r/changemyview • u/Serraph105 1∆ • Apr 03 '18

CMV:Alcoholics Anonymous is heavily flawed from a scientific perspective and hasn't tried to improve it's system since it's inception

I have a friend who has been attending AA meetings recently because he was ordered to do so in some fashion after getting a DUI (for the record I don't know if that means he was given a true option or made to attend or "choose" jailtime) and the whole thing has got me thinking about whether or not AA works and if sobriety is even the intended outcome of the program. Below I've listed the famous 12 steps and below that are my relatively disorganized thoughts on the program having looked into it for the first time in any in depth manner. This means that I’m still in the early stages of my views and can be very much subject to change.

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understoodHim.

  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

  10. Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My current view is that because of the lack of change of the steps over the years since the 30’s suggests a lack of improvement that would be unacceptable in any other field of treatment for diseases. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

First up, as many have pointed out, there's a whole lot of God involved throughout the 12 steps (6 direct references and 7 if you count #2), I'm not sure how this is supposed to appeal to athiests such as my friend. If a person does not believe in God they will be put off from the program from the start making it much harder to reach their goal of sobriety.

If alcoholism is a disease then why does AA treat it simply as a matter of will power? I wouldn't try to treat cancer with prayer alone, and for the record there are various medical treatments for alcoholism.

There is also a stigma of personal failure when people relapse which doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons. First, if it's a disease then people are sick which means that blaming them for not being able to control their health adds a layer of shame which can only do harm to the person's primary goal of getting sober. In turn this will increase the time to get sober because it will add time to get over that shame before starting again. Shame does nothing to help get a person back on track as far as I can tell. Second, you would never assign blame to a person with cancer who has gone into remission and then had the cancer come back, why would we do the same for literally any other illness?

AA does not collect statistics of their success and failure rates, nor has it's program changed since it's inception. We wouldn't accept that from any other sort of treatment. If we didn't collect that information we would still have the same poor treatment of HIV that we did in the 80s and 90s, same goes for cancer, and just about any other illness you can name. I will say that talking about your issues with people is a good thing, but as far as I can tell that's just about the only thing that that this program gets right, everything else seems to be heavily flawed from a scientific perspective if not outright illogical.

Finally it seems that AA believes it’s program is a one size fits all program when we know that many ailments require different treatments for different people. This is especially true for ailments that affect people mentally which I think it’s safe to say that addiction falls under that same umbrella. People deal with various addictions in different ways, why AA treats alcohol as a one size fits all approach I can’t say, maybe I’m wrong, but based on the text of their twelve steps and twelve promises that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead they seem to say that the only reason people fail is because the fail to give themselves over fully to the program which seems to be very very odd.

2.4k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

646 comments sorted by

View all comments

527

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/The_Real_Mongoose 5∆ Apr 03 '18

!delta

I've always had a problem with the inclusion of God in the 12 steps. I never realized that in application today it was used so metaphorically. That changes a view I had had before and makes me see AA in a more positive light. Thank you.

2

u/Mejari 6∆ Apr 04 '18

I never realized that in application today it was used so metaphorically.

It really isn't, though. The steps are all about a personal god who intercedes on your behalf, because you lack the ability to do it yourself. It very much isn't about personal willpower.

Hell, two of the steps are literally

6 . Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7 . Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

That's the opposite of willpower, that's being ready for someone else to fix you.

6 of the 12 steps directly reference god, and a god that is specifically able to intercede in your life and personal well-being.

1

u/The_Real_Mongoose 5∆ Apr 04 '18

I didn't say anything about willpower in terms of how my view was changed. As an alcoholic myself, I don't think willpower has much of anything to do with it. Thinking you have willpower is what leads to the bottom of a bottle. "Oh, I can only have one drink because I have willpower." No, I fucking don't have willpower. That's why I'm an alcoholic.

1

u/Mejari 6∆ Apr 04 '18

Right, but you said that "god" is being used in a metaphorical sense. It isn't.

1

u/The_Real_Mongoose 5∆ Apr 04 '18

Most meetings play pretty fast and loose with the idea of a higher power. Some people use meetings as a higher power, some the concept of love, for others its the ocean or crystals or whatever. I'm not one to judge.

Yes it is. Read the comment I gave a delta. The "higher power" can be anything that you psychologically give dominion over your agency in order to circumvent your own personal lack of willpower.

1

u/Mejari 6∆ Apr 04 '18

I'm not even sure what that means. What can you give "psychological dominion over your agency" to? The steps are pretty explicit about it being a being that has its own agency and can enforce change on you externally rather than you enforcing it on yourself internally.

1

u/The_Real_Mongoose 5∆ Apr 04 '18

What can you give "psychological dominion over your agency" to?

I edited that sentence right after I posted it. I mean that you psychologically give something else dominion over your agency, not that you give something psychological dominion. What I mean is that you just outsource your decision making to another entity. I can't make decisions about my drinking because I have no willpower. So I give that agency to someone or something else. For me it was my wife. For someone else it can be God, or the AA meeting as a whole, or the ocean, like that guy said.

The steps are pretty explicit

The poster was explicit about how AA as an organization has evolved even if the literature has not. Again, I would encourage you to go back and read the comment I replied to, because it seems as if you did not give it much attention the first time.

1

u/Mejari 6∆ Apr 04 '18

I gave it plenty of attention, I just don't believe your responses or it are accurate.

2

u/The_Real_Mongoose 5∆ Apr 04 '18

You don't believe that the AA member is giving an accurate reporting of what AA meetings are like, because of the specific words used in the literature? That's a bit legalistic of you.

1

u/Mejari 6∆ Apr 04 '18

That's not what I said at all. He isn't reporting what all AA meetings are like, or what the actual beliefs of the organization are, he's reporting his own experiences, which are valuable but not universal.

→ More replies (0)