LINK Atheist reaches settlement over religious objection to mandatory AA - BBC News
Alcoholics Anonymous pushing religion . . .
8
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12 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.There is conflicting success rates around the success of AA due to lack of experimental research. Most studies rely on subjective participant surveys or observations. Pretty hard to have a control group, and two different recovery methods when anonymity must be preserved. The only participants I can see stepping forward are the highly motivated, who could've found recovery anywhere. This has nothing to do with your post of course.
I am glad the young Canadian won his battle. It was never going to help him while the basic ideology is flawed
MsDemeanour
Level 8
Dec 22, 2019
1
That higher power AA talks about is really you.
DenoPenno
Level 9
Dec 14, 2019
0
The only higher power a person can NOT have in AA / NA is Self. However, I fully agree with you that one must take responsibility and be one's own higher power.
The higher power, in my opinion, is the collective wisdom we find, here and there.
If we think we already know everything,
we will not get curious,
and do a little research,
(nowadays, we have the internet, to help us with our research)
So,
if we get curious,
and do that research,
and learn and learn,
more and more,
then we may find some key bits of information,
practical philosophy,
things we may need.
That information,
and the humility we need to learn some of it,
and embrace it,
and act upon it,
that,
in my totally atheist opinion,
is a kind of higher power,
that all of us should turn to.
Seems to me.
There is a treatment that is starting to take off called The Sinclair Method it involves taking a tablet which locks off the part of the brain that gets pleasure from drinking (or at least that is what I can recall I may have the specifics wrong) The person does not have to stop drinking as long as they take the tablet. Obviously any psychological issues that are driving someone to drink need to be dealt with my trained professionals or they will simply head towards another drug. I do not believe that the tablet works for all addictions.
Budgie
Level 8
Dec 13, 2019
2
Let's see how far we have to go before the 12 Steps fall apart into religious horseshit.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
That part about being powerless is highly questionable but there's no actual religion so far.
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Uh oh. Trouble brewing. Still, no mention of a god specifically as yet so we'll keep going.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
And we're done.
How has this crap not been replaced with a completely secular program to deal with alcoholism or any addiction? This is just another example of religion worming its way into people's lives when they're at their weakest and most vulnerable,
Sgt_Spanky
Level 8
Dec 13, 2019
5
Good. A legal presidence over there might bring one to the U.S..
Heathenman
Level 7
Dec 13, 2019
1
Unfortunately, I doubt it.
Kudos to him.
In my opinion ANY Group/Organisation that offers up religion/prayer as assistance for a problem like Alcoholism, etc, IS merely replace one crutch with another crutch and not really touching upon or helping to actually solve the problem in any way.
Triphid
Level 9
Dec 13, 2019
7
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