jimhere

I believe you are correct, Tib.

As an AA member, I happen to think it is a good thing.
Jim

bob_sapp

Maybe instead of generalizing and bashing AA you should go read a book or clean your bathroom. In my experience, people who stopped going to meetings did so to drink. Some older people just stop, but the majority leave to go back to drinking. I don't care what you say, I know it's true.

nolonger

If only progress was so simple. Some things stay the same, or change at different speeds. Alcoholism is not a problem that has one magic bullet, one stand-alone scientific solution. I'm not in AA any more. (And I still don't drink.) But one of the things that I like about AA, and that helped me a lot, is that it recognizes alcoholism is a physical, mental, emotional and even a moral problem, and you cannot separate them out. You have to find a lived solution which includes them all.

bugsworth

Wow, Interesting thread. Up to now I stayed away from it because in the past no matter what I say about aa I get accused of killing newcomers. Since I want no "blood on my hands" I would simply like to say that aa does work for some people. The evidence is in this thread. On the flip side, as is also evident in this thread, people do leave aa and do not drink. Since I already read a book this week and cleaned my bathroom...lol Bob...I thought I would add my 2 cents. I did not leave aa to go back to drinking, I left because it was and is not a viable solution for me. I found a simple solution...I never, ever put alcohol in my body..end of story.

Best of luck with your article!

Tazman53

Tib I still sign quite a few court cards in my area, Virginia is not the most liberal state going LOL!!!!!

I have signed hundreds of them in just the short 20 months I have been in the rooms, of those hundreds I have signed to my knowledge only one of them was seeking sobriety and he just picked up 2 years, all the rest of them were just doing what thier PO told them to do, thier lawyer told them to do, or what a judge told them to do.

I fully understand why AA has an overall low success rate when the following are counted in the success rate:

1. All court ordered folks that have absolutely no desire to quit drinking.

2. Every person in a rehab or detox who goes because it is a part of their rehab or detox program.

3. Every person whose spouse or other loved one threatens them into going when they do not want to go.

4. A person that comes in and out of AA 15 times is counted as 15 people because there is no recoerd of names to determine who is coming back into AA

Now if you took all of the folks in catagories 1 through 3 and send them to any other program, that programs stats will suffer drastically as well.

If they only counted people who really wanted to get sober who came to AA the success rate would be through the roof!

I went to AA because I wanted to stay sober, one of my sponsees who has over a year now wanted to stay sober, my sponsor wanted to stay sober.

Any one who is an alcoholic knows that an alcoholic is not going to get and stay sober until they are ready to!

The courts can not order you sober!
Ones PO can not order you sober!
Your spouse/family can not make you sober!

All of the above can force you to go to AA, detox, or a rehab, but until you are ready to get sober you will not get sober no matter what program you are forced to use.

In the early days of AA the vast majority of people who came into AA wanted to get sober, it was the rare case that was forced to go to AA, as a result the success rates were very high.

gerryP

Whaaaat...?

Reading a book or cleaning my bathroom is your best response to a comment based on my experience in the rooms?

The best defence is offence. Things are ...because You say they are?
You call my experience generalizing, yet your experience is "truth"?

Having an opinion does not constitute "bashing"and the comment I made about "angry AA'ers who call those who leave the program and stay sober, dry drunks? I rest my case. You my friend, are angry!

LosingmyMisery

Left AA, still sober. Don't have any desire to drink. I hope that dispels any myths out there.

Emimily

well, the only thing i want to point out is that there is no AA slogan that goes "It's AA or Die." in the big book, bill w. talks about the fact that AA has no monopoly on sobriety. my dear friend is getting sober with buddhism. people go to church. some people just quit, no problems. SMART, RR, etc. no monopoly.

if you write an article, you should get an editor that checks accuracy. in my opinion.

jimhere

Hello Bugs, good to see you.

I wouldn't worry about killing any newcomers if I were you. It is the crap being spread in AA meetings by AA members that hurts the newcomer and hurts AA as a whole. Bill Wilson always said that while AA may be attacked from without, it would fall apart from within. AA is in far worse danger these days of collapsing from within due to us AA members failing to practice our own principles.

Bob, you might want to pay heed to some articles Bill Wilson wrote about paying attention to our critics to see if there is truth to what they say and if there is, even a grain of truth, to thank them and get on with our respective inventories. Bill took this position after AA came under its first major attack in the mid-forties. Bill said the best defense is no defense at all. You might want to consider the idea that taking a defensive stance does AA no good because to the public, as an AA member you are AA.

