.




I don't know you, so maybe you're an alcoholic maybe not, but do whatever you got to do to stay out of jail.








One thing I think is problematic is that it's sort of common wisdom now that "everybody" is an alcoholic.




I'm not in denial.




Nor am I an alcoholic.  Plenty of lesser men who drink as much as I do probably are though.    


 

OP has yet to answer my question.

Doesn't require a half-page of cites and research references, a simple yes or no will suffice.

ok. I'm not sure an addict cares, only that it works.

I think AA's success rate would dramatically improve if participants experienced a true life changing event similar to the one Bill Wilson had.

And this thread is making me thirsty!

I don't see anyone coming up with a better plan?  If so, why hasn't anyone heard of it?  

It's the same theory.

Will power is their problem.  

No pain no gain.

People are an "addict" because personal responsibility and self discipline just are too "difficult" for them.  Essentially "addicts" are small children who have physically grown up, but mentally are young children.

 


You're hard.


Hard people, IME are brittle.


Brittle, as in subject to breaking, completely, under the right strain.


Good luck keeping it together if life ever challenges you to your limits.  Hopefully you will not be tested to that degree.



I don't have my panties in a bunch over your position. I'm not a proponent of misplaced compassion.  Calling a thing what it is, is not misplaced compassion.


Calling it what it is not, is ignorance.


My conclusion is that you're ignorant on this subject.  Thinking you know something without accepting the possibility of error is also a species of ignorance.


If you're not ignorant, you have an agenda, which may be as simple as reinforcing your worldview.


That's my read, anyway.


Cheers.

Again, you say addicts suck, but offer no more wisdom than "stop sucking!". It's simply not useful.

Your point is absurd, but even if it were true a crutch that doesn't kill you is preferable to one that does.  A crutch that doesn't destroy your relationships is better than one that does.

Stay baller, bro.

This thread is like a game of retard double dutch. It's like you wanna jump in and play but the stupidity is flying by so fast there's just never a good place to start.

Are they as hostile as you are to the suggestion that it's a success?

I have, at times, drank so much and so often that I would fit any definition of alcoholic. I worked with functional addicts - people who were constantly high on alcohol as well as heroin - who managed to hold a job and pay the bills. Addiction runs in my family. My grandmother was a lush. My sister went to AA. My brother went to NA. I used to spend every night at the bar; from when I got there after work until it closed. When I moved to Florida, I lost all interest in it and maybe drank a case of beer the first year I lived there.

I dealt with alcoholics for eight years as an EMT, aside from my family. One of the most interesting things, to me, is the definition of the alcoholic. It's so convoluted that it's impossible to write one. We know that withdrawal from chronic alcohol abuse can cause a physical reaction - delirium tremens - and it can kill the patient. This is the generally accepted definition of an addictive substance. The lack of it causes a reaction that can be measured. Ingestion of the substance causes cravings which then result in something then something happens and when the patient can no longer ingest the substance, metabolic changes occur.

It doesn't happen with all alcoholics. They may consume alcohol and not experience the craving. We took one of the local drunks to the hospital one afternoon and there were two physicians outside the ER having a smoke. I'd just violently dumped an alcoholic girlfriend.* The police were involved. (I was in the right and they knew it. This was pre Bill Clinton domestic violence law.) Nancy typically carried a pint of Popov Vodka in the god damn golf bag she called a purse. When she was drunk, she turned irrational and sometimes violent.

I asked the doctors what happened when an alcoholic had a cold. Do they use cough syrup? Cough syrup at the time was around 70% alcohol. That little dose cup of Robitussin was a shot of 140 proof booze even though it tasted like a mixture of Kool Aid and radioactive waste.

One answered, "I have alcoholic patients. Some of them do. Some won't touch it."

There's your answer from a couple of professionals, including me. The answer is that we don't know what causes addiction and we don't have a way to mitigate it that the scientific method can pronounce sound. We can't even do the study because we can't agree on what, exactly, is an addict. We can tell you exactly what it looks like when a patient has an occlusion in the left coronary descending artery or a bundle branch block, but we can't even envision a picture of normal versus addict.

In the meantime, AA is doing something for no money for the best of intentions to the best of their abilities and you're trashing it.

Stop. Just fucking stop.

*A couple of years later, she told me she quit drinking because of that incident. I hope that's true.

I have two problems with AA:
1) AA forces people to move their locus of control to the exterior. Not entirely healthy.



2) "If you drink at all you're going to go totally nuts and end up blowing a hobo in a dumpster," is unhealthy to tell people and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've seen alcoholics under their own cognizance slip up and have a beer then decide it didn't taste as good as they remembered. I've seen alcoholics in AA go totally fucking nuts and then try to avoid responsibility for it entirely by blaming it on "the disease"..."I can't help it!"



