this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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And you often have the "option" of going to AA meetings, which are almost always religious, or the "option" of being imprisoned. It's literally the government enforcing religion.
Yup, although, while I do agree that a lot of AA programs are just trojan religion, AA itself can sometimes be a little misrepresented. Like the controversial 'higher power' thing. Maybe not the best language, but I observed similar patterns in my own addiction remediation efforts. At least the way I interpret it is, I'm in this poor state that appears to complete lack the necessary differences in thinking that it would take to get myself out of this; therefore I'm powerless to stop this on my own. I need to seek out a third factor to set things in a different direction.
It doesn't need to be anything mystical. Could literally just be reading a book written by another addict, who happens to share an idea that catalyzes the right changes. Wisdom of an elder. But again, that might just be a misinterpretation on my part. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I hear this all the time, but I have to always point out that the only way to make Step 11 non-religious is to totally rewrite it:
There is just not a way to interpret that non-religiously without rewriting it. Which is not surprising, since AA formed out of a prayer group.
If AA helped you, I'm glad it did. But there's no science behind it and AA's success rate is between 5 and 10 percent. It does help some people mainly because it's a form of group therapy.
There are better, more scientific methods. Including medication. Unfortunately, in a for-profit healthcare system, free AA may be your only option. And your local group will almost certainly be religious.
And rehab and treatment has an even lower success rate. Turns out we don't really know how to fix addiction. It's really a cultural thing and we can't put a bandaid with a little bit of therapy.
From what I've seen AA / NA is at least as effective as other treatments, some research indicates it's more effective, and considering the fact that it's free compared to thousands of dollars minimum for any kind of treatment you're looking at a massive price delta
NA helped me get clean from heroin and at no point did anybody push religion and everyone made it clear the language is like that cause it was written a long time ago in a different time. They encourage people to take what they can use and throw away the rest.