Twelve step terror

[Prisoner 6655321]

So, yesterday I was struck with a bolt of terror when someone I care about mentioned to me that they thought they thought their drinking had gotten out of hand and they had to begin to think about checking out AA and I got overwhelmed by terror. While I think it's admirable that they realize they have a problem stopping sometimes and want help, the kinda help offered by 12 step programs seems dubious to me.


A girl I grew up with had developed some problem behaviors with drugs and alcohol and embraced a 12 step lifestyle. While she has managed to stay sober she has also made a lot of, imo less than reasonable life choices and acquired attitudes seemingly due to her affiliation with the group. Now she often accuses people of having her own set of problems, turning occasional drinkers into full blown lushes with a bit of spin this is pretty annoying and occasionally offensive but not very dangerous. More problematic, from my perspective is just that her affiliations with the group has lead her to form unhealthy relationships with unreasonable people. The language they use and the practices they endorse seem pretty cult-like to me, the message of sobriety is admirable enough (if you've got a problem maybe you should abstain) and I don't think they've got (as a group) any sort of evil agenda but the path used to get there seems dangerous. While I don't think it's exceptional prevalent I think it's probably common enough but basically, while she's done well enough maintaining her sobriety she's refocused her entire life around sobriety. Good people who might occasionally drink or what have you but not in any sort of dangerous way are avoided and made pariah while new relationships were formed with pretty crummy people in the shared (or at least percived) pursuit of sobriety. Obviously, every individual is different and I'm sure a bulk of AA, NA, whatever A members are decent folks with problems and the intent to fix them but people sometimes are there because of compulsion and even out of those folks there with more sincere intent many aren't necessarily good people, just people trying to stay sober. Many are willing to take advantage of the relations forms in the 12 step groups and, of course many of these folks relapse too, it's the nature of the beast.

In short, 12 step programs more than a little creepy to me; volatile people all speaking cult-like vocabulary and forming potentially dangerous relationships with troubled people. I'm sure these groups help some people but it seems that a lot of criticism directed towards the groups is well founded. Any one have success or nightmare stories to share about these groups?

[Paradox]

Never did a thing for me, but then I wasn't an alcoholic, I just had Peter Pan Syndrome. I'm not fond of it, though. It seems a placebo to me (which, OK if it works for you, but it doesn't for everyone). It's a disease but the cure only works if you REALLY want it to? That's almost a textbook definition of a placebo.

[Michael P]

By that logic, therapy's a placebo, too.

[icctrombone]

Never did a thing for me, but then I wasn't an alcoholic, I just had Peter Pan Syndrome. I'm not fond of it, though. It seems a placebo to me (which, OK if it works for you, but it doesn't for everyone). It's a disease but the cure only works if you REALLY want it to? That's almost a textbook definition of a placebo.

A placebo given to a person with a virus won't work but when you deal with the mind, belief is a strong thing. No one can change until they've made up their mind to change.

[Shawn Hopkins]

I know people who were serious, on their way to a coffin drug addicts and alcoholics who turned their lives around with twelve-step programs. It might not be perfect, but I guess every treatment has side effects and a chance of relapse.

I know it can sound cult like, but I've come to understand that staying sober is an every day struggle, so that structure is a way of keeping focused. And no, the friends met through 12 step aren't always going to be the most savory characters, they were drug addicts and alcoholics after all, but knowing people with the same experiences is a part of the support system.

[Enigmatic Undead]

My first experiences with a 12 step program were as a teenager. Court ordered 90 meetings in 90 days after completing an outpatient program. I didn't take it seriously at the time and found it to be really unappealing. Especially their use of the serenity prayer which is likely due to my mistrust of organised religions. I continued to hang out with people in the program and would return to meetings as an adult to support a friend who was going through his 90 in 90. I recognize that the program isn't for everyone and I think some of the criticism has validity. The way I look at it is that it has the potential to actually save lives and provide a support system that would otherwise be unattainable for many people so it's definitely a good thing in that respect.

Good people who might occasionally drink or what have you but not in any sort of dangerous way are avoided and made pariah

This just sounds like she's avoiding triggers which is something they teach in group. (Not just NA or AA but actual rehab facilities.) Hanging out with people that use would inevitably provide opportunity for her to use. She's at a point in her recovery where it's not worth her risking her sobriety.

By that logic, therapy's a placebo, too.

Sharing in group is therapeutic for those not fortunate enough to afford an actual therapist.

