Topic: A critique of AA meetings and an assessment of the nature of addiction. - page 2. (Read 3815 times)

There is a very low percentage of alcoholics that kick alcohol through AA. The people I believe it works for is those that value being part of a group that accepts them more than they value drinking. Kinda like people who get involved in a club or community and start to revolve their lives around doing things that will get acolades by the community, whether it is a fishing club and you make sure you make it out every morning before work to try to catch a great fish so that you can tell your community how well you did, receiving acolades and being a "big fish" within that community for your efforts. Or any number of groups where following their process makes you more welcome among the members.

As for whether or not it is an addiction, I read one article that made sense. It said that many alcoholics started drinking when they were a teenager. When you drink alcohol your body treats it like a poison, your body reacts, you may get sick if you have too much, you get hung over as your body has literally been poisoned. If you do this once in a while this is no big deal, but as a teenager who's body is developing, if you repeatedly drink alcohol your body will accept that for some reason you will continue to drink this poison so your developing body changes to accept alcohol not as a poison but as something that your body will tolerate and even need. You will feel good when you drink alcohol and your body will crave it when you do not have it in your system. This is what alcoholics have to live with. People who do not have this type of body chemistry look at alcoholics as weak because they can have a couple of drinks and stop with no problem. An alcoholic has two drinks and his body has taken over and needs more and more and more, the euphoria has taken over.

I have been to a few of these AA meetings with a friend and I am saddened that the meetings are not about taking control of your own body and your life but rather replacing one addiction with another. Every AA meeting will have people drowning themselves in coffee or there are the smoker's meetings where everyone is puffing away at cigarettes as they talk about how they are glad that they have their alcohol addiction under control.

I do not know what the solution is, you have changed your body's chemistry while it was developing. I doubt as an adult you can do much to change it back. Your body is pretty much done developing.

The best thing that can be done is to discourage kids who's bodies are still developing from drinking alcohol. Let them know that they are not just damaging their bodies in the short term but they are choosing a miserable life of being addicted to something that will control them the rest of their lives.

Wow!  So after 5000+ years of human history with alcohol and drug addiction , all that was missing for those who suffer from  alcoholism and addiction was the insight you have?  Where religion ,medication have psychiatry all failed to help these people with sustained recovery , NA and AA have statistically helped a much higher percentage than all 3 of those.  But people should just be smart enough like you to realize they should just stop identifying themselves as 'addicts' or 'alcoholics'.  
There is a reason that courts order alcoholics and addicts who get into criminal trouble because of drugs and alcohol to AA and NA meetings..statistically it works better than anything else that has ever come along.  Should something else come along that works better (like your brilliant discovery)... they will surely be referring the offenders to that method.  So start a program and make tons of money.. There are 3am infomercials promising the same thing, and I'm sure they cost a pretty penny.

   These 12 step programs are not perfect because they still depend on the person to want to get better and to work at it.  The powerless thing is misunderstood by outsiders and even members of these groups.  "we admitted we WERE powerless over... and our lives HAD become unmanageable.  The Idea is there is power greater than any one individual in a group of individuals with a common focus...and that will work for anything.  When one utilizes that power.. they are not powerless anymore but need to remember that, on their own, they don't have that power.  Self-sufficiency for an individual is almost impossible (you'd eventually go crazy if you were alone long enough) .. but for a group ..it is easy. What worked for you, you should share and see if it works for others.  My guess is that for the majority of people .. it will not.

I read it. Can't come up with anything clever to say at this hour though.

AA/NA Meetings

I recently accompanied a very dear friend of mine to an AA meeting.
I've long held various prejudices against the organization, but she needed support and it seemed like a good opportunity to assess my opinion of these meetings and see if perhaps I had misjudged them.

I found many of my preconceptions to be correct and the experience reinforced my negative feelings about the group. Now, many might say "it helps some people, if it's not for you, good for you, no need to knock it." I feel otherwise. I believe that AA and NA (and many other groups intended to help people battle addiction) are not only unhelpful for me personally, but actually obstruct and discourage true recovery for all of those who subscribe to their rhetoric.

The main issue I take with these organizations revolves around identity. I hypothesize that addiction is tightly tied into identity. Overcoming addiction involves severing the portion of your identity that is associated with not only the particular substance at hand (i.e. "I am a smoker" or "I am a drinker") but also severing the portion of your identity that is associated with being addicted (i.e. "I am an addict" or "I am incapable of controlling myself").

AA/NA encourages you to embrace this identity. They encourage you to accept and resign yourself to the idea that you are inherently flawed, that you are not capable of enjoying a beer or two now and then without losing all control, that it is beyond your willpower--that you "are" an "addict" and must behave accordingly.

They encourage you to reinforce this unhealthy self-image. Rather than suggesting, for example, that you say to yourself "I currently am drinking more than I would like to" or even "I am suffering from withdraws because I have become physically dependent upon alcohol," they propose that you say things like "I am an alcoholic" and even use a standard format of introduction such as "Jane, alcoholic" or "Jim, addict."

You are what you chose to be in this world. If you identify yourself as an alcoholic who has been abstinent for 20 years, you are still an alcoholic (albeit one that has been very well behaved for a long while). If you identify yourself as a recovered alcoholic, and allow yourself a drink now and then but are very cautious to avoid losing control, you are still identifying yourself as an alcoholic. You are choosing to be a recovered alcoholic, or an abstinent alcoholic, but you are choosing to be an alcoholic.

