wonkothesane

About 4 months ago, I kicked, all on my own, a 5 year-long prescription drug habit. (Opiate-based pain pills & benzos - the benzos I was given originally to help me get off of the opiates!)

[Btw, if anyone who has read my other threads is wondering if the drug habit is why my wife dumped me, it's not...she dumped me one month after I got cleaned up...]

Anyway...in almost every rehab clinic that I tried, the traditional 12-step "AA" and "NA" programs were pushed...programs that were anathema to me mainly because, of the reliance on a "Higher Power" to get clean (indeed, you are told that you cannot get cleaned up without a Higher Power).

Now, they are sure to tell people like me that your Higher Power can be "anything that you want", but in the "12 Steps" (an actual list), the Higher Power is refered to as "God as you understand Him", and pretty much everyone in any meetings that I went to would refer to their Higher Power as Jesus.

Another thing that I hated was the insistence that you could never get clean unless you followed the 12 Steps, and that if you couldn't follow them you were morally weak (I forgot the exact words that they use) and - get this - if you tried to follow them and failed, it was because you obviously were'nt really following them after all! (A nice piece of circular logic!)

Or the claim that without AA or NA (or CA or CoDA, or whatever...there are a million "Anonymous" groups out there...) you will someday, somewhere, relapse. Even if you have been clean for years...without AA or NA, you will relapse, it's only a matter of time! (Nice twisted reasoning there...you either have relapsed for lack of AA/NA, or you will, someday...no matter how long it takes...unless you die first, of course...but if you hadn't died, you would have relapsed! (Btw, I haven't relapsed yet, but I may very well...but so do people in AA/NA...oh yeah, but they weren't really following the program, right?

Also, I hated the general cult-like look and behaviour of the people attending the groups...some people went to several meeting a day, and indeed, at first you are told to do "90 meeting in 90 days!"...I honestly think the some of these people were addicted to the meetings - like it was their substitute drug!

Also, once you get a "sponser", they - and often other group members - will hound you if you miss a meeting, and generally, I found the air of the meetings to be very, very cult-like. ("More of a cult than Christianity" as one friend of mine put it...really, like she said "I'm just waiting for them to pass out the spiked Kool-Aide!")

Now, I do think that 12 Steps work for a lot of people, but only if you are willing to blindly and unquestioningly turn yourself over to the program and it's dogma. But you have to be the kind of person that can do that - and most people can, just like they do to religion - but I'm not one of them. (Indeed, I was often told that "thinking too much" will lead to failure.)

I think that these programs work like the magic blue feather in "Dumbo"...it's the placebo effect...it works because you believe it will work. But if you are, like me, not one of the types of people - as one of my counselors put it - "One the of the 99% of people prone to unquestioningly believe in stuff", then it won't work for you.

If anyone out there is interested in alternatives to the 12 Step recovery systems, then check into "SMART Recovery", or the "Rational Recovery" book "The Small Book" (counterpoint to the "Big Book" put out by AA) - however, as much as I LOVE The Small Book, I have a problem with RR's marketing of it's...well...product. Their website (I have to re-find the URL) reads like a Get Rich Quick! infomercial....however, the book itself eschews all that bullshit, and is worth the read, IMHO. (I also like the chapter in the book the ofers a counterpoint to the cult of "co-dependency"...

And for alcoholics, there is some kind of moderated drinking program (I forget the name) whereyou actually can drink, but you limit, and even measure the amount of drinking that you do. This is opposed to the AA belief that you can never drink even one drop, ever again, or that "once an addict, always an addict!". And although I don't intend to try moderated drug taking, there may come a time when I might need to take pain medicine - an accident of whatever, andI have a severe anxiety problem that SSRI's like Prozac aren't helping with, and I may need to take benzo meds (Valium, Xanax, etc...) - one doctor has told me that I really do need to be on Ativan, but that I may need to have someone regulate it for me, and I am very reluctantly considering trying it if I can't find an SSRI that works...

(I'm reluctant to do this, of course, because I got started on both the pain and anti-anxiety meds because of need -- a root canal originally...then I found that the pain meds helped with my life-long chronic headaches, leg cramps at night and irritable bowel syndrome - I actually gained weight on the pain meds, because the IBS keeps me fairly underweight, and most IBS med's make me very sick, and make my heartrate, already high from the anxiety, go even higher...)

- bryce

Enai

Hi wonkothesane,

there is such a program, in fact there are several. One is Rational recovery. They have a website at www. rational.org . Another one is Synanon, but this turned into a cult around it's founder many years ago. I think since the founder is dead, it's not a cult any more. I didn't find an english page from synanon about synanon, but google is your friend. They do operate in Berlin, Germany and placate all over the republic, that's how I know about them.

I was never addicted to anything, so I don't know first hand if any of these programs works. Cliff Walker has a whole section of articles on rational recovery on his site Positive Atheism . I think he founded it.

Best wishes for your recovery,
Enai

Jackalope

Er, Synanon as it still exists in Marin County, California (founding place) is still a cult. I used to work at a "social model" detox center in Marin and we'd occasionally see people who'd passed through Synanon. Among other things, at one point they shaved clients' heads after intake. And other strange and bizarre habits. In my experience, Synanon is not an ideal venue for recovery.

The other group to avoid is Narconon, which is an offshoot of the Church of Scientology. They tend to try and fish for new members through the prison and court system.

Anyone having doubts about 12-step programs should read the articles at Deprogramming from Alcoholics Anonymous

Enai

To Jackalope:

Oh. I didn't know Synanon was that bad. Scratch any positive mention, Rational Recovery it is!

Enai

HelenM

Congratulations - that's awesome!

I hadn't read about that - I'm sorry

Helen

cricket

I have only heard of Rational Recovery and one called Secular Organizations for Sobriety -- is that one still around?

Good luck to you!

cricket

I once read through the Rational Recovery website -- Jack Trimpey answers many letters on there and he is a hoot, especially when he is ripping AA. He's not an infidel but nonetheless he loathes AA and its teachings.

jayh

SOS is availble here.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/sos/index.htm

I don't know anyone who has actually gone through their program, but it is backed by a very rational organization.

Interestingly, there have been several attempts to quantify how effective AA is, however they refuse to report (or even keep records) sufficient for follow-up studies. The ad-hoc studies that have been done suggest they are not particularly effective at all.

It's kind of the no true Scotsman shell game. If one starts drinking while attending meetings it's not a failure it's a temporary setback, if one starts drinking while not attending the meetings, it's a failure it's because one left.

This unvalidated nature of the program raises serious questions about the legal validity of 'sentencing' someone to AA membership as some judges have done.

j

Seeker630

I read some of the RR site about 2 years or so ago. As I recall he flat out states someplace in there that RR is not for atheists. I'll have to re read it just to make sure. And yes he really has a thing about tearing up AA--I wonder if he was once a member himself. I don't recall that he said so.

AspenMama

Wow, good job! Thank you for posting this topic. Often, I've seen requests for information on an alternate program for atheists. This is a very relevant issue!