I write a lot of inventory about the ******** perpertrated in AA by AA members, but I rarely if ever have written any about what non-AA members have to say about us.

Once again, Alcoholics Anonymous has no monopoly on recovery from alcoholism. That was true in 1955 when the second edition of the book came out, and it is true today. What the non-AA'ers on this thread have saying about AA's abysmallly low recovery rate is absolutely true. But it is not the fault of any non-AA member or outside source. We AA's are the guilty ones because we allow it to happen.
Jim

PupMum

I read Richards item (before any responses were written!) and thought it was excellent as to me it says...consider every option...some things work for some people or situations. I understand AA is great organisation and has saved many lives...but that does not mean alternatives should not be considered...Thinking is good for us!

barb dwyer

MG -
I love ya. I just ... love ya.

here's the one I use ---->

Tazman53

pupmum I could not agree more, and the best way to allow someone to consider every option open to them is to not speak badly of an option.

Imagine if you will, a waiter handing you a menu with all of the entree`s available on it and then saying "The shrimp used in the scampi was far from being fresh today" would you order the scampi?

I feel it is important that I do not talk badly of any recovery program, the program I bad mouth may have been the only program that may have worked for some one and they may skip it because I wrote an article that "may" be published.

If you were doing a research paper on blacks would you use KKK literature as your primary source of information? Of course not!!! What sense would it make to use an obviously biased source for real information.

bob_sapp

Lol I'm not angry... I read these boards for entertainment. What you say will not change what I have seen over and over. I listen to what critics say about AA, and I have some criticisms myself. On the other hand, some criticisms aren't well founded or seek to discredit AA because of one person's experience. I'm sorry you don't like my opinion, but you've taken one thing I've said and acted like I made a sweeping list of generalizations about AA. AA is a small segment of the population, there's obvious patterns and some people deny them just to meet their own ends, I really don't care but obviously you do?

bugsworth I never said why you left AA. I said that some do leave AA because they don't like it. Most I see leave it because they want to drink more, good for you if you can stay sober by yourself.

tiburon88

AA members always seem to assume someone "is back out there" whenever they disappear from meetings. One old timer in my area says you can be a meeting making fool. lol I guess he means someone who just goes to meetings and never changes.

contrarichard

I apologize in advance for this lengthy post. Sometimes I can’t figure a way to consider all the potential sensitivities of others without the use of many words. Needless to say, anyone who doesn’t wish to take the time to read my “over explanation” here, is obviously free to pass it by.

Throughout this thread, I have been asked where I came up with info included in my original essay. I have gone back in fourth on this issue whether or not I should forward my sources to SR, especially since the initial heated responses. I didn’t want to further aggravate people or heat things up by planting my feet in the ground and backing things up with statistics. Although I realize that I may catch some crap for this, after much consideration, I find it more likely to be in the best interest of everybody to suggest that people do their own research to obtain statistics, if you so choose. Some of them are fairly grim and are accompanied by negativity that I just don’t want to pass on to others. My original essay continues to evolve (in part, thanks to many of you) and one way I have changed it is to make it clear that my position is 100% based on personal experience and therefore, my perspective is 100% true….. for me. Although often not disclosed, I believe that is true for most of the posts here and other places. I have also prefaced in my article, any “reported facts” with a disclosure about the potential inaccuracy of the available statistics. Having said that, my reason for not including statistics here is firstly, because I have come to believe that statistics are so often slanted (in some cases extraordinarily so) because the strategy, interpretation, and results of collected date are frequently manipulated by the agenda of the specific organization or individual reporting those statistics. There is a saying about statistics along the lines of: (and I use these quotation marks loosely) “there are lies, then more lies and then statistics” – sorry - am I bad - don’t know the exact wording or its author.

I will say this much for those of you who wish to view statistics. I have found that the statistics claimed by individual treatment facilities, 12-step based AND non-12 step based alike are fairly unreliable. Clearly, the higher the success rates any specific facility can claim, the more appealing it seems to those seeking treatment, which generates more revenue. Additionally, we all know that people with alcohol and drug issues are not the easiest people to track down when they are still active, so accurate long term success rates are near impossible to track. Many treatment centers are reported to collect data while people are still in treatment. Therefore, if 70% of their clients stay for the full 30 day program, for example, and remain clean and sober for those 30 days, then they report a 70% success rate. That is clearly misleading since we all know there is a high likelihood of relapse (especially for those w/only 30 days clean). Again, that is true for both 12-step based treatment AND non-12 step based. This brings me to my next point. The statistics vary (yet some don’t even take into account), according to the length of clean time one has when the data is collected. Obviously the percentages of success are going to change drastically when comparing 30 days clean and sober to 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and so on.