If you never acknowledge the need to sever that portion of your personality and your very self, you will remain an alcoholic for the rest of your life, regardless of how much or little you drink.

Only when you can truly change your self image and assert control over who you choose to be will you have a chance at no longer being an alcoholic. "I was once an alcoholic, I am not any more." Only when you truly believe that statement will you be free of the shackles of alcoholism.

I have been using the example of alcoholism, but this is my theory of all addiction, and it goes along with a more fundamental belief that man chooses his own destiny and must take full responsibility for all of his actions and even all of his thoughts. You choose who you are. I believe this fully, and from it springs my assessment of addiction. It leads me to hold other opinions some challenge, such as the idea that one choses which foods he likes and does not like, and chooses which people he loves and does not love. Many disagree with these fundamental beliefs and therefore will systematically disagree with a large portion of my opinions; it is a sort of dissonance caused by differing world-views similar to the dissonance I experience when talking to people who harbor religious beliefs.


To use the example of cigarettes and myself, I would phrase it like this: I am a smoker. I am a smoker because I choose to be a smoker. I choose to be a smoker because "being a smoker" is so deeply ingrained in my self image from such a young age that to change myself would require a painful effort so great that it outweighs my fear of and aversion to lung disease.

If ever my aversion to lung disease becomes stronger than my aversion to the pain and effort involved in changing who I am (which might happen, for example, if a close loved one were to be diagnosed with lung disease, or if I myself were diagnosed with lung disease), I would sever that portion of myself and cease to smoke. I can see that my aversion to that pain and effort is greater than my aversion to lung disease, by virtue of the fact that I have not yet stopped smoking. I may never stop smoking, but my core assumption is that if I am still smoking, it is because my attachment to being a smoker is greater than my attachment to being healthy (or even being alive).

Also closely tied in to identity and self image, I see surrounding oneself with others who are addicts and identify themselves as such (recovered or otherwise, clean for 10 days or 20 years) reinforces the image of oneself as an addict. Especially harmful is going to meetings with or spending time with "recovered addicts" who were already part of your peer group and were previously abusing substances with you. Clinging to relationships that had their basis in substance abuse is clinging to the identity you've formed of yourself in which you see yourself as an addict.

Say for example a heroin addict who is entrenched in the false glamor and the appeal of junkie culture. That person thinks of them self as a junkie. They have a peer group that consists of other heroin addicts and holds those folks in high esteem, valuing their opinions and and seeking their approval. If this person tries to get clean, but continues to spend time with the same folks, listen to the same music, spew the same rhetoric, live the same lifestyle; they will fail. To shed the "junkie identity" one must recreate themselves with new values, change the very essence of what they do and do not like and who they are.


In summary, I think that groups such as AA and NA are using the wrong rhetoric and approaching the issue of addiction from the wrong angle; while they are certainly helpful for many many people I believe they could be much more helpful if they focused on guiding people towards a point at which they no longer need to attend meetings, worry about slipping up, think of themselves as addicts, think of themselves as compromised or flawed, think of themselves as recovering or even recovered.

Many folks call addiction a disease, including AA and most physicians. I certainly am aware that people suffer from addiction, and I see how it has properties very much like various diseases, but I do not think that disease is a very effective word for conveying the nature of addiction. Disease implies that "addiction" is something you have; I propose that "an addict" is something you choose to be, and that with enough willpower and motivation you can become something better.

And of course, some people will bristle at that statement, and say that with those words I am blaming the victims, and that it is "out of their control" and that "they have a disease it's not their fault" and so on. Those people will find that they disagree with me on most topics, due to deeper differences in fundamental beliefs about the world. I firmly believe in man's ultimate responsibility for all of his actions, I firmly believe that you chose who you are and what you do.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do not propose that we shut down AA and NA, and I do not propose that meetings of this sort are entirely harmful. Certain people at certain stages may find it helpful to connect with others who have fought the same battles. I believe that the systems and rhetoric used by most of these sort of meetings tend to turn "alcoholics" into "recovered alcoholics" and "addicts" into "recovered addicts." It may sound like semantics, but I feel that a recovered alcoholic is still an alcoholic; for example, many so-called "recovered alcoholics" still are unable to consume even a single beer without losing all control and returning to alcoholism. I say this is not true recovery, and that one should strive towards being a whole, healthy, happy, human being, who has left alcoholism and addiction in their past.

As a final note I would like to point out that I am not speaking as an outsider. I am speaking as an individual who suffered greatly through numerous addictions over the course of three years, starting at a very young age. If there is any inherent genetic tendency towards being particularly susceptible to addiction, I would say it is likely that I have it. Nevertheless, I am not an addict, "recovered" or otherwise, and I will never be one. I am a man who was once addicted.

I am now healthy, free of addiction, and do not live in fear of relapse. I can comfortably be in the presence of substances that once were a major problem for me, and I can drink a beer now and then without becoming an alcoholic. I am this way because I have decided to make it so, and I did so with very little support required, through my own willpower and introspection. I do not count how many days I have "been clean" and I do not consider myself a "recovered addict" and I never went to meetings or rehab programs or spoke to doctors; only twice during the whole process did I feel a need for support and in both instances I needed only to talk to somebody, mostly to vent the about emotions I was experiencing during withdraws.



I hope this inspires some fiery debate. But that's probably wishful thinking, after all, nobody bothers to read a thread this long (except for me, I search for the longest threads I can find and I read them carefully, word for word).