Carlotta

Stockholm syndrome?

silentrun

See...we don't even perceive language the same way. That alone can be a barrier to communication. You see information and facts as interchangeable words. I see facts being a subset of information. Information can be factual, misleading ,irrelevant or any combination. By calling something information I am not attesting to it's factualness.

Boleo

I must admit you have caught me telling the story from an optimist's perspective instead of a neutral or pessimist's perspective. I guess I must have been influenced by the many AA members that I have met within the Snyder legacy who genuinely felt grateful to have known the man. My judgement and expectations are now biased by a human sentimentality that I would never have developed without f2f meetings with his sponcee's and grand sponcee's.

In all honesty, if all I knew about him came from books and internet searches, I probably would have told his story from a pessimist's perspective. However, there is something about seeing recovery that has actually saved a myriad of lives, that biased my judgement and motivated me to omit some of the flypoop from my original post on the subject.

For that, I owe all here an apology. For those that here looking for flypoop - you can always find it at the Orange P****s web site.

Ken33xx

The paper I provided regarding the dubious 90% claim isn`t anti-AA.

Introduction
This paper is written for AA members and is intended for internal and public circulation as an item of AA historical and archival research. It is offered to help inform the AA membership and academic researchers of a widely circulated misinterpretation and mischaracterization of AA recovery outcomes
http://hindsfoot.org/recout01.pdf

Ken33xx

Roger that.

I try and practice this both inside and outside of AA meetings.

miamifella

There is a difference between abstinence and sobriety. If someone does not drink because he is afraid of getting caught, I would not call that real sobriety.

And that is what Clarence's statistics do not speak to. His group was 90% abstinent. Were they 90% sober?

The people in Clarence's group were people pleasing and palatable, that is true. And as Clarence's records show, they succeeded in being pleasing and palatable. But those records do not speak to the results that matter most to me.

I am no longer in AA, but I did learn in the program that sobriety is about wholeness and health. Not drinking and drugging is not enough for me. And wholeness and health cannot be easily quantified.

Ken33xx

Probably some truth in that.

In my case I was able to get sober in AA despite a nut job guru who badgered me.

awuh1

There is an excellent discussion regarding statistics in this (long) world science video. The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance - World Science Festival

BTW the people discussing the topics in the world science videos are VERY high caliber folks.

mick3580

Every article I have ever read or video I have ever watched related to aa's lack of efficacy, without exception, has contained huge misrepresentations about the aa fellowship as a whole as well as the aa program as a whole, revealing that all of the authors did not understand the difference between the fellowship and the program. All authors equated them when they aren't equal. This misrepresentation immediately disqualifies the author as a credible commenter on the subject of the aa efficacy because they don't know what aa is and what it isn't. Yet, in most pieces done on this subject, the authors claim to have done "extensive research." This cannot be true. And, if it is, then these people should not quit their day jobs just yet.

mick3580

Joe, thank you for posting the link to the article. It seems in this article, the author isn't making statements about aa or any other twelve step fellowship or program. The article is referring to treatment centers that claim to be twelve step based and the differences between those treatment centers versus treatment centers based on some other philosophy or approach.

paulokes

Thats an important point to make...so many of the guys and gals who come through our doors say they "did the steps" in Rehab and, however useful it was to them, the program they talk about is usually not the one I recognize.

Here in the UK, treatment programmes often misrepresent the 12 steps purely and simply because they receive charitable funding to offer 12 step as an option, but it comes with professional provisos, and they need to 'create' a certain amount of paperwork to validate what they do with all that time and funding.

P

miamifella

While I was in part of 12-step recovery the program/fellowship distinction seemed to be that those who succeeded in working the steps were in the program. Those (like me) who struggled and could not get through them were in the fellowship.

I spent years doing everything I could think of and everything I heard that anyone else tried to do the steps (other than cleaning my sponsor's garage), so this distinction always rankles. It feels like a way to "cook the books" by omitting the people who either did not succeed in getting to step 12.

Joe Nerv

I've seen lots of people make suggestions to you here, that you refused to take. While I'm not one to generally call people out on things, you often misrepresent AA. You met some crazy people early on in AA, and continue years later to still define AA by those people. If you're resentful towards AA, which it seems you are, don't you think it might be time to figure out a way to let go of those resentments? And either dive back in with a completely open, clean and fresh mind, or move on to things that would help you?

