Alcoholics Anonymous (1 Viewer)

[Simris]

Used to attend a very liberal church (kind of a unitarian deal) and they had a group called 'Rational Recovery'.

It focused on personal responsibility without all the 'higher power' stuff.

Having watched the Penn and Teller episode I would like to think the success rate for RR would be higher than AA.

Why would you assume that RR had a better success rate than AA? Seems to me that Penn & Teller's point was that all programs had low success rates.

I may have misspoke.I just 'feel' that when someone believes they have some power of their own as opposed to asigning power elsewhere they would do better.

I have no stats to back this up.

 

[Keys Myaths]

Used to attend a very liberal church (kind of a unitarian deal) and they had a group called 'Rational Recovery'.

It focused on personal responsibility without all the 'higher power' stuff.

Having watched the Penn and Teller episode I would like to think the success rate for RR would be higher than AA.

Why would you assume that RR had a better success rate than AA? Seems to me that Penn & Teller's point was that all programs had low success rates.

I may have misspoke.I just 'feel' that when someone believes they have some power of their own as opposed to asigning power elsewhere they would do better.

I have no stats to back this up.

From what I've seen/heard, it's just not that simple.The whole "powerless over alcohol" thing is actually true. Maybe it's something you have to experience to actually understand, though.

 

[Alias]

Used to attend a very liberal church (kind of a unitarian deal) and they had a group called 'Rational Recovery'.

It focused on personal responsibility without all the 'higher power' stuff.

Having watched the Penn and Teller episode I would like to think the success rate for RR would be higher than AA.

Why would you assume that RR had a better success rate than AA? Seems to me that Penn & Teller's point was that all programs had low success rates.

I may have misspoke.I just 'feel' that when someone believes they have some power of their own as opposed to asigning power elsewhere they would do better.

I have no stats to back this up.

From what I've seen/heard, it's just not that simple.The whole "powerless over alcohol" thing is actually true. Maybe it's something you have to experience to actually understand, though.

did you axe your AA thread?

 

[Keys Myaths]

Used to attend a very liberal church (kind of a unitarian deal) and they had a group called 'Rational Recovery'.

It focused on personal responsibility without all the 'higher power' stuff.

Having watched the Penn and Teller episode I would like to think the success rate for RR would be higher than AA.

Why would you assume that RR had a better success rate than AA? Seems to me that Penn & Teller's point was that all programs had low success rates.

I may have misspoke.I just 'feel' that when someone believes they have some power of their own as opposed to asigning power elsewhere they would do better.

I have no stats to back this up.

From what I've seen/heard, it's just not that simple.The whole "powerless over alcohol" thing is actually true. Maybe it's something you have to experience to actually understand, though.

did you axe your AA thread?

No. BGP killed it with his insane ramblings. Why he's still allowed to post here, nobody really knows.

 

[johnnycakes]

The whole "powerless over alcohol" thing is actually true. Maybe it's something you have to experience to actually understand, though.

When someone tells me that not drinking for an alcoholic is all about self-control, I'll suggest they swallow a whole package of Ex-Lax and then sit and tell me about self control for a while.

 

[IronToe Nedney]

AA isn't for people who need it. It's for those who want it.

Would you mind sharing your story about what happened to you?TIA

OK.... since you asked.... maybe it can help someone else.... It's still one day at a time, and today is just another day. When the thought of going out and having a drink crosses my mind, I know my life will change forever if I go down that path. I will lose my wife, my kids, my job... myself. Then I think to myself, "I'll have that drink tomorrow." It's OK to have that drink tomorrow. Just don't have it today... that's what one day at a time means to me.

Thanks.

 

[Simris]

I have no direct expierence with alcoholisim.

I have no idea how hard it is to quit.

That being said, why is it necessarry to believe in a God, and avow helplessness to find a 'cure'?

 

[johnnycakes]

That being said, why is it necessarry to believe in a God, and avow helplessness to find a 'cure'?

Well... if you're not powerless over alcohol, then why even bother with AA or with trying to quit? Step #1 is where we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. Most people who come to AA voluntarily don't have much of an issue with that piece of it, or else why would they even bother coming to AA? Because their life was going along great and they just decided to top it off with a little AA? As far as whether it is necessary to believe in a God. I will cite AA Tradition #5, which reads, "the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking." So, no, you don't have to believe in a God to be a member of AA.

That said, Step #2 says we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. There's an awful lot packed into that one simple sentence:

- came to believe. Note this does not say "believed", but instead refers to a process of coming to believe. There are a lot of atheists and agnostics, myself included, that struggle with the concept of a Christian God but who can become comfortable with a power greater than ourselves restoring us to sanity. My usual advice to newcomers struggling with this is to just keep coming. You don't have to get it;' it'll get you after a while.

- power greater than oursevles. Well, Alcohol is a power greater than ourselves. Once we start drinking, all bets are off. Most people who have a good grasp of step #1 don't have a hard time grasping the concept of some power greater than ourselves. For some people, that power may also be a judge who sends us to jail, or a cop, or the divorce attorney.... lots of the bad things that can happen to a drunk are really just glorified examples of a power greater than ourselves. From there, it's a matter of looking for that power that's greater than us that can help us.... For me, that's the power of the AA Group and the power of the 12 steps.

- restore us to sanity. Means pretty much what it says.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

I thought this was a good read on the topic of whether AA actually works. The conclusion: the research on the subject is generally so shoddy as to be useless, so we don't really know. But based on the little decent evidence we have, it seems to work at least a very little bit -- the whole twelve-step process works perhaps about as well as a doctor taking a minute to ask you if you'd considered cutting back on alcohol, and either of those options seems to work nearly as well as doing no intervention at all.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

You have to genuinely want to stop drinking in order to quit. Interventions, rehab, AA are useless if the person doesn't want to quit.

 

[snellman]

You have to genuinely want to stop drinking in order to quit. Interventions, rehab, AA are useless if the person doesn't want to quit.

AA is a great support system, but you have to want to be there.