[Greg Hatcher]

It saved my life.

Here's the thing. If your friend is getting something out of it and staying sober, honest to God, the rest of it will work out. The mistake people make when they go to programs like this is thinking it covers EVERYTHING. It really doesn't. It covers drinking and drug abuse. And it only promises one thing-- do the steps as outlined (NOT as editorially re-defined by whoever's bloviating in a given meeting) and if you do that, you won't want to drink or use and you'll feel a little better. You don't become a better person or more successful or any of those things.

But since several of the steps are about taking responsibility for one's actions, the net effect is that people who do that, first of all, get a lot damn pickier about their actions, and second, they realize that real freedom comes from taking responsibility; if you own what you do, you can do anything. Those two things, put into practice on a daily basis, tend to lead to a better life when you're not getting loaded all the time.

You can talk about the placebo effect all you like but there is a physiological component to addiction, and it boils down to this-- don't pull the trigger. Once you ingest whatever your drug is, it's game over till the storm passes. Then you start all over again. So the struggle is, first of all, get clean and stay clean long enough to figure out what your actual baseline for physical health is. Once that happens, the rest of your life is about not pulling the trigger. Learning disciplines to aid in that, to find other ways of coping with life and people that you never learned while you were using, is the point of twelve-step programs. That's it. That's what they're for. People who use them as social clubs or dating services or life-coaching or full-on therapy are putting too much weight on them. Using a hammer to hit nails is sensible. Using it to hit everything is idiotic.

I've heard all the criticisms; it's a cult, it's brainwashing, it's whatever. Maybe it is a kind of brainwashing, since you have to unlearn a lot of stuff and teach yourself to think differently. But since I was using my brain for a bar rag before I stumbled into my first meeting, a little laundering didn't hurt.

What I found is that there is a culture inside AA the same as there is in any group, and the fact is, if you show up and don't drink and that's all you do, eventually you get to be Someone of Importance. But that's not what it's about. Sometimes newer folks hide out in AA for a while because it's safe, it's a place to practice being a grownup. See, the accepted wisdom is that "when you start using, you stop growing emotionally," but the corollary to that, that always gets left off, is that when you stop, you have your adolescence right then and there. It doesn't matter if you're thirty-five, you feel like a jangled teenager trying to figure out how to fit in at school, all awkwardness and insecurity and panic. You tell your co-workers you opened a bank account, they'll say huh. Tell your friends at a meeting and you'll get applause, because it is a step towards being a responsible adult, the thing you're supposed to be learning how to do sober. Some folks were so screwed up as drunks, they need that applause to function and find the courage to keep moving forward. And some get addicted to THAT, but eventually, the ones who stay clean get a sense of perspective.

Most of what you are describing is a phase newer folks go through. Be patient. your friend has never done this before-- not just sobriety, but adulthood. She's finding her way. Chances are she needs the shield AA is giving her. If she stays clean, I absolutely guarantee you, she'll calm down and you'll get to see who she really is, probably for the first time. I've never seen anyone fail. I've only seen people quit. Usually because it looked too hard or because they thought they might have to do something they didn't want to.

I'll have twenty-eight years tomorrow, as it happens, and it is because of AA and the people I met there who taught me to keep my eye on the ball. Full stop. They get the credit for teaching me the things I'm telling you, the techniques for not flipping my own switch and throwing it all away. I owe the program a lot. But I have no illusions about it. It's full of people and people mostly suck. So what? That's true of everything, including comics fandom. It shouldn't poison the entire thing for her any more than annoying fans poison comics for me. If your friend is staying sober, she wins. The end. Everything else can come later. If she's a smart person and willing to go the distance, it'll work out for her.

[Enigmatic Undead]

Great post Greg!

[Paradox]

Michael P notes:

By that logic, therapy's a placebo, too.

icctrombone adds in:

A placebo given to a person with a virus won't work but when you deal with the mind, belief is a strong thing. No one can change until they've made up their mind to change.

Valid points, of course. I should have made it clearer that that's why it wouldn't work for me. I did note that it does work for some people, though.

[Kees_L]

Never did a thing for me, but then I wasn't an alcoholic, I just had Peter Pan Syndrome. I'm not fond of it, though. It seems a placebo to me (which, OK if it works for you, but it doesn't for everyone). It's a disease but the cure only works if you REALLY want it to? That's almost a textbook definition of a placebo.

