First - I'm really glad that you are alive to post this, and it sounds like that wasn't a given based on your story. I wanted to comment on one of your last se

First - I'm really glad that you are alive to post this, and it sounds like that wasn't a given based on your story. I wanted to comment on one of your last sentences - that "natural recovery" doesn't warrant attention. I think there's a certain bias here given your own experience. If you go twelve step meetings, you'll find people who's lives were on the brink of ruin and who have pulled themselves back by living the steps. But I think even NA/AA would acknowledge that the percentage of people who walk into an meeting once who get sober and continue to attend meetings is small (if I had to proffer a guess, it'd be less than 10%, but I don't have a good basis for that). So the question is really "what happens to the other 90%"? Some will certainly die from their addictions, destroying themselves and the lives of their loved ones in the process. Others are going to "grow out" of their addictions. It may be that the percentage who grow out of their addictions is actually higher than the AA percentage (and that seems to be what the article implies). That actually _does_ merit attention (and I think we'll find that in most cases the growth mirrors some of the steps that you'd see in AA, just without AA). Of course, those that _don't_ grow out of their addictions would be far better served working a program, and we don't have a good way to distinguish which group any addict is in, so that puts us back to where we are, which is in not knowing the best way to treat addiction. :( (Personal note: I was clearly an addict and alcoholic in my late teens and twenties, and this period of time involved multiple trips to rehab, as well as AA/NA meetings. None of that "worked" for me, but what worked was the development of some additional maturity (late 20's) that was able to see a life that I wanted which was incompatible with my behavior. As an adult in my 40's, nobody would define me as an alcoholic or an addict. I'll occasionally drink, but drinking to excess really just doesn't fit into my life anymore.)