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“Silkworth, a supporter of AA from its inception, was quoted [as saying], "We all know that the alcoholic has an urge to share his troubles. . . . But the psychoanalyst, being of human clay, is not often a big enough man for that job. The patient simply cannot generate enough confidence in him. But the patient can have enough confidence in God—once he has gone through the mystical experience of recognizing God. And upon that principle the Alcoholic Foundation rests. The medical profession, in general, accepts the principle as sound.”

Quote by Lance Dodes

Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry

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Lance Dodes

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“[Jack Alexander] underscor[ed] what remains a widely held belief among many AA members: that only an alcoholic can help another alcoholic: “A bridge of confidence is thereby erected, spanning a gap, which has baffled the physician, the minister, the priest, or the hapless relatives. . . . Only an alcoholic can squat on another alcoholic’s chest for hours with the proper combination of discipline and sympathy.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“When the Big Book was first published in 1939, the American Medical Association, bewildered by its tone and inflated claims, called the work “a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation. . . . [T]he one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases went even further in 1940, calling AA a “regressive mass psychological method” and a “religious fervor,” writing: “The big, big book, i.e. big in words, is a rambling sort of camp-meeting confession of experiences, told in the form of biographies of various alcoholics who had been to a certain institution and have provisionally recovered, chiefly under the influence of the ‘big brothers of the spirit.’ Of the inner meaning of alcoholism there is hardly a word. It is all surface material.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“Throughout AA’s history, its members have often embraced any literature that references disease, whether degenerative, genetic, or biochemical. AA favors the term disease because it fits with the description of alcoholism as a disease in its own literature. It also supports the foundational notion that an addict’s behavior is uncontrollable (“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol”). Ultimately the mechanism of the disease (and whether it is strictly logical to embrace it, given AA’s own views) has been less important than the word itself.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“Harry Tiebout, [Bill] Wilson’s personal therapist [assured] the collected members that AA was “not just a miracle but a way of life which is filled with eternal value.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“It wasn’t long before the court systems began to mandate AA attendance for drug and alcohol offenders. AA won a landmark decision in 1966 when two decisions from a federal appeals court upheld the disease concept of alcoholism and the court’s use of it, despite the fact that there was scant precedent for a US court of law to assign itself the power of medical diagnosis. Although later decisions would rule court-mandated 12-step attendance unconstitutional, judges still refer people to AA as part of sentencing or as a condition of probation. Dr. Arthur Horvath, a past president of the Division on Addictions of the American Psychological Association, summarizes the current legal status of this practice: "If you have been convicted of an offense related to addiction, it is common to be ordered to attend support groups, treatment, or both. It has also been common that you would be ordered, not just to a support group, but to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) specifically, or to another 12-step based group. Based on recent court decisions, if you have been ordered to attend a 12-step group or 12-step based treatment by the government (the order could be coming from a court, prison officer, probation or parole officer, licensing board or licensing board diversion program, or anyone authorized to act on behalf of the government), you have the right not to attend them. However, you can still be required to attend some form of support group, and some type of treatment. These court decisions are based on the finding that AA is religious enough that being required to attend it would be similar to requiring someone to attend church. Five US Circuit Courts of Appeal (the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 9th) have made similar rulings. . . . The 2nd Circuit Court decision states that AA “placed a heavy emphasis on spirituality and prayer, in both conception and in practice,” that participants were told to “pray to God,” and that meetings began and adjourned with “group prayer.” The court therefore had “no doubt” that AA meetings were “intensely religious events.” Although some have suggested that AA is spiritual but not religious, the court found AA to be religious.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“A recent paper looking at state-sponsored physician health groups (for doctors who have problems with addiction) found that “[r]egardless of setting or duration, essentially all treatment provided to these physicians (95%) was 12-step oriented.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“Examining this history, it is clear that AA has been extraordinarily effective at influencing public opinion and policy toward a favorable view of its ideas. What is missing from this account is notable as well: these strides were achieved without any triggering event, such as a well-designed study, that might support the organization’s claims of efficacy. Most of AA’s claims were simply grandfathered in, collecting legitimacy in a sort of echo chamber of reciprocal mentions that often featured the same handful of names.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“Human research tends to cleave into two major “kingdoms”: observational studies and controlled studies. Observational studies observe and compare groups of people. This research is conducted passively; in other words, without interventions or controls. Any significant differences that emerge between the populations studied—say, finding that people who drink more diet soda tend to have a higher incidence of depression than people who don’t—can’t prove anything but may be used to generate hypotheses about what is causing this difference. Yet people still assume the obvious when confronted with a correlation of this sort. In the diet soda study, which was actually run by the National Institute of Health and widely reported, many people jumped to the conclusion that depression must be caused by something in the soda. But a moment of creative consideration turns up several other plausible possibilities. What if the people who drink diet soda are simply more judgmental about their body appearance and generally more prone to self-criticism? What if, since drinking more diet soda correlates with a history of being overweight, the depression arises physiologically from the effects of obesity, or as a result of the cluster of health problems that go along with it, such as obstructive sleep apnea and diabetes? What if people who are depressed simply crave sweet things, as evidence suggests? And what of the fact that diet soda drinkers tend to cluster more in urban areas: is there something about this environment that promotes depression? Strong correlation is tantalizing, a just-so homily that satisfies our need for simple explanations. It feels definitive and self-apparent, especially given the huge number of subjects typically involved in such studies. The NIH study that produced the diet soda finding, for instance, had 260,000 subjects. Headlines are driven and public health advice administered whenever a major observational study unearths a provocative new correlation. But it turns out that the record of observational studies like these for generating accurate medical advice is, in a word, abysmal.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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“Why do purely observational studies fail so often despite finding such clear associations? The diet soda example tells the tale. All of those alternative theories I mentioned can be boiled down to a single, devastating possibility: what if diet soda drinkers are just fundamentally different from regular soda drinkers, in any of the ways I mentioned, and this difference colors everything about the way they live and behave? Scientists call this the selection effect, or selection bias. When human beings are free to behave as they always have—free to willfully choose their behavior—there is no meaningful way to find a control group of comparable subjects.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
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