Posted by galtin on November 12, 2001, at 22:59:13
In reply to Re: addiction and recovery » galtin, posted by Elizabeth on November 10, 2001, at 23:18:41
> > Some AA members have strong opinions, but there is no AA "dogma." Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs required for membership in a group. AA has no such beliefs.
>
> Isn't there a "big book" or something like that? I know that some meetings don't adhere to the exact formula for what AA is supposed to be, but those that do can indeed be very dogmatic.
>
> > Can people be "indoctrinated" when their attendance is voluntary?
>
> People are often ordered by the courts to attend AA as an alternative to prison (for such offenses as DWI), and in such cases I would say it's coercive. Also, a lot of people don't know about the alternatives like RR and SMART (both of these are self-help groups with a cognitive-behavioral approach); they think AA is the only group that can help them.
>
> > The term "alcoholic" is not a medical or psychiatric term.
>
> This is true. I usually just assume it's roughly equivalent to DSM-IV "alcohol dependence."
>
> > Researchers like Stanton Peale believe they have demonstrated that "heavy" and "problem" drinkers can be taught to drink moderately. They have not claimed this of alcoholics, since alcoholics are not heavy drinkers, problem drinkers, alcohol abusers or dependents. They are those who have adopted the term alcoholic as a self-designation defining themselves precisely as those unable to drink moderately.
>
> Okay, you have a point there. But I suspect that some people who abuse alcohol (but are not alcohol-dependent) are identified as "alcoholics" by family, friends, or others (I believe there is even a ritual known as "intervention" for this), and encouraged to go to AA meetings.
>
> But anyway, it's not true that alcohol dependence is necessarily a lifelong condition, although it often is. People who have been dependent can sometimes -- and perhaps more often than we realize -- learn to drink moderately after having abstained or a while.
>
> > Alcoholics are often members of AA, but not always.
>
> Well, like I said, often they aren't offered alternatives -- they go into rehab, and the only treatment they're offered is 12-step based.
>
> -elizabethElizabeth,
1) The book you refer to, "Alcoholics Anonymous," is a compilation not of dogma but of the experiences of the first 100 members of AA. Like those in any organization, AA members can be self-righteous and closed-minded. This does not demonstrate that the organization itself indoctinates people with an ideology--that is, with a closed system of belief.
2) None of this is the doing of AA. AA does not claim that it possesses the only path to sobriety, merely one path that has worked well for its members.
3) Alcoholic and alcohol dependence are not interchangeable. Although society uses the term alcoholic loosely, it has no medical or psychiatric integrity.
4. The purpose of an intervention is to get a person into treatment, usually the in-patient kind. That many treatment facilities recommend follow-up with AA attendence testifies only to AA's AA's relative ubiquity. There is no causal or implied relationship between these recommendations and any reputed program of "indoctination" on the part of AA.
5) AA does not deny that persons diagnosed as alcohol dependent can find their way to moderate drinking, even though the evidence for this is either anecdotal or a product of the unsophisticated statistical vagaries of the anti-AA lobby. What AA does claim, on the basis of direct observation, is that members of the fellowship who have attempted moderate drinking almost invariably (whether a month or five years later) wind up in full-blown relapse.
6. Fortunately, the number of rehabs that offer non-AA options is growing. Only a tiny minority of people referred to AA by rehabs ever attend. And of those, most soon stop going either because they dislike it or because they want to continue drinking.
The point is not that AA is perfect. There is a small minority of members who have rigid beliefs. There is another minority of members who believe in nothing. There are others who behave just as reprehensibly as they did when they were drinking. And a few lead double lives, feigning sobriety in AA but drinking or using drugs on the sly. But on the point of your original accusation, even if AA wanted to indoctinate members and attendees, such a project would be hopelessly doomed by AA's chronic and deliberate lack of organization, by the reflexive defiance of authority characteristic of most members, and by the sheer heterogeneity of the people joining up over the last ten years.galtin
poster:galtin
thread:12188
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20011105/msgs/13836.html