Rethinking Addiction
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, March 5, 2017
Perhaps you’ve studied the 12-Step program, or perhaps you’ve practiced it. I have done both. Practicing it was not as a matter of addiction, or any such thing for myself, but instead, was a part of my personal spiritual growth and development.
Over the years, I’ve heard commentary, or news features which interviewed people with divergent perspectives on 12-Step programs, most notably which were skeptical of them, and were thoughtfully seeking answers themselves for the “whys and wherefores” of substance abuse, whether it’s long-term or temporary, and whether it is a genetic fault, or if it is a personality or character flaw in response to external or internal stressors. In other words, it’s the classic “Heredity vs Environment” argument.
As I have come to view it, there is validity for both sides, but I think the stronger case is made for a combination of environment and character flaw, instead of genetic defect.
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“In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.”
The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous
By Gabrielle Glaser, April 2015 Issue
Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found dozens of other treatments more effective.
See also:
With Sobering Science, Doctor Debunks 12-Step Recovery
March 23, 2014 3:43 PM ET – Heard on All Things Considered 5:30 (audio)
Taking Aim at 12-Step Programs
‘The Sober Truth’: Seeing Bad Science in Rehab
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. MAY 5, 2014 – Health Books
The Surprising Failures of 12 Steps
By Jake Flanagin, Mar 25, 2014
How a pseudoscientific, religious organization birthed the most trusted method of addiction treatment
Rethinking The Use Of Medication In Opioid Addiction Treatment
By Anna Gorman, Kaiser Health News, April 6, 2016 at 12:13 PM EST
Faced with a worsening opiate epidemic and rising numbers of overdose deaths, policymakers are ramping up medication-assisted treatment.
Alcoholics Anonymous: There’s a better way to treat addiction
AA and rehab culture have shockingly low success rates, and made it impossible to have real debate about addiction
By Dr. Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes, Sunday, Mar 23, 2014 6:30 PM UTC
The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
An exposé of Alcoholics Anonymous, twelve-step programs, and the rehab industry—and how a failed addiction-treatment model came to dominate America – book website
Don’t Dismiss The 12 Steps, Validate All Recovery From Addiction
By Tori Utley, Mar 29, 2016
The Fix
RadioLab podcast
Friday, December 18, 2015 – 04:49 PM
This episode we take a sober look at the throbbing, aching, craving desire states that return people (again and again) to the object of their addiction … and the pills that just might set them free.
Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
By Johann Hari, Journalist, TED Global London · 14:42 · Filmed Jun 2015
Johann Hari spent three years researching the war on drugs; along the way, he discovered that addiction is not what we think it is.
Addiction
Published on Oct 29, 2015
What causes addiction? Easy, right? Drugs cause addiction. But maybe it is not that simple.
This video is adapted from Johann Hari’s New York Times best-selling book ‘Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.‘ For more information, and to take a quiz to see what you know about addiction, go to:
ChasingTheScream.com
4 Things Johann Hari Gets Wrong About Addiction—Updated With a Response From Hari
By Andrew Dobbs 07/29/15
Best known as a lying plagiarist in the UK, the disgraced journalist Johann Hari has remade himself as an addiction expert. Or has he?
Warm Southern Breeze 
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