 

I have never said addicts "suck".

Some of the most successful and wise people I have ever met were "addicts" of some sort or another.

When I say "addict" I am not just referring to alcohol, there are other things:

Drugs
Gambling
Sex
Reckless Behavior
Food / Obesity
Laziness
Smoking

What I am saying with addiction there are 2 things that separate an "addict" from a person who conquers an addiction.

"I am the problem, where I am in life is my fault"

"I have the will power to conquer this"

For a person alien to the concepts of personal responsibility and will power, once embraced, the positive effects on your life will shock most people.

"I am not going to the bar after work today, I will go home and help my kid with his science project."

"If I have a drink with friends this evening, I will be kind and loving to my wife, I will never be abusive again."

Human beings can achieve amazing things, more than we have ever dreamed, but first we need the will power to do it, the rest will come.

Ignorant?  No.
Agenda?  No.

I have seen many people who have succumbed to "addiction" and I have seen many people defeat addiction.

The difference between success and failure is personal accountability and will power.

It's a cold hard fact, for some people it's unpleasant, but not for the people who conquered addiction, it is a truth that was their salvation.

You talk like someone with very little exposure. You offer no more than the advice "fix yourself". The people who go to AA have tried your method over and over and failed. That's why they're desperate and willing to try AA and admit to a room of strangers, "I keep failing and I'm not in control".

If you had real, significant experience you would see your theory for being as impractical and useless as when a liberal says thugs just need love, or someone tells a person with OCD "just stop washing your hands".

If "just stop" worked for everyone, there would be very little work for shrinks and far fewer support groups.

You sound like a kid.

Those numbers might or might not mean anything.  What correlation exists between attendance and abstinence from alcohol, understanding that AA probably thinks you should attend.  However, if someone never drinks or attends meetings again, how would they be counted within your 80% and 95% numbers?

By its very nature, AA encourages the broadest spectrum of people to avail themselves of their program.  There is a significant difference between attending a free and anonymous meeting that you can drive to versus taking leave from work for a month to check yourself into Passages Malibu.  Could this result in high rates of people who attend briefly and don't return?  

If AA was "only" dealing with the population of people who are willing and able to do in-patient rehab, would their results differ, and by how much?  One self-selecting sample with a higher bar for commitment versus another sample, some of whom self-select and some of whom are ordered by courts to participate, with a relatively lower bar for commitment....disparate results in treatment success wouldn't be too surprising.

Support groups have the same success rate that not going to a success group has.

3%


That's one, two, three percent. Three fingers.


It's a sad figure.

We have a winner.   I had no idea AA's success rate was single digit.

Statistics are misleading.

 
Not particularly in this case. There may be a few percentage points difference, but the reality is that addiction is named so for a reason.

My uncle had a drinking problem, but he was certainly not an alcoholic. He went to AA. Now, he's an alcoholic. Okay, fine, he stopped drinking. He goes to AA 4 or 5 nights a week. Now everybody in out family is an alcoholic. Drink 2 beers on Sunday afternoon? You get the speech. Nonstop, all the time, it's like he gets paid by them.

Statistics aren't useful to individuals when choosing options for help. They oversimplify things to a point where they're meaningless.

That's not an AA problem, that's a person problem.

Of course they are in this case.  You would be comparing:

Some population of people who self identify as alcoholics who attempted to quit drinking with no outside assistance whatsoever,  3% of whom "succeeded."

To

Some population of people, with members who self identify as alcoholics, members who are ordered into participation by the courts, and members who agree to attend a meeting in response to family/friend pressures, who attempt to quit drinking with AA, 3% of whom "succeed."

Is success defined the same for both?

What impacts are there from a solely self-selecting population for study versus one that is court-mandated?

How many people who attend an AA meeting want to quit drinking, versus the non-treatment study population you refer to?  All of those subjects must have said they wanted to quit, correct?  Otherwise it would make no sense to study them.

Finally, let's say that this dubious study were true and both programs defined success as abstinence forever and you actually could draw a meaningful parallel between the two populations....so what?  3% of people were able to achieve that on their own.  They should be congratulated.  3% of the AA population achieved that with help from AA.  Perhaps they wouldn't have been able to on their own.

Depends on your definition of "useful".  You're caught up in all this "addiction treatment" shit, getting people to quit drinking and improve their lives.  Feh.  Pedantry.

His viewpoint allows him to feel superior to addicts.  It gives him a spring in his step.  It has nothing to do with fixing them, it's about fixing HIM.

No, I average about one drink every three weeks, which is extreme but b/c i am on call most of hte time.  I get drunk about once a year w/ a buddy.