Specifically for AA, accurate statistics are probably the most impossible to obtain. As someone said in an earlier post, data is not collected at meetings and even if it were, there are numerous factors to consider in order to report accurate statistics; People who are required to go there for legal reasons or ultimatums from spouses and family and so on (some stick with it and some don’t) ; people who never go at all but quit through alternative program,; people who go once and never go back; people who drop out for various reasons and stay clean and sober vs.those who drop out specifically because they decide to use again and so on – this is all tough to track and as far as I can tell, there is no available research which includes consideration of all necessary factors and therefore, the numbers are either inflated or deflated, depending on the specific agenda or missing criteria.

And then to throw the whole thing off further, there are those who never go to treatment, AA or any other “program” and quit on their own. There are reports that vary in percentages, of those who quit on their own and attribute success to different things including supportive spouse (or family), church, or just made the decision to quit because of health problems (including accidents), legal problems, certain scares, marital problems, familial problems, or just because they have “had enough”.

The bottom line is you will find statistics to support whatever it is that you believe – as I did. Since I don’t want to impose the statistics I found onto anyone else, which could start a whole new flurry of heated debate, it just seems mutually beneficial to let those who have a desire, to find statistics on their own.

Based on personal experience, when I was in a 12-step based treatment in 1996, I was told that “1 out of 30 will stay clean and sober” – about 3%) This was repeated over and over again to those of us attending classes and meetings. Since then, I have visited dozens of treatment centers and have heard treatment counselors do the same thing that I experienced, yet the ranges quoted (and repeated) were between 1 out of 12 and 1 out of 30. At the time of my treatment, since often there were about 30 people present, we were perpetually reminded that only one of us will “make it”, which didn’t feel very good at the time and certainly did not offer any hope, as I thought about my own life and looked around the room at people who I had grown to care about. Luckily, I never allowed such claims to penetrate me too deeply and ultimately purged from my psyche, such a claim as well as many others which I found would otherwise be dangerous to embrace. Even in the instance that those statistics were accurate during the time of my treatment, to say it and repeat it over and over to those who are attempting to find sense of hope and solid recovery for such a tormenting condition, it is my firm belief that “planting that hopeless seed” in the minds of vulnerable, frightened, conflicted treatment clients is counter-productive to the intent of the program, and most significantly, to its clients. For me and others who I remain close to, it served no positive purpose and in fact, presented an unnecessarily obstacle which we had to remove. Again – that was my experience.

I came across this review of a book (which I haven’t read), which better conveys the changes (or alternatives) in treatment approaches. This was posted on LifeRing website – unhooked.com. Please do not think I am promoting LifeRing, the website, or for that matter, this book. I am not. I just found the excerpts with quoted dialogue somewhat touching and reflective of some positive treatment approaches that seem compatible and helpful for some who continue to suffer from addiction. That is not to say that anyone is expected to agree with these or have them influence any current recovery program. I simply offer it for those who will only benefit by it in one way or another. Either way, I do not believe its message is hurtful or threatening to anyone.



Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System, by Lonny Shavelson ISBN 1-56584-684-2
TWO REVIEWS! Craig Whalley and Marty N.


I was tickled to read the dialogue between Darlene and Dr. Pablo Stewart, the resident psychiatrist at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, one of the several clinical Good Persons in this book.

Darlene, in her first interview, is telling Dr. Stewart that if an addict doesn't want to get off drugs, "you can just talk at them until your eyes turn blue, and they'll just tell you to **** off."

This is hardly news to Dr. Stewart, and he has an answer. Holding up his thumb and forefinger pinched together, he says, "Just possibly, that person who you're speaking about may have the teeniest of desires" to deal with her drug problem.

Darlene joins in the game, holding up her fingers and pinching them together harder. "Well, what if that person only has the teeniest, teeeniest, tiniest wanting to be off drugs?"

