Sure ... these are all fair arguments. To some degree, i'm now more curious about the meta-issue of when a little more knowledge is dangerous, and how anyone can qualified to make that call for someone else.
For completeness, tho, i'll add the following comments, all provided IMHO as food for further thinking/discussion.
First off, i'll always agree with the idea that having more options for treatment would be good. I'm 100% with you on that. AA started in a grass-roots way to respond to a need. For many people, however, it fills a gap that is failed to be covered by what's out there (especially in our health-insurance-driven mental-health-avoidant system). I think that when the public at large thinks of AA as a panacea for people with drinking problems, they're way off. ... and interestingly enough, i think it annoys many people in AA also, because i don't think it hails itself as such a thing, either
... which leads well to my next point. You're absolutely right that the majority of folks to attend AA don't stick with it. What's interesting (tho i know correlation rarely implies cause) is that this fact has not been true for all of AA's history, as i understand it. My understanding is that this fact became the norm right around the time that people started being referred to AA by outside sources -- like the countless folks who are required to attend AA programs as a condition of not going to jail after multiple DUI offenses.
Both of these points relate back to the basic AA idea that the program only works for people who are ready to use it. It's not a treatment for alcoholism. It's a path for those who are alcoholics and have hit a point where they're ready to work a program. It's more like going to college than it is like a medical treatment; your classes, professors and textbooks can't make you learn the material.
The program, as it were, also means not drinking. In that regard, people who can't stomach the idea of quitting drinking entirely should avoid AA, because it's not a program to "get control of your drinking", it's a program for those who can't control their drinking*.
*(... or at least truly believe they can't. I know a few rare folks who worked AA programs for years and then found that they could use other things to maintain their psychological well-being enough to not drink, or (even rarer) very occasionally drink. What's interesting is that -- at least in AA terms -- it then becomes arguable whether or not these folks were truly alcoholics in the first place.)
So i guess the end conclusion of all this is that whether or not the original myth you posted above is really a myth comes down to how you define "alcoholic". In AA terms, afaik them, an alcoholic is someone who has a permanent physical allergy to alcohol that invokes a reaction that is utterly disabling and uncontrollable. For such a person, the AA concepts of "having no control" and "once an alcoholic ..." are true.
Now, that said, are there people who have other drinking problems (which might be called alcoholism by some, but not by AA terms)? Definitely. Should there be treatment options for these people other than AA? Definitely (especially since AA is deliberately not for people that it would not define as alcoholic). Could some of these treatments avoid an "all or nothing" approach to alcohol? Definitely. Should people know this? Definitely.
... which i guess brings us full circle. I'd definitely agree that people knowing all of this stuff would be for the best. I also agree that your original myth above is, indeed, a myth, if you replace the word "alcoholics" with "people with drinking problems" (or just accept that that's all the word "alcoholics" really means).
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(part 1 of 2)
Date: 2010-05-20 11:29 pm (UTC)For completeness, tho, i'll add the following comments, all provided IMHO as food for further thinking/discussion.
First off, i'll always agree with the idea that having more options for treatment would be good. I'm 100% with you on that. AA started in a grass-roots way to respond to a need. For many people, however, it fills a gap that is failed to be covered by what's out there (especially in our health-insurance-driven mental-health-avoidant system). I think that when the public at large thinks of AA as a panacea for people with drinking problems, they're way off. ... and interestingly enough, i think it annoys many people in AA also, because i don't think it hails itself as such a thing, either
... which leads well to my next point. You're absolutely right that the majority of folks to attend AA don't stick with it. What's interesting (tho i know correlation rarely implies cause) is that this fact has not been true for all of AA's history, as i understand it. My understanding is that this fact became the norm right around the time that people started being referred to AA by outside sources -- like the countless folks who are required to attend AA programs as a condition of not going to jail after multiple DUI offenses.
Both of these points relate back to the basic AA idea that the program only works for people who are ready to use it. It's not a treatment for alcoholism. It's a path for those who are alcoholics and have hit a point where they're ready to work a program. It's more like going to college than it is like a medical treatment; your classes, professors and textbooks can't make you learn the material.
The program, as it were, also means not drinking. In that regard, people who can't stomach the idea of quitting drinking entirely should avoid AA, because it's not a program to "get control of your drinking", it's a program for those who can't control their drinking*.
*(... or at least truly believe they can't. I know a few rare folks who worked AA programs for years and then found that they could use other things to maintain their psychological well-being enough to not drink, or (even rarer) very occasionally drink. What's interesting is that -- at least in AA terms -- it then becomes arguable whether or not these folks were truly alcoholics in the first place.)
So i guess the end conclusion of all this is that whether or not the original myth you posted above is really a myth comes down to how you define "alcoholic". In AA terms, afaik them, an alcoholic is someone who has a permanent physical allergy to alcohol that invokes a reaction that is utterly disabling and uncontrollable. For such a person, the AA concepts of "having no control" and "once an alcoholic ..." are true.
Now, that said, are there people who have other drinking problems (which might be called alcoholism by some, but not by AA terms)? Definitely. Should there be treatment options for these people other than AA? Definitely (especially since AA is deliberately not for people that it would not define as alcoholic). Could some of these treatments avoid an "all or nothing" approach to alcohol? Definitely. Should people know this? Definitely.
... which i guess brings us full circle. I'd definitely agree that people knowing all of this stuff would be for the best. I also agree that your original myth above is, indeed, a myth, if you replace the word "alcoholics" with "people with drinking problems" (or just accept that that's all the word "alcoholics" really means).
(cont'd below)