Regarding the article, I think people are still missing the point I'm trying to make. I'll cut and paste:

If you are wondering which treatment works best with you, here are some factors that may indicate you being better suited at a non 12 step treatment center. Note the blue text:

You do not believe in a “higher power”
You feel yourself to be socially awkward
You are very shy
You value your personal privacy
You are uncomfortable sharing your deepest emotions and thoughts with a group of strangers
There are no 12 step programs where you live

A major difference in philosophy is that 12 step treatment programs tell the addict that they are powerless, diseased and incurable whereas the non 12 step model believes in empowering the individual to find his or her own way out of their suffering. The individual in the non 12 step program is taught to be self-aware and self-confident along with instructions on the necessary life skills to face the issues that caused addiction in the first place. The healing process is up to the individual addict, not a higher power.

Is it really so difficult to see what the author is doing here? I don't know any drunk, sans alcohol, that isn't socially awkward, or shy. Everybody on the planet values, or should value their personal privacy. And who in the world is comfortable sharing their deepest, darkest, secrets with stranger? Drunk, sure, no problem. Sober, I don't see many people looking to do that. Hence, that whole list reads to me as, if you're an alcoholic looking for help, your best bet is to go the non 12 step route.

Then it continues, without any clear explanation; 12 steps = you're powerless, you will be diseased for life, and you will never be cured. That hardly describes me. Doesn't even come close.

Non 12 step = you'll become self aware and confident. You'll also be given the tools to heal this thing.

The article sums it all up by stating there's a 70% better chance you'll get sober using non 12 step methods, and that the success rate of people who use 12 step methods are less than 10%.

If that ain't trashing 12 step programs, I'm not sure what is. The writer does it so cleverly she even has intelligent people who are pro 12 programs defending her. OK. In the big picture this article probably isn't all that important, but I can't help but to wonder "what if" I had read this while drinking, and never tried AA because of it. Or went into AA with this being my preconceived notion of what AA is. Throw me or any other angy, hurting drunk into a place he/she already has a negative view of, and guess what's going to be confirmed. And guess what's going to be blamed if and when it doesn't work.

I may be a bit over protective of AA at times, but I know I wouldn't sane, or alive had I not been led inside it's doors.

Joe Nerv

I'm starting to notice also that when using statistics regarding success of programs, people creating those statistics use very different criteria for their term "success". I noted one earlier, I believe in this thread, but will repeat it anyhow.

A very popular non 12 step drug rehab in my area claims an 80% success rate. After 6 months clean on their own outside the center they're able to drink alcohol. They'll still go down in their "success" statistics.

Not that long ago I posted links to a program that claimed similar success, and trashed AA to all hell. They were a program that showed up in a google search as an ad if you typed in "AA meetings". The link was removed from here for legal reasons, but for other legal reasons I contacted AA general services and was able to have the AA name taken out of all their advertisements and claims. Anyhow, they stated all kinds of crazy statistics, and when I dug deeper I found that what they considered success was if someone went from drinking a bottle of wine a night, to drinking a glass of wine. Within their 6 month program!

AA on the other hand I believe is only judged on those who successfully maintain over a year (possibly even 3 years) sobriety. Still don't know how anyone could know that even close to accurately, and it doesn't count for all the people as (already mentioned here by someone else), who fail many times, and then return to sobriety for the rest of their lives. I have a friend who failed for 25 years and now is enjoying his 9th year of contented sobriety. Did AA fail for him 1000 times, yet work just this 1? Or does the 1 erase the 1000 failures. I guess that would be up to whoever is figuring the statistics.

Statisticz r stoopid, yo!

Joe Nerv

And fwiw, I quit all internet come the end of June every year till September, so I have to get it all out now .

Coldfusion

Hi Joe!

This article convinced me many years ago that if I needed to quit drinking, AA was the answer. Here is what he says about AA's success rate:http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0903...l/458025a.html

mick3580

Cook the books? I'm not talking about statistics of any kind. I have nothing to prove far as that goes. There are no books that have been cooked or that need cooking. Whoever gave you that definition of fellowship versus program was wrong. Sorry to say it that way but bs is bs. What I mean when I refer to the fellowship is the group of people in church basements calling themselves aa. What I mean when I refer to the program is the twelve steps as laid out in the big book. One can work the program and/or be in the fellowship but it's flawed language to use a phrase like "in the program." I don't pick on those who often use the terms interchangeably but people who make uninformed claims about aa and use that flawed language to describe it are just plain wrong in their assertions. Being wrong is okay but once they say that they have done extensive research and then make wrong conclusions based on that extensive research, then their statements deserve to be heavily scrutinized. When someone in the fellowship says that they are "in the program" it is really not technically correct. However, I am not a aa police officer so I don't need to tell them they are wrong because they usually aren't knowingly doing or speaking wrong. What I do with those people depends on if I am helping them with recovery. If not, then "live and let live" is my motto.