"Then," says Dr. Stewart, standing up and offering her his hand, "I would think that such a person would do very well in this clinic."
Here the doctor knows that telling Darlene she is powerless over drugs or that she has an incurable progressive fatal disease is a sure way to drive her out of the clinic. What keeps her coming back is his solemn acknowledgement that something within her, something of her own, no matter how concealed and tiny, is right and good; and he bonds with that quality in her, no matter how fragile, and builds the therapeutic relationship on it. That seems to me an example of the LifeRing way: finding, acknowledging, reinforcing and ultimately empowering the sober place within the addicted person, rather than shaming and humiliating the person for displaying the symptoms of their affliction, as so frequently happens.

Another example of what I think of as the LifeRing approach shines through Glenda's remark about her counselor in Friendship House: "Evelyn tells me, 'Glenda, you're a strong, wise lady.' She says all kinds of things about me that make me feel really good." The counselor Evelyn is a strong, wise lady herself, and she knows that focusing on Glenda's many deficiencies and shortcomings would be a pointless and abusive therapeutic exercise. Glenda has been beaten up enough. Healing cannot come by reopening the wounds that her addiction has inflicted on her; it must begin with recognizing and reinforcing her positive, sober side.

Another gem, in my view, is Shavelson's conversation with Drug Court counselor Marillac after observing her run a meeting. He thought Marillac would be tougher with the Drug Court patients, because they were mandated to be there.

Marillac shakes her head. 'It's just the opposite.' She smiles. 'I have to be more relaxed with them here. The fact that they're mandated to be in rehab doesn't make their treatment easier, it makes it harder. They have to show up, but then I have to win them over to wanting to change their lives. If I act tough, all I get is an addict who's pissed at another authority figure. So I've got to grab at what good they have inside of them, and they have to see me grabbing it, bringing it out - accepting them.'

It's ironic, Shavelson observes, that rehab in the coerced setting of Drug Court turns out to be more compassionate than rehab in many voluntary programs. Not only compassionate, but more pragmatic and more likely to be effective. "Grabbing the good" that is inside the addict, bringing it out, accepting them because of it -- these methods awaken and mobilize the inner motivation to get clean and sober, without which no treatment approach has the slightest chance of success. That, too, is to my mind a "LifeRing" type of approach.

Also very true and significant in my eyes is Shavelson's observation, made after watching Mike stay clean and sober on his own for weeks while waiting to get into treatment, that "the fierce power of an addict's obsession with drugs is matched, when the timing is right, by an equally vigorous drive to be free of them." Linking up with and mutually reinforcing that vigorous inner drive to be free is, basically, what our LifeRing self-help groups are all about. That vigorous drive for freedom, if given peer support, can do more than match the obsession for drugs, it can overpower it, break it, and pen it up harmlessly for life. Shavelson's observation ought to be made into a poster and hung in every treatment room, where it might do far more to promote recovery than the disabling platitudes typically found there.

There's much more to like in this gem of a book, which ought to win its author big awards. If it has one flaw, it's that it ignores the big elephant in the center of the room. By far the greater part of the rehab industry that Shavelson finds misguided and inadequate is of course erected on the 12-Step model. Shavelson, however, maintains a diplomatic silence about this whole topic. However, the fact that he quotes all of his subjects by their full real names and publishes their photos, with their express consent, speaks volumes. This book is a powerful manifesto calling for more effective alternatives, by someone who passionately cares about people

Photos: Mike Pagsolingan in Walden House, Mike in relapse; Darlene James with her shopping cart, Darlene in treatment with Dr. Stewart; Glenda Janis on the street, Glenda with counselor Evelyn at Friendship House. By Lonny Shavelson, from the book Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System

CarolD

The only recovery time I count is my own.
That's been 100% for 19+ years.

If this 100% statistic is not your experience
I do hope you keep trying.

barb dwyer

AA isn't the only stop on the train -
but it *is* the only stop where the 'refreshment' is free.
And real.

:chatter

contrarichard

Thanks for the good wishes. Although I struggled prior to it, I have remained comfortably, peacefully and fulfillingly free of alcohol and drugs for what will soon (july 5) be 12 years. Sobriety actually came when i stopped trying and just did it.

Tks again

Dee74

- however the hell we get there

D

Thinkingabit

Ditto Bugsworth! Funny if you say that you left aa because it did not work for you that you are killing people when according to the studies 95% do not get sober in AA... So what are we doing to the 95%?? Educating? sigh...

I do not deny that AA helps 5%. I just would have liked to known my odds prior to trying something that did not work for me. I may have done something different. As it is my experience in aa was negative. Not so for all. I am aware. Tis my truth though. Need not be yours!

There are lots of ways and letting others know that is a great thing!

Thinkingabit