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From what I read about AA, it seems very religious....what happens if you are an athiest?
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AA is religious and was founded on religious principles.
Have a look here for the history and practices of AA and AA alternatives
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrm s/aa.html
Have a look here for the history and practices of AA and AA alternatives
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrm s/aa.html
I agree with you pitstopbunny, AA is organized on a spiritual basis because religious people founded it. Basically they believe that alcoholism is an incurable disease and alcoholics require spiritual support specifically through finding god to maintain recovery. I suppose an atheist may embark on an AA recovery program and seek emotional support from someone in authority, say a sponsor they respect but they wouldn't really be following the full program. The philosophy of AA, that the addict is powerless over their alcohol addiction is not supported by evidence. Critics also argue that AA can actually reinforce some people's negative relationships with alcohol and some studies have shown AA recovering alcoholics show higher instances of binge drinking than control groups.
A rational approach to combating alcoholism is to seek medical help for withdrawal augmented by therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy to address the patterns of addictive behaviour. Many people can and do learn to drink moderately after dependency and many choose not to drink as a positive action.
A rational approach to combating alcoholism is to seek medical help for withdrawal augmented by therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy to address the patterns of addictive behaviour. Many people can and do learn to drink moderately after dependency and many choose not to drink as a positive action.
I think AA have condemned many drinkers to a life of misery, by convincing them that alcoholism is incurable. They are brainwashed into believing that if they ever touch another drink they will be straight down the road to addiction again, and not surprisingly, that's what happens. It is possible for an alcoholic to recover and live a normal life (i.e. social drinks in moderation), but only if they've never been a victim of AA propaganda.
A friend of mine (and yes, it really is someone else, not me pretending to be someone else) realised in the past year that he was an addict and enrolled in AA. The religious stuff initially gave him some issues. I showed him this thread and although he didn't want to sign up to respond, he did say I could post his views, so here goes:
"That stuff makes me laugh - a load of people who don't really have a clue about AA talking about AA :) I know a guy who's higher power is the trees in Kew Gardens. Another guy's higher power is the number 19 bus which took him to his first AA meeting. For a lot of people is AA itself - or rather the group of people who provide support.
"Basically, for addicts, the single most important thing in the world is themselves. My drinking governed pretty much all my actions because my life was planned around it. Since its me doing the drinking, I'm the centre of the universe. The higher power thing is mostly about accepting that you are not the most important thing in the universe - and that's a fairly big step in the recovery process because it opens your mind to a world where you're not trapped in the addiction."
(TBC)
"That stuff makes me laugh - a load of people who don't really have a clue about AA talking about AA :) I know a guy who's higher power is the trees in Kew Gardens. Another guy's higher power is the number 19 bus which took him to his first AA meeting. For a lot of people is AA itself - or rather the group of people who provide support.
"Basically, for addicts, the single most important thing in the world is themselves. My drinking governed pretty much all my actions because my life was planned around it. Since its me doing the drinking, I'm the centre of the universe. The higher power thing is mostly about accepting that you are not the most important thing in the universe - and that's a fairly big step in the recovery process because it opens your mind to a world where you're not trapped in the addiction."
(TBC)
�Someone on that site said that AA was founded by religious types and that's true. There are also a hell of a lot of god bothers in AA and a lot of people who "find god" (there's also a lot of clinically crazy people, lovely people, utter c___s and any number of people types - just like real life). Mostly I just switch off when they start talking or go and make a cup of coffee :) A belief in God is not a requirement for AA and nobody in AA will ever tell you it is. Generally, people avoid the word God or, if they do you use it, it is always "God as you understand it" which could mean "cats" or "little green aliens". There were actually three guys who founded AA. 2 were religious, the 3rd was an atheist. The book they wrote, called "The Big Book", even has a whole chapter about how the program works for people who don't believe in God. But then, it also has a special chapter for women because they're different and talks about asylums a lot ;) It's an OLD book full of OLD concepts and OLD ideas and the only reason they don't update it is to prove that it isn't some new fad diet. I mean, they have therapists for dogs now so its hard to take "self help" books seriously these days.
�There is, admittedly, a lot of nonsense in AA but its understandable really. People ******** up their lives with booze and they are looking for a cure or fix. See, you hit a point where you just can't go on drinking. Life sucks and you are desperately unhappy and you just can't do it anymore. The simple answer is to stop drinking but the very thought of a life without alcohol in it is the single most terrifying thing imaginable. I think the word that best describes it is "despair". God fits nicely into that and provides a concept people can latch onto which gives them the belief that it might just be ok.
(TBC)
�There is, admittedly, a lot of nonsense in AA but its understandable really. People ******** up their lives with booze and they are looking for a cure or fix. See, you hit a point where you just can't go on drinking. Life sucks and you are desperately unhappy and you just can't do it anymore. The simple answer is to stop drinking but the very thought of a life without alcohol in it is the single most terrifying thing imaginable. I think the word that best describes it is "despair". God fits nicely into that and provides a concept people can latch onto which gives them the belief that it might just be ok.