ETA:


lol

it happends like a mohterfucker.  watch the penn & tell bullshit episolde linked in this thread, they talk about it a bit.  THer is some pushback on it finally, its just that here the 12 steppers have a traditional monopoly

the problem is that they, w/ government funding, have crowded out other approaches and scientific research trying to maintain their near traditional monopoly on treatment in north america.  

I'm glad it helped you.  I definitely understand that a drug abuser often needs a support gropu of people who have been throug it.

I watche dthat penn & teller bullshi episonde, the next largest support group orginization is something caled SOS who aren't dogmatic about labeling yourself as an alcoholoic for the rest of your life or the helplessness parts of AA.

Its not the god part that is disturbing, it the admitting helplessness part.  Seems to run contrary to the notion of personal responsibiliyt.  The required attitude for gaining control of yourself is to be lieve that you CAN gain control of yourself.

AA has the same success rate as quitting cold turkey



 

Did you see the "FWIW" part?  That was to say, in so far as it is perhaps applicable to beastman's comment, this excerpt from the article:

gotta love the GD way... a bunch of 'experts' in fields no one has any experience in... everyone here saying AA doesn't work when no one does AA, everyone says you're not a true muslim if you don't wanna kill non-muslims when no one who posts is actually a muslim... always saying gay's this and gay's that when no one posting about the gay shit is gay... carry on....

teatottler's gonna teatottle??

You really going to say that having a drink or two a day is failing at life?

so its like cross fit?

Thank you. This tells me everything I need to know about your opinions on the matter.

If AA works for some people, that's great. But it didn't work for me. I became a Christian and my life has been 1000% better because of it. I went to some AA meetings since becoming a Christian and thought the twelve steps were baloney and some of the thought processes of AA conflict with the values of Christianity. And most of the AA members I've met are chain smokers. How does it profit someone to replace one sin with another? If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor 5:17). So no, I'm not going to spend my life calling myself an alcoholic when that isn't me anymore. That just sounds like a way to lay the foundation for future failure and blame it on the "disease" of alcoholism if there's a relapse, that it can't be helped.

The reason you don't understand the "success" rate of AA, it's because you really know nothing about alcoholics. The AA book says the success rate is 50% of people who came to AA and REALLY TRIED, and then some make it after a few failed attempts and so on.

AA takes WORK. It's hard. It means the absolute destruction of self-centeredness. It means service to everyone, it means genuine humility. The people that are capable of that are the people that have absolutely had their asses beat by alcoholism.

The problem is entwined all through this thread. Judges sending people to AA, family members, jobs probation officers, DUI classes etc, those people show up and drink our coffee and moap about and then skew our "success rate." Those people don't want to go to AA, and soon as no one is looking, they're not.

THEN, you have alcoholics. The most stubborn, hard headed, self centered people there are. 90% of people that come to AA know that their life sucks, they are failures at work, family and being a productive member of society, but if you ask them, it's EVERYONE ELSE"S FAULT. If you ask damn near ANY alcoholic if they have a problem they'll say no. You can show them a slideshow of their disaster of a life, their drinking habits, how they treat everyone around them and they'll shrug their shoulders. Shit you can read the threads on ARFCOM all night long on the weekends, guys talking about how they're connoisseurs of scotch and microbrews and then pounding down the entire bottle or 12 microbrews. That's not how a connoisseur drinks.

How do you get someone like that to change everything about the way they live. Habits and mindsets they've had since they were 6 years old? The simple fact is you don't. For most people. AA isn't mandatory. For you to be a "failure, you just have to stop going. That's not AA's fault, people are lazy and stubborn. AA works just fine. AA doesn't claim it's a disease, that's psychXXXXX babble and in my meetings we'll remind you of that politely after the meeting. What you guys are seeing is people with degrees and politicians fucking our shit up.

If it were up to me, I'd end ALL mandatory AA committments. You go to AA cause you're done drinking.

As far as the article goes, if that guy's got the answer, then fuckin prove it dick. There's millions of people dying right this very minute, many of whom are under state custody. Go test your fuckin theory and back it up with time and then report your findings. And if they're following up with alcoholics, some of the biggest liars on the face of the planet and ASKING THEM OVER THE PHONE how much they're drinking like studies have done before, then your results mean jack shit and as originally suspected, he knows shit about alcoholics.

If you want to claim that the part I highlighted in red is not hostile, then we must leave that question for the jury to decide.

That's not AA. That's the judicial system. AA doesn't have a monopoly on anything. AA just exists and people get sent there by other people and it's AA's fault. WTF, your logic is impeccable.

And the Penn and Teller video is a fuckin joke. If you wanna have an informed conversation about AA, that's the last thing I would reference.

AA has never gotten government funding. All contributions are voluntary and come from the membership at large.

From the traditions: