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Tags alcoholics anonymous , alcoholism , treatment programs

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Old 22nd July 2012, 04:35 PM   #6921
qayak
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Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post
When I really looked at how this statistic was reached - oy. It's not very strong evidence.
Can you explain your reasoning or should we just consider this an unsubstantiated claim used to further an agenda? This is a skeptic forum after all.
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Old 22nd July 2012, 05:29 PM   #6922
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Originally Posted by Bamberger View Post
Interesting fellow, this Buchman. Fluent in German....
Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post
Well dang that is pretty damning right there.
No one who speaks German could be an evil man.
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Old 23rd July 2012, 03:37 AM   #6923
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Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post

The old-timers response is evidence of his response. Your interpretation is just as valid as his. Your presence alters the mix. In OZ the agnostic presence has tipped meetings toward agnosticism.
Have the OZ meetings removed the word God from the steps hanging on the wall? How did this go over with the Vatican World Services?

BTW, where is OZ?
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Old 23rd July 2012, 04:20 PM   #6924
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Originally Posted by Bamberger View Post
BTW, where is OZ?
The Antipodes. Where they speak Strine.
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Old 24th July 2012, 09:21 AM   #6925
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Originally Posted by A.A. Alfie View Post
Not true, an over inflated ego is the "enemy" of the AAer, self confidence and self esteem is fine and very healthy.

Not quite. Bill Wilson erroneously believed that all alcoholics suffered from an inflated ego, and he also believed self confidence to be detrimental to recovery.


“When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability.”
12&12 p.22, Step One
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Old 24th July 2012, 10:14 AM   #6926
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I would just like to add that the above quotation is indicative of Bill Wilson’s awareness that people had gone to AA with a need to actually build up their egos and self-confidence, yet his plans for them, based upon his own narcissistic personality, was ego deflation at depth. Many alcoholics and drug abusers have been the victims of many forms of abuse, and actually do suffer from low self-esteem, but AA simply doesn’t allow for that. It’s just another reason it doesn’t work for so many—they simply aren’t narcissists. And even the ego deflation doesn’t work for the narcissists as evidenced by Bill Wilson’s continued bad behavior.
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Old 24th July 2012, 03:29 PM   #6927
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Originally Posted by causeandeffect View Post
Not quite. Bill Wilson erroneously believed that all alcoholics suffered from an inflated ego, and he also believed self confidence to be detrimental to recovery.

“When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability.”
12&12 p.22, Step One
You have not contradicted me here; the highlighted piece explains why.

Self confidence regarding beating alcohol is a liability - especially in the early days of recovery. In other words, if you continue to think you can beat it yourself, it will work against you

It is also true that most alcoholics do suffer from the interesting paradox of big ego and low self esteem.
The ego needs to be deflated and the self esteem (which includes self confidence) is built up.

You probably know people like this, they are busy telling you how good they are when inside they feel very different. This trait is not just limited to alcoholics btw.

This big ego gets in the way of rational thought: It is the person who is a know-it-all, knows better than you, is better than you or the next person, who won't back down and is happy for everyone to know just how important they are. They have inbuilt narcissistic defence mechanisms, refusing help, have big boundaries, blame others for failings and shortcomings, insults others and they second guess.
People with a healthy self confidence/self esteem do not do these things, they know they are ok and are happy to take advice and receive help when necessary.
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Old 24th July 2012, 03:44 PM   #6928
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http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pre...e.aspx?id=1401

Here's an interesting piece on AA and its efficacy:

Quote:
"AA is the most commonly sought source of help for alcohol addiction and alcohol-related problems in the United States and has been shown to help people attain and maintain long-term recovery," says study leader John F. Kelly, PhD
So AA has been shown to work.

Quote:
Overall results indicated that greater participation in AA during the first three months of the study period was independently associated with more successful recovery over the following year.
90 meetings in 90 days might have something to it? To be honest, I never went in for that, I might rethink it.

Quote:
Of the behavioral changes associated with AA attendance, changes in social networks – more contacts with people who supported abstinence and fewer with those would encourage drinking – and greater confidence in the ability to maintain sobriety in social situations were most strongly connected with recovery success. Reduced depression and increased spirituality or religious practices also had a significant independent role in the recovery of participants whose had received inpatient treatment and probably had been more seriously dependent on alcohol.
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Old 24th July 2012, 05:40 PM   #6929
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Bill W.'s bad behavior? Pshah! I just saw the new fawning biopic Bill W. and detected none of this!

Begging for a drink on his deathbed compared to a peaceful ascetic passing, seducing the newest most vulnerable members of his cult to the point of a group intervention that never worked compared to shy, reluctant recipient of praise, accidental genius compared to conniving fraud, you'd think his contractor's were fruitcakes!
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Old 25th July 2012, 02:53 PM   #6930
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Originally Posted by A.A. Alfie View Post

Self confidence regarding beating alcohol is a liability - especially in the early days of recovery. In other words, if you continue to think you can beat it yourself, it will work against you

Then you posted this article that claims:

“Among the many ways that participation in Alcoholics Anonymous helps its members stay sober, two appear to be most important – spending more time with individuals who support efforts towards sobriety and increased confidence in the ability to maintain abstinence in social situations.

It also says:

“A broad range of factors associated with AA participation have been identified as contributing to recovery – including changes in social networks, maintaining motivation, confidence in the ability to cope with the demands of recovery, decreased depression symptoms and increased spirituality – but no study as yet has been able to determine the relative importance of those mechanisms.

Now, you may want to claim there’s some difference between confidence and self-confidence, and claim that nobody is able to do it on their own, but that’s been disproven by the NESARC which studied 43,000 individuals and found that:

“About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab) programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment.”

And at the very bottom of the article it says:

“Social contacts, self-confidence crucial to successful recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous”

And funny, I don’t see any mention of the steps. They did mention spirituality, but said no study has been able to determine the importance of it. But studies have shown an increase in drinking due to prayer, at least early on. (I’ve linked to that before.) They also mentioned decreased depression symptoms, yet AA has been shown to increase depression symptoms early in recovery (which I believe I’ve also linked to before), so it seems this claim is false.

This article cited Project Match which was a wash. There was absolutely no difference found between the 12-step therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational enhancement therapy. And now I see why. All of the groups attended AA according to this article. I’ve always suspected that as a reason that none of the other therapies excelled. There was contamination between the different modalities, so the study proved nothing. Thanks for the link that confirmed my suspicions. In fact, here’s what the World Health Organization said about Project Match and Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Although Project MATCH found a significant positive impact of treatment and no differences in outcome between 12-step facilitation therapy designed to help patients become engaged in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, a 12-session cognitive behavioural therapy designed to teach patients coping skills to prevent a relapse into drinking, and a motivational enhancement therapy designed to increase motivation for and commitment to change (132), the mesa-grand study found evidence of ineffectiveness of 12-step facilitation from 6 studies and of ineffectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous from 7 studies (109). An additional systematic review of 8 studies found no studies that unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous or 12-step facilitation approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or alcohol-related problems (133).”

By the way, Alfie, what exactly did they say was the efficacy of AA? How exactly how much efficacy for 90 days of cult indoctrination?

Quote:
It is also true that most alcoholics do suffer from the interesting paradox of big ego and low self esteem.
That’s just cult dogma. There’s no evidence to support it, unless you want to quote someone else who is just quoting cult dogma. We’ve covered all of this before.
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Old 25th July 2012, 09:23 PM   #6931
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Originally Posted by A.A. Alfie View Post
http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pre...e.aspx?id=1401

Here's an interesting piece on AA and its efficacy:



So AA has been shown to work.
Gee, a fluff piece written with money from NIAAA that supports AA? What a shocker. By the way, why not link directly to the paper itself if it's so supportive?

As it stands now, you're drawing a hasty conclusion based on no verifiable evidence that AA "works" as your link intimates.

Also, this is an interesting quote, one which draws further parallels between religion and AA:
"Reduced depression and increased spirituality or religious practices also had a significant independent role in the recovery of participants whose had received inpatient treatment and probably had been more seriously dependent on alcohol." (emphasis mine)
What does "increased spirituality" even mean, for example? Some vague, equivocating statement means that anyone can read anything into that sentence and come out thinking it says something of import.

Or how about this excerpt?
"Our findings are shedding light on how AA helps people recover from addiction over time," says Kelly. "The results suggest that social context factors are key; the people who associate with individuals attempting to begin recovery can be crucial to their likelihood of success. AA appears adept at facilitating and supporting those social changes. Further questions we need to investigate are whether particular groups of individuals – women or men, young or old people, those with or without accompanying psychiatric disorders – benefit from AA in the same or in different ways." Kelly is an associate professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry." (emphasis mine)
This section I emphasized seems to be key. The following sentence still has no evidence showing it to be the case, however.
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Old 26th July 2012, 09:21 AM   #6932
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Oops. At the top of the article it says:

"Social contacts, self-confidence crucial to successful recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous"
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Old 26th July 2012, 05:35 PM   #6933
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Originally Posted by causeandeffect View Post
Oops. At the top of the article it says:

"Social contacts, self-confidence crucial to successful recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous"
Let's see the true believers spin that one.
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Old 26th July 2012, 08:25 PM   #6934
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Originally Posted by qayak View Post
Can you explain your reasoning or should we just consider this an unsubstantiated claim used to further an agenda? This is a skeptic forum after all.
I've explained it out the yin-yang, recently. Surprised you didn't see it. Basically, something like 35 years ago, a handful of people, probably all court-ordered, attended some AA meetings. The claims of increased binging all seem to stem from this study. Orange is fond of pointing out the increased binging at 6 months while forgetting to mention there was no increased binging at 3, 9 and 12 months.

As far as promoting abstinence, there was no difference among the groups: They all failed. Not surprising, as most were probably court-ordered to begin with. Originally there were some volunteers, but overall the study lost half of its participants over the course of a year, and I'm presuming the ones who left were the ones who could do so without legal consequences. But I don't really know.

At the end of the study there were 12 AA participants. (I won't say "members," because "the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking," and it's unclear if the AA participants met that criterion). If the attrition rate held steady throughout the follow-up period, by a year later, the AA group would have been down to 4 or 6. So, the AA binge rate at follow-up would have been calculated using as few as 4 people.

As far as I know the results haven't been replicated, but I could be wrong.

And anyway ... I'm not sure what the binge rate tells us. If someone had 4 drinks every day, he'd never count as a binger. But if someone only drank on Saturday nights and had 5 drinks, at the end of the month he'd have had 4 binges vs. zero for the other guy. But the first guy would have had 120 drinks and the second guy would have had 20.

I'm grateful I wasn't a binger. If I like something I do it every day, so 24 hours was a significant period for me.
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Old 26th July 2012, 08:34 PM   #6935
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Originally Posted by causeandeffect View Post
Oops. At the top of the article it says:

"Social contacts, self-confidence crucial to successful recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous"
Confidence in your ability to stay abstinent, if based on reality, is healthy.

Confidence that you can learn to hold your liquor, if only you try hard enough, may be detrimental to alcoholics of a certain type.
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Old 26th July 2012, 08:45 PM   #6936
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Originally Posted by Bamberger View Post
Have the OZ meetings removed the word God from the steps hanging on the wall? How did this go over with the Vatican World Services?
Who cares how it would go over with World Services? That's World Services' problem. The problem of the people in the room is helping each other get and stay sober. They're free to work up a resentment against AA World Services. Hell, maybe they'll stay sober to spite AA World Services. I'm sure it's been done.

What do you call someone who stays in AA to prove it can be done without belief in God? A member of AA.
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Old 27th July 2012, 06:05 AM   #6937
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I'm sorry, I meant to say, "you'd think his DEtractors we fruitcakes" I
the association between Bill W and con in my mind was too strong.

