This brings me back to Gregory Bateson's writing on the methods of the AA, where he describes the surrender to a higher power as the alcoholic undergoing a change in epistemology and realising that they are actually part of a larger system. It's interesting, but funnily enough he never actually explains addiction.
Really, Wired. Just had to get the pop culture quote instead of sticking with real people who treat and study addiction.“In my 20 years of treating addicts, I’ve never seen anything else that comes close to the 12 steps,” says Drew Pinsky, the addiction-medicine specialist who hosts VH1′s Celebrity Rehab. “In my world, if someone says they don’t want to do the 12 steps, I know they aren’t going to get better.”
I'm assuming you mean substituting alcohol addiction to a sort of addiction to AA, but it is actually funny that most people at AA end up as chain smokers.
Both my parents have been sober for over 25 years. Their best friends are from AA. They met in AA. It's the community that makes it work and, at least the meeting they go to, isn't some cult phenomenon. I'm sure some meetings are more religious or crazy and preachy than others but the one here isn't.
I think AA is a wonderful bunch of people who earnestly want to help I would recommend them
1000 times over narconon (which is a cult)
. It is just that their percentages are quite low about the same as quitting with no formal help. I hope and rather suspect that it is a different group that is helped by one method over another. The only real gripe I have against 12 steps is the lack of poetry in the language of recovery.
http://life.umt.edu/curry/DOcs-SOS/Current%20Peer%20Educator... It certainly does not mean don't do what helps you.
I have known some AA people. It works for some, and for those, it is a life-saver. It is absolutely a religion, no doubt. A non-judgemental and accepting religion, when it works like it's supposed to.
I think coupled with other things it is a boon to folks that want to stop drinking but its efficacy is about the same as cold turkey.