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The 12 Steps
The treatment of addiction to alcohol or other drugs is a fairly new endeavor, even though man has been suffering from these problems since the beginning of recorded history. In the past, a person either died of his addiction, or used his will to stop his compulsive use, with most taking their addiction to their grave.
In the past, alcoholism afflicted more of the population than did drug addiction, but with the drugs becoming readily available on the streets and by prescription, alcoholism is now far less prevalent than addiction to other drugs.
Since no one understood addiction, it origins were determined to be a problem of one’s character or a mental health problem and addicts and alcoholics were persecuted by religion or sent to asylums where any cures were rare and death or confinement to an institution were the usual outcomes.
With the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous those who needed support in their efforts to handle their addiction were given a set of principles to follow and group support from other recovering alcoholics to stop their use by staying clean “one day at a time”.
When health insurance companies stated paying for addiction treatment, many hospitals opened programs that used the 12-steps of AA and NA as their clinical basis for their treatment, even though the AA and NA groups and their founders rejected its use as a treatment modality. A inpatient treatment center could find ample staff that understood the 12-step approach and since they weren’t highly trained medical staff, they could be hired for lower wages and the treatment centers were becoming a cash cow for many of their owners. Charter Hospitals and other for-profit groups were building residential centers in all metropolitan areas throughout the United States that used the 12-step modality to “treat” addiction.
When the public and the insurance companies realized that less that 10% of those that completed this regime of treatment were able to stay clean and sober and lead normal lives, the funding for these treatment centers was cut and many of these centers went broke.
However, today, about 80% of the centers that profess to treat addiction are still using the this 12-step approach. Most of these residential centers offer 28-30 day treatment, which gives the addict enough time to start detouring off of his drug of choice and pick up some education on the 12-step’s philosophy of addiction and three of the twelve steps. This modality of treatment states that addiction, whether it be alcoholism or drug addiction or a combination of both is a chronic (meaning that it will be with the person forever) and progressive disease (meaning that even if you quit using alcohol and other drugs, the “disease” will continue to progress). 12-sept programs believe that it is a given truth that nothing can cure addiction. They believe that it is a disease that is bigger than one’s will and all that one can do is to live as good a life as possible, with the support of others doing the same, and never take a drug or alcoholic drink again. To do so would put you back to where you were before you stopped using and you would need to start again from the beginning to build up “clean time”.
It is easy to see why this method is not successful if you put yourself in the shoes of and addict that has been ruining his life and his self-esteem by continually failing at all attempts to be productive. You know that alcohol and drugs are keeping you from fulfilling your worthwhile desires, but you also know that you can’t stop using. You finally confront the problem and ask for help and they you are told that you have a disease that will haunt you the rest of your life and there is no way out of wanting to use drugs, other than coming to support group meetings to ask for help and support to keep your desires at bay. If you are like the majority, 90%, you will find that when you do what is asked of you by the 12-step modality you don’t feel better, you meet many others that are still using and pushing drugs and the only thing that seems to be real is the fact that this is a chronic problem.
Basically, the 12-step approach uses fear as motivation and fear has never been a successful agent for personal change and certainly not for those that have been used to living in fear of being arrested or caught with their drug use and who have decided that they will never win at life except to get the pleasure that life can offer them when they are high on alcohol or other drugs.
Another problem with the 12-step approach is the fact that it has no quality assurance that oversees and corrects the abuses that can naturally occur when you have a group of people that are assuming leadership without supervision. There are AA and NA groups that are lead by wonderfully caring and dedicated people that are taking a message of hope to others and working tirelessly to help their fellow man, but there are many groups that are run by people with other less altruistic motivations and there are many that are somewhere between the “good and evil”. Few addicts have the observational wherewithal to discern good meetings from bad and they have their own desires to be associated with those that are taking advantage of others rather than accept the responsibility of having someone care for them and expect them to respond in positive ways.
After inspecting over 150 AA and NA programs, the author is surprised that even 10% of those that are seeking help are successful. However, the successful outcomes of 12-step programs is no better than the success of those that change their lives on their own without any “help”. Many people find it hard to believe in the disease theory of addiction and rightfully so since there are programs that help addicts move past addiction and there is nothing in their new lives that resembles a chronic and progressive disease.
Behavoir Modification
Behavioral Modification was developed to work on the Personality that is considered to the norm, or a person who was self centered. This method relies on harsh tactics where the individual is yelled at by groups of peers and then hopefully rebuilt into a more social person.
There has been some use for this method with young teenagers who are on a warpath to destroy society. However the success is only very marginally about 10%, in most cases other methods are recommended.
Due to that reason very few drug rehab centers use this method.
Long Term Religious
This method of drug rehab is possibly the oldest form of
getting someone off of their addiction.
The individual is removed from the environment where he is
taking drugs and sent to a farm or large church for up to a year. There he
works and studies the bible without drugs and out of the environment where he
obtained them.
Determining the success rate of this method is difficult
due to the low percent of addicts who make it through. However, of those
complete the program around 20% manage to stay clean form hard drugs.
Due to the long term it is usually not available to most addicts, and
waiting lists are long.
Bio-Physical
The truth about addiction is that there is a strong physical
dependence to most drugs and alcohol when it is abused on a regular basis.
This physical addiction is the consequence of the body’s mechanism to keep
the blood stream clear of these alien substances. In doing so, the liver and
kidneys are cleansing the body as fast as they can, but because of the extremely toxic
nature of these drugs and the fact that they are fat-soluble substances, the
body resorts to “pushing” these molecules into the dormant fat tissue
of the body.
Once a person stops using drugs, the body will attempt to
cleanse itself by releasing small amounts of these stored substances back into
the blood stream for the liver and kidneys to totally break them down so they
can be eliminated. Actually this process of leakage is going on continually in the addicts life, but it is heightened when one stops taking drugs and the body begins to try to cleanse itself.
When these drugs come from the fat tissue and they are
reintroduced back into the blood stream, they re-stimulate the mind and cause
the person to be drug effected and the cravings lead the addict back to wanting
more of this feeling. There are programs that have the clinical skills to
rid the body of these chemicals while the person is in treatment and this ends
the physical addiction.
There are many programs today that remove these toxins from the
body without harmful drugs. Coupled with basic skills in dealing with life's
problems, addiction can be terminality handled.
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