(TBC)
�But it�s all just a tool. Like "A day at time" which helps you not to freak out at the prospect of never being able to drink again or worrying about what will happen at Christmas or birthdays. Alcoholics live in the future because we're always thinking about the next drink. It actually takes a long time to learn not to do that. I still check my wallet every time I walk past a cash point to see if I have enough cash to buy wine on the way home.
�The 12 steps are all about learning how to build a life which doesn't have booze in it but they're not rigid things - everyone interprets them differently which is why we have meetings and talk about it. Each meeting has someone do the chair which means they talk about their drinking and their recovery. They talk about how they did the steps and the program - their point of view. Its different every time and the point is that people listen and take away the stuff which works for them and ignore the rest.
�The bottom line is - people are people and addicts are unpredictable. We're fundamentally broken in some way so there is no single fix which works for everyone. It's not the alcohol which is the problem - it's the reasons why we drink. AA has a lot of tools which help and is flexible enough to work for most alcoholics. You can pick on the God thing all you want but its making the assumption that AA is like a military organisation where you must follow the rules. I have no sponsor and I'm not doing the steps. Everyone knows that and nobody cares. All they care about is that I haven't had a drink today :) I have realised that I am much happier sober, which was a surprise for me. For years I thought booze solved a lot of problems and made me confident and happy and made my oh so complicated life much easier to cope with. As it turns out, all the problems and fear and complications were actually caused by the booze.�
(TBC)
�The 12 steps are all about learning how to build a life which doesn't have booze in it but they're not rigid things - everyone interprets them differently which is why we have meetings and talk about it. Each meeting has someone do the chair which means they talk about their drinking and their recovery. They talk about how they did the steps and the program - their point of view. Its different every time and the point is that people listen and take away the stuff which works for them and ignore the rest.
�The bottom line is - people are people and addicts are unpredictable. We're fundamentally broken in some way so there is no single fix which works for everyone. It's not the alcohol which is the problem - it's the reasons why we drink. AA has a lot of tools which help and is flexible enough to work for most alcoholics. You can pick on the God thing all you want but its making the assumption that AA is like a military organisation where you must follow the rules. I have no sponsor and I'm not doing the steps. Everyone knows that and nobody cares. All they care about is that I haven't had a drink today :) I have realised that I am much happier sober, which was a surprise for me. For years I thought booze solved a lot of problems and made me confident and happy and made my oh so complicated life much easier to cope with. As it turns out, all the problems and fear and complications were actually caused by the booze.�
(TBC)
"The studies people refer to on that site are probably about the people who just like to have problems. There are people in AA who carry their alcoholic status around with them like a cross. AA, in effect, replaces the alcohol. They go to a meeting every day or sometimes more than one - and this is after years of sobriety. They count the days they've been sober and like to tell you that number at every opportunity. They have nothing to talk about other than AA and the steps. But like anything in life, some people are nutters, some people are stupid, some people are religious nutters etc. And people often forget that one of the A's in AA stands for Anonymous so studies aren't really representative. If an AA meeting started asking people to fill in forms or taking head counts or asking any questions at all, it would soon be an empty room. AA doesn't ask questions - it listens. If it starts doing something different, its not AA."
You may be right Rojash that an alcoholic can return to social drinking but I think it's incredibly rare.
I certainly found I couldn't - after 8 months on the wagon I thought I could and within 6 months I was drinking as much as ever. It took another couple of years before I quit again and I've been dry for 6 years now.
I didn't get involved with AA
I certainly found I couldn't - after 8 months on the wagon I thought I could and within 6 months I was drinking as much as ever. It took another couple of years before I quit again and I've been dry for 6 years now.
I didn't get involved with AA
Waldo
I think it is excellent that your 'friend' (just joking) has found support through AA. I certainly don't doubt that it helps some people into sustained recovery from alcoholism. I should have mentioned that in my post. A couple of things though:
Just because it helps him it doesn't mean that it will help everyone, there are many alternatives. It is true that many non-religious people go through AA but that doesn't alter the fact that the psychology of the 12 steps is religious. This wouldn't be such a problem if AA could demonstrate high success rate but unfortunately it can't. Other forms of quitting offer a higher success rate in controlled studies. For example, medication plus CBT.
Just because AA is anonymous it doesn't follow that accurate studies have not been carried out on its efficacy see:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiven ess.html
Studies provide better evidence than anecdote and do not show a significant correlation between attendance of AA and improved prospect of recovery., yet the AA literature claims incredible success rates for people who correctly follow their program and that simply is not the reality.
Many people simply stop drinking perhaps after a scare or a familial intervention.