Turtle82

Not to climb on a soapbox but my conscience dictates that I say something very simply. I got sober when the recovery industry, private or institutional, and the internet were both in their infancy I bring that up only because they are the two leading producers of defamatory reading material on AA as I see it. I, literally, thank God the reading materials available to me, much of it written by doctors in support of AA, in the rooms of a very large meeting place were positive and supportive. Reading that material is part of why I stayed. But, initially, with the fears I had, of people and their motivations mostly, I seriously doubt I would have even called AA Central and I, for sure, wouldn't have sought any sort of what I saw as mind-controlling psychological therapy.... individual or institutional. The thought of walking through the doors into the hands of a "cult" for instance just wouldn't have been possible for me.. more frightening than a psychologist's office. I have no doubt whatever, with nowhere to turn, that I would still be drinking or dead and most likely dead. (Think about this... all of the above would make me an Internal type... right?)

Now, to me, the statistics don't matter.. as I said, they can be manipulated for an agenda... nor do any psychological profiles. I still have a problem with the Locus material I read and I read more than the links here. I see manipulation in it.. propaganda with a purpose. It clearly avoids, as most all of "psychology" does, the spiritual (and/or mystic) which, if trying to pigeon-hole people by personality-type is a huge failing in the data. In my earlier post, I tried to explain why I, personally, have to "force" either one, internal or external definitions, attempting to categorize myself. Both (or otherwise viewed as neither) fits. Each had to be "forced." I approached the material, admittedly, skeptically, the minute I began seeing what I call a spin job. Just briefly and simplistically, take the External type which is characterized, with intent in my view, as a blamer. That's purely negative for an agenda as I see it. That very same focus can be applied to monks, priests and nuns for instance who, by the definitions, would be External types. So, the very same focus can lead in either direction toward pity-pot, resentful and irresponsible, blaming or gratitude and love. Given it can go either way, isn't there something being omitted or not addressed.. something a priori? I posit that what's being avoided is spirituality which head people always avoid as it can't be quantified or analyzed.

So anyway, I'm going to keep reading as I like staying up with how alcoholism/addiction affects the culture and economy. But for now at least the Locus material doesn't hold up to even basic logic. Its a posteriori wholly. Just a single a priori dilutes and/or blends either type.... knowledge of or belief in free will... making the logic actually circular and, therefore, fallacious.

PS: Thanks for the vid link Awuh... I enjoyed it.. especially the humor.

miamifella

I have to speak up. You says I ran into crazy people "early on" which implies a brief period. It was about 7.5 years.

By the time I got to SR I was near the end, and I have to admit that I was much more critical about suggestions. Though in fairness, I do not think I ever got any advice on the steps here. I prayed to the doorknob and ran errands for sponsors with great enthusiasm for the first few years. After a while I started to be more critical and question whether the tasks suggested really were in any way helpful. That was really the start of my recovery.

12-step recovery gave me a vision of recovery as a wholeness. In my rejection of its practices, I came to a realization that my recovery would have to be based on rigorous honesty, openness, service to others and connection to something larger than myself. Reading on SR, I see that some were able to find that in 12-step recovery--which I think is terrific.

You do talk about my resentment, which I think has gone away because I have taken action and continue to take action. The only cure for resentment and anger is action, isn't it? I want people to know that they are not alone. When I was praying to the doorknob and feeling nothing, I thought that there was no hope for me. It is important to me that people in 12-step recovery who face similar obstacles to know that they are not doomed to a lifetime of continual relapse.

I still send people new to recovery to AA because I believe it does work for many people. And people still contact me when they read what I write to share similar experiences.

My only real disagreement with AA is that I do not think we are powerless to help each other when in an addiction crisis. And on SR I read from many in the program who agree with me on that.

AA is probably the best place to start recovery...but it does not have to be the last place you look. That is why I try to be specific when writing (even though it means a post can run long like this one). If I was not specific about what my difficulties were, it would be bashing AA and could discourage people who genuinely could get help there.

miamifella

I have to ask what article this is? This claim seems so irresponsible I cannot believe it was written.

Are you sure they are not just saying that 70% of alcoholics would have a better chance in another program? Even that seems high given the lack of any serious statistics in this area, but at least it is closer to being in the realm of the possible.

---------------

I went back to the beginning of the thread. You said something different...that the article says that 70% of people who get sober do it without AA. That seems reasonable---and the fact that 30% of those who get sober do it WITH AA is quite an achievement for the fellowship.

Now you are saying that what I assume is the same article is saying your are 70% more likely to get sober without AA, which is something completely different.

You took an article which sounds as if it gave credit to AA for 30% and claim it is bashing it. No program will ever be 100% for everyone. Frankly, I doubt any program can ever get above the 30%!