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Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inacces
by IlikeKitties 1y ago
Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales. It's obvious that the modern society requires addiction counseling and rehabilitation facilities, what we don't need is even more outlets for cults of all color to pray on people in dire situations.
Just the very 12 Steps themselves are enough to show you that[0]:
> We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
> Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
> Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him
> Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
> Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
> Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
> Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
> Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
> Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
> Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
> Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
> 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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
- kingkawn 1y agofolks doing their best with what they've got, a huge portion of the population this language speaks to, your contempt is not helpful to them
- tayo42 1y agoWhat do alcoholics do for recovery outside the US?
- IlikeKitties 1y agoIn civilized countries? Get support from Doctors, licensed psychologist and addiction counselors. In less civilized countries? Die.
- Aurornis 1y ago> In civilized countries? Get support from Doctors, licensed psychologist and addiction counselors All of these are available and common in the US. 12-step programs and AA are available in many countries outside of the US.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoThere wouldn't be any evidence that these groups, specifically AA have embedded themselves into the government and law system of the united states in particular and have used their influence to force non-religious people to join their little cult meetings, right? It's all optional of course! Anyway, here's a list of court cases/news articles where it wasn't: https://www.courthousenews.com/atheist-fights-court-ordered-alcoholics-anonymous-treatment/ https://www.courthousenews.com/atheist-fights-court-ordered-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/alcoholics-anonymous-canada-religion-secular-groups-aa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/alcoholics-ano... https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1995/jul/15/aa-probation-requirement-illegal-for-atheist/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1995/jul/15/aa-probatio... https://aaagnostica.org/2014/10/17/atheist-punished-for-rejecting-12-step-program-gets-2-million/ https://aaagnostica.org/2014/10/17/atheist-punished-for-reje... I'm sure you can find 20 more easily. Glad i'm not american.
- genewitch 1y agoyou really got an axe to grind, huh?
- stronglikedan 1y ago> specifically AA have embedded themselves into the government and law system of the united states in particular You could literally say the same about any special interest group in any country. > Glad i'm not american. Me too, but the difference is that you don't see me thinking I know anything about UK politics or special interest groups. I'd even wager that you've never even set foot in a meeting in an attempt to alleviate your naivety.
- tea-lover 1y agoI'm in the former USSR; this thing is very popular among alcoholics I know personally or have heard of from friends and relatives: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кодирование_от_алкоголизма https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кодирование_от_алкоголизма The article in Russian is much more thorough than the English one, run it through Google Translate or something. There are various ways it's practiced in my area, all of them can be summarized as follows: a medical professional performs some procedure (sometimes just hypnosis, but it can get more physical), which either "cures" your alcoholism, or convinces you that you're going to die horribly if you have even a drop of alcohol. The process depends on who is doing it. It's basically just placebo and is pretty useless in practice (most alcoholics I know haven't stopped drinking for more than a couple of months), which doesn't prevent it from being widely used.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoThat seems insanely dangerous. As far as I know, once you are physically addicted to alcohol, you can't even go cold turkey without risk of literally dying.
- tea-lover 1y agoIf you get DTs after drinking for months, you will get proper medical treatment as in any other country. The "coding" is usually performed after you have been sober for some time and "stabilized", so to say.
- Yizahi 1y agoProper (most) of the facilities which do this require people to stop drinking for at least few days before procedure, and some offer paid service isolating patient for a few days under supervision, and then do a block. In cases when patient is already delirious from intoxication these facilities can force one to go cold turkey, but at the same time put patient on the IV with some supplements and issue anti-psychotics (by doctors of course). So in general the system is well equipped to not allow patients die from abstaining.
- Yizahi 1y agoThis is why ex-USSR countries have so many programmers - we did a lot of coding :)
- graemep 1y agoAs Alcoholics Anonymous operates in 180 countries quite often people outside the US do go there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous#International_expansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous#Internati...
- moffkalast 1y agoDie by drinking and driving, mainly.
- singpolyma3 1y agoGet proper treatment by professionals.
- bloqs 1y ago>pray on people bravo
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI'm gonna leave that in.
- Aurornis 1y ago> Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales. One of my old friends was a staunch atheist since middle school. He joined AA after some struggles. He said it was no problem at all. They told him his “higher power” could be anything he chose, such as nature or the universe. The prayer part was just meditation. Nobody tried to push religion on anyone. I don’t know if his experience was typical or not, but he didn’t think it was a problem at all. I haven’t kept up with him for a while but last we talked he was still doing well, many years later.
- datpuz 1y agoYep that was a deal-breaker for me going to AA. I eventually just quit drinking on my own after a few years, but AA being the only option for addiction support groups in many places is a bummer.
- Drew_ 1y agoYup. The steps are definitely rooted in Christianity, but you can exercise them however you want. As you might imagine, most people suffering with addiction are not that religious (if at all) and the same thing goes in those groups.
- Craighead 1y agothe vast majority of the law systems surrounding the global west are rooted in Christianity. you need to pause for a moment and stop equating religion with evil.
- imtringued 1y agoA lot of people don't see religion as a self replicating cultural program that benefits its biological host. It provides answers for the unanswerable. It is like L_2 norm based regularization in machine learning. You need an answer and there are many solutions, so you have to have a criteria for picking one. Turns out in the last few centuries a lot of unanswerable questions have found answers rooted in scientific progress and the new answers conflict with the previous answers, which by their very function as placeholders could not have been correct.