Did we mention the pump and dump schemes?
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Old 27th July 2012, 01:09 PM   #6938
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Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post
Who cares how it would go over with World Services? That's World Services' problem.
But what if the agnostic/atheist meeting got excluded from the official meeting lists because they had modified the steps to mirror their lack of belief regarding theism? Wouldn't we at this point start questioning whether AA was officially a theistic organization because of the meeting list ban?
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Old 27th July 2012, 08:56 PM   #6939
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Originally Posted by Bamberger View Post
But what if the agnostic/atheist meeting got excluded from the official meeting lists because they had modified the steps to mirror their lack of belief regarding theism?
Do you have an example of that? Just curious, because I'm finding agnostic/atheist meetings listed in a link provided by AA its own self.
Quote:
Wouldn't we at this point start questioning whether AA was officially a theistic organization because of the meeting list ban?
Don't need a meeting list ban to know that AA is officially a theistic organization. Federal courts have done that for you. It's just that AA is such a decentralized organization that the exceptions are as much a part of the whole as the ones full of holy rollers.

And guys, please stop beating your heads against the canard that AA is not a religious organization. You know it is. We know it is. And we've said that it is and that the theism is something that bothers us, but we keep going for other reasons. You won the original debate some 6900 posts ago and you are looking like sore winners.
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Old 30th July 2012, 07:14 AM   #6940
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Supernatural?

Would it be fair to say that AA bases recovery on supernatural beliefs?
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Old 30th July 2012, 09:05 PM   #6941
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Originally Posted by Bamberger View Post
Would it be fair to say that AA bases recovery on supernatural beliefs?
AA is based on religion. We know that. All religion is wooish. We know that, too. Therefore, AA is based on supernatural beliefs. Duh!

I really don't know what point you hope to make by stating the obvious.
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Old 21st September 2012, 03:19 PM   #6942
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Originally Posted by dropzone View Post
Do you have an example of that?
Here's an example:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendl...ked-out-of-aa/
Quote:
Just curious, because I'm finding agnostic/atheist meetings listed in a link provided by AA its own self. Don't need a meeting list ban to know that AA is officially a theistic organization. Federal courts have done that for you. It's just that AA is such a decentralized organization that the exceptions are as much a part of the whole as the ones full of holy rollers.
Out of the many I attended I've never been to an AA meeting that claimed to be specifically for atheists or agnostics, but what I've heard of many such meetings is that they were for "conversion" - for old-timers to convince such people that they absolutely need God, or the AA "Higher Power" in their lives if they were going to stop drinking, stay sober and "become happily and usefully whole."
Quote:
And guys, please stop beating your heads against the canard that AA is not a religious organization. You know it is. We know it is. And we've said that it is and that the theism is something that bothers us, but we keep going for other reasons. You won the original debate some 6900 posts ago and you are looking like sore winners.
Except that AA itself CLAIMS NOT to be religious.
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Old 22nd September 2012, 05:24 AM   #6943
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Spiritual, not religious.

It is beyond belief that people don't understand the difference as accepted by many both in AA and beyond (even Wiki draws a difference).

Too bad if it doesn't fit your narrow definition, it works just fine for millions of others.
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Old 24th September 2012, 07:29 AM   #6944
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Originally Posted by A.A. Alfie View Post
Spiritual, not religious.

It is beyond belief that people don't understand the difference as accepted by many both in AA and beyond (even Wiki draws a difference).

Too bad if it doesn't fit your narrow definition, it works just fine for millions of others.
Spirituality crosses over to religion when there are embodied beliefs and rituals sanctioned and practiced by the organization. AA possesses both of these aspects.

Examples:

- Prayer at meetings.
- Use of program literature that spells out steps to come into contact with God, and to evangelize to other alcoholics.
- The promise of a happy destiny if such practices are undertaken in earnest.

Granted, the forgoing do not approach the level of sophistication one finds in mainstream religions, but they do exist. To me, this makes AA's brand of theology a little lazier than most, but a theology all the same.
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