No, a 'placebo' doesn't equate to believing a lie or some such. It isn't some prank or irrationality, but merely a blank or vacant substance.
A placebo is an aid for seeing about the effect of administering medicine, a device for understanding human behavior, invaluable for experimentation or onto innovation.

Whereas the thing is that people in their conduct can very usually be prone to 'helping themselves' in ways that don't actually help them. Such as people overeating for solace. Or overdrinking. Overspending. Not cleaning up their stuff when they should. 'Not caring' when in fact caring would be about all they do.

Helping that is very very simple, except for those people themselves, even when they'd realize they would want to be helped, which is why such help is offered as based in 'steps', in routine and structured discipline, arranged around a culture of keeping one's eye on the ball better than before, among folk more or less all in the same boat together. That might seem cultlike or creepy but it isn't, because what's creepy about cults is a cult meddles or subordinates as based on but wrongful intentions, which 'help' commonly would not involve.

[Paradox]

Personally, I never got past the first step, as it wasn't outside my control at all, but then again, as I said, I wasn't an alcoholic, I just didn't give a shit.

Which is another problem. People are sentenced to join these programs by courts (only reason I was there). The people at AA really seem to hate that, and who could blame them, as it rarely works when people are forced to go. If it's not your idea, you're unlikely to put your effort into it.

[dupont2005]

Haven't gone to a single meeting I wasn't ordered to go to by a court. Been clean off meth for going on eight years, after thirteen years of daily use. The steps are not only unnecessary, but I consider them detrimental to sobriety. The biggest problem is the constant reinforcement that you WILL NOT make it if you don't attend meetings or work the steps. I'm seven years clean, nearly everyone I was in rehab with has relapsed, some so quickly they were back before I even left.

And yet at all the meetings I don't attend, people I know who are still fresh out of jail, still going to court to get their kids back, still collecting that 90 day chip, are gathering in the parking lot of the NA meeting and badmouthing me for not going. I've lost real friends over it, lifelong friends. It is most definitely a cult.

Not to mention the friends and family who I know for a fact are still using drugs daily are posting all kinds of 12 step nonsense to their Facebook feed every day. And of course there's the people who badmouthed me for not attending NA meetings, posting pics to their Facebook of the new rehab facility they're in, again, collecting that thirty day chip one more time.

The last meeting I went to was because I was tricked into going by my 12 stepper uncle. I literally can't hang out with these people. They will stop at nothing to evangelize someone they know who has quit drugs and doesn't attend meetings.

[dupont2005]

Nevermind, I'm going on nine years clean. The 2005 in my user name is for the year I got clean. August 2005.

[Prisoner 6655321]

Well, thanks every one. It seems like the one person I know who was pondering AA isn't going to go that route and honestly that's probably for the best in their situation. As for the other person who signed up for NA some time ago, I wish them the best but I'm not sure that things have really gotten terribly better for them being clean other than they don't really risk the possibility of injury from drugs and they're spending less money on them. Basically, that girl was a functioning binge drug user. An ex-teenage mom in her 20's, with her own house and a steady job (ironically, she lost the job when they left town and then the house... all while clean when the place she worked at shut down and she was about a year sober at that point) would party too hard when the baby was away for the weekend but otherwise responsible enough. After NA she passed her kid off on her mom who she actively blames for most of her problems (our moms were best friends and lived next door from each other, they were kinda hippies and smoked a bit of pot together but were, and hers is (my mother died some years ago) pretty reasonable people and both fine parents) and hooked up with a guy, who may be clean, but is constantly getting into trouble for various minor criminal acts. Anyway, I wouldn't want her to relapse because what she was doing was dangerous enough it's good she stopped but by most accounts she's doing much worse after NA. Though, to be fair a lot of that has to do with her loosing her long term job in her sober years.

[dupont2005]

I've noticed that as well, with some of the 12 steppers I know. Still living like drug addicts, but their new drug is meetings, and they frantically have to get to up to three meetings a day, driving out of town in a car that's obviously about to break down to hit that third meeting. Spending all their time socializing with recently sober druggies. It seems to be preventing them from succeeding. A lot of them either remain unemployed and living in a halfway house collecting food stamps, forever. Others are in low wage jobs without putting in any effort to advance or change careers. I don't like to judge people based on their income, but it's just odd how many of them benefited from the recent minimum wage increase. These are people in their mid thirties and forties.

Still getting homemade tattoos on their knuckles in a filthy living room in the middle of a weekday afternoon instead of circulating that resume.