- timacles 1y agoI mean listen. If humans have to abstract a belief into something to get them through tough times then so be it. It does not help anyone to pretend that the universe is some sort of pure logic and reasoning machine and that a human can operate that way, because we are governed by and a slave to our emotions. Religion and God exist for a reason, and that reason is that the world is inconceivably complicated and if you dont create a mental and emotional reasoning system that helps see beyond the complexity then you are going to have a really tough time. Now, churches and cults and all that preying on vulnerable people is a whole other subject. But God and religion is a powerful tool humans have turned to for millennia.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rubicon33 1y ago“Religious nonsense” is such an engineer minded thing to say. I’m with you for sure, but the truth is systems like religion, art, design, etc all serve a functional purpose to trick the mind, calm the mind, etc.
- colechristensen 1y agoPlenty of non-engineering types are also atheists with a dismissive attitude. Putting art and religion in the same bucket like they belong to the same thought process is a ... very engineer minded thing to say.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI would invite you to look into how modern cults started. Jonestown, Scientology, Children of God, Haven's Gate, Branch Davidians, Mormonism, etc. It's really, really fascinating and there's tons of resources out there how they get started, how they function and why. Once you understand the functional purpose of them, you'll never look at other religions the same.
- 93po 1y agoI would recommend Refuge Recovery over AA any day. It's still buddhist inspired but it doesn't ask you to believe in a deity and basically just sticks to principles of buddhism like "be nice, be compassionate, to both yourself and others"
- graemep 1y ago> to principles of buddhism like "be nice, be compassionate, to both yourself and others" Principles shared with most religions and most non-religious people are hardly a mrk of Buddhism. Buddhism is not a theistic religion, but it still requires a lot of religious beliefs (reincarnation, enlightenment, nirvana) and a lot of concepts such as detachment. There is a BIG difference between "not monotheistic" and "not religious".
- 93po 1y agoThere is an extremely wide spectrum of how buddhism is practiced and I'd argue most ways are "wrong" and violate things the buddha very specifically said not to do (e.g. don't worship him). There are no "requirements" in buddhism. there is no hell for you to go to if you do it "wrong". take from it what you want and leave the rest behind.
- graemep 1y ago> here is no hell for you to go to if you do it "wrong" My understanding is that the present life and the cycle of reincarnation is what Buddhists seek release from in nirvana. There is a hell, we are just in it. I hardly need say that "going" to hell is misleading as its not a place, and many other religions do not believe in it (.e.g. Christian universalists). > take from it what you want and leave the rest behind. At some point you take so little its not the same religion anymore.
- 93po 1y ago> At some point you take so little its not the same religion anymore. sure but the point is to take what works to stop drinking, not to able to accurately call yourself a buddhist
- intellectronica 1y agoI'm as rational atheist as they come, and was nevertheless helped, for a while, by a 12-step program. You don't need to believe anything other than that not everything in life is under your control.
- peab 1y ago>It's obvious that the modern society requires addiction counseling and rehabilitation facilities is it? or is that your opinion? Why don't we look at actual evidence: "There is high quality evidence that manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, such as CBT, for increasing abstinence. Non-manualized AA/TSF may perform as well as these other established treatments. AA/TSF interventions, both manualized and non-manualized, may be at least as effective as other treatments for other alcohol-related outcomes. AA/TSF probably produces substantial healthcare cost savings among people with alcohol use disorder."[0] [0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32159228/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32159228/
- IlikeKitties 1y agoThat's a great resource because it's a meta study collecting data from other studies, thank you i was searching for something like that! Unfortunately your quote is misleading as it leaves out some serious issues with the evidence and studies used. I recommend reading the "Main results" parts in your link in full.
- stronglikedan 1y agoYou are mistaken if you think AA has anything to do with religion. Methinks you're just parroting what you've read without actually verifying anything. Amplifying this nonsense just causes people in need to reconsider getting help.
- IlikeKitties 1y ago> You are mistaken if you think AA has anything to do with religion Reread the 12 Steps.
- bongodongobob 1y agoGo to a meeting. There is no pushing god unless the group is explicitly religious.
- 1attice 1y agoI have been. There is plenty of God and God adjacent talk. This constitutes pushing. Its Christianity with the serial numbers filed off. Pass. My sobriety has its roots in not drinking. Not some higher power.
- afpx 1y agoBut, it works, right? 12-step type programs are also widely-available and low-cost. Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. Otherwise, people wouldn't practice them. With moderate practice, you can easily achieve a state of 100% internal peace.
- wkat4242 1y ago> Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. True, being religious would cause me a lot of anguish and turmoil. Just the idea that I'm not in control of my life. I don't consider that a positive of any kind. That scene from the Matrix really speaks to me and always has :) I think for people that like it it could have positive effects. Just like team sports would have negative effects for me but positive ones for others (I'm totally not a "team player")
- EnergyAmy 1y agoYou can also just meditate or engage in other practices that have nothing to do with religion. Religion is unnecessary.
- myhf 1y ago12-step programs have a 5-10% success rate.
- ninkendo 1y ago> Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. Otherwise, people wouldn't practice them. I don’t think that follows. Plenty of people practice religion because they’re terrified of the consequences of not doing it, because they’re have been indoctrinated from a young age to believe that to turn away from God is to be tortured in hell for all eternity. (Or in the case of some religions, you can be straight-up executed for leaving.)
- missinglugnut 1y ago>Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales. This is both wrong and deeply harmful. As others in this thread have pointed out, you can choose any higher power you want, whether it's a tree or the inevitable increase in universal entropy. Don't throw away the whole thing because you might have to talk to a Christian. Free, accessible addiction help is hard to come by so it's terrible to discourage people based on misinformation and culture war bullshit.
- dang 1y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44531234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44531234.