I have a 'friend' (just joking) who was dependent on alcohol and quit for about a year when his first baby arrived. He now drinks moderately. He is not necessarily representative, it is anecdotal.
Surely its ok to question these things?
I think it is excellent that your 'friend' (just joking) has found support through AA. I certainly don't doubt that it helps some people into sustained recovery from alcoholism. I should have mentioned that in my post. A couple of things though:
Just because it helps him it doesn't mean that it will help everyone, there are many alternatives. It is true that many non-religious people go through AA but that doesn't alter the fact that the psychology of the 12 steps is religious. This wouldn't be such a problem if AA could demonstrate high success rate but unfortunately it can't. Other forms of quitting offer a higher success rate in controlled studies. For example, medication plus CBT.
Just because AA is anonymous it doesn't follow that accurate studies have not been carried out on its efficacy see:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiven ess.html
Studies provide better evidence than anecdote and do not show a significant correlation between attendance of AA and improved prospect of recovery., yet the AA literature claims incredible success rates for people who correctly follow their program and that simply is not the reality.
Many people simply stop drinking perhaps after a scare or a familial intervention.
I have a 'friend' (just joking) who was dependent on alcohol and quit for about a year when his first baby arrived. He now drinks moderately. He is not necessarily representative, it is anecdotal.
Surely its ok to question these things?
jake-the-peg, I was speaking from experience when I talked aout it being possible to recover. I had reached the stage where I was starting the day with a large shot of whisky in my coffee, and for the rest of the day, I didn't drink anything that didn't contain alcohol. I had an excuse of each and every drink: A wakeup drink, a drink to give me confidence before a meeting, a drink to help me relax afterwards, and so on, right up to the final drink "to help me sleep".
It took me years to realise that my life was a total mess, and I finally decided that I had to stop. It was hell when I first stopped and I didn't touch a drop for months. That was 14 years ago.
Now, I usually (but not always) have a glass of wine with dinner, I never ever drink in the day, and can go for days or weeks without a drink, but I can still go to a party and get thoroughly sloshed if I feel like it!
It took me years to realise that my life was a total mess, and I finally decided that I had to stop. It was hell when I first stopped and I didn't touch a drop for months. That was 14 years ago.
Now, I usually (but not always) have a glass of wine with dinner, I never ever drink in the day, and can go for days or weeks without a drink, but I can still go to a party and get thoroughly sloshed if I feel like it!
dawkins - of course it ok to question stuff :) But that Orange Paper site isn't a study - its propaganda. You can tell by the way its written and the fact that the only numbers it uses are either estimated, or have no proper reference (other than the ones from their own site which is essentially saying "We're right and we can prove it because here's some stuff we wrote down last week").
I don't really understand why someone has gone to that amount of effort to debunk AA. I mean, AA can't actually do any harm. There's nothing sinister in it. What AA essentially is, is a room full of alcoholics talking about being alcoholics. For many people that really helps.
I personally know around 200 people in AA from various meetings. Out of that, 2 have drunk again. So I could produce number showing that it has a 1% fail rate. And of that, both cases were short term and they are now back on the wagon so I could say it's a 0.5% fail rate.
Ultimately, no system can guarantee to cure you but AA can and does help the majority of people who go to meetings. I've actually witnessed this and so believe that above estimated or self-referential statistics which claim to come from an organisation which clearly states that it doesn't provide statistics.
Obviously the literature isn't going to say "AA might help. It might not." What people need at the point they turn to places like AA is someone telling them that there IS a way out. So you need to be a little forgiving of the Big Book and understand why it says what it does. :)
The higher power thing does not equal God in AA. AA is not a religious organisation but some of the people in AA are - but then that's true of any organisation. I don't believe in God yet I have no problem in AA. Actually, there's a saying among some of the meetings I go to: "Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there."
I don't really understand why someone has gone to that amount of effort to debunk AA. I mean, AA can't actually do any harm. There's nothing sinister in it. What AA essentially is, is a room full of alcoholics talking about being alcoholics. For many people that really helps.
I personally know around 200 people in AA from various meetings. Out of that, 2 have drunk again. So I could produce number showing that it has a 1% fail rate. And of that, both cases were short term and they are now back on the wagon so I could say it's a 0.5% fail rate.
Ultimately, no system can guarantee to cure you but AA can and does help the majority of people who go to meetings. I've actually witnessed this and so believe that above estimated or self-referential statistics which claim to come from an organisation which clearly states that it doesn't provide statistics.
Obviously the literature isn't going to say "AA might help. It might not." What people need at the point they turn to places like AA is someone telling them that there IS a way out. So you need to be a little forgiving of the Big Book and understand why it says what it does. :)
The higher power thing does not equal God in AA. AA is not a religious organisation but some of the people in AA are - but then that's true of any organisation. I don't believe in God yet I have no problem in AA. Actually, there's a saying among some of the meetings I go to: "Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there."
