NOTE:
As with some of my other "Home Grown" recovery links, it is possible that
this link may not meet the approval of the NA Nazis, the Step Police,
the Guardians of Recovery, or others. I have therefore decided to allow
people to post rebuttals to the opinions on this page.
To send hate mail , click
here.
For rebuttals to the opinions on this page,
click
here.
If you have read any of my other "home grown" links, by now you have probably figured out that I am not an NA Nazi. I will take my recovery wherever I can get it, because my life depends on it.
One of the best lessons I ever learned about recovery didn't come from a meeting at all. I learned it under my house. I had battled a rat for years. She would come to my house each year to have babies. She would climb up in the walls and scare my daughters. I tried everything to catch her, but she would always spring the traps, and then eat the bait.
One day I decided to poison her. I crawled under my house with four boxes of rat poison. My crawl space is very low, and it was hard to maneuver under there. As I removed the wrapping from the first box, I found that the poison had leaked out into it, and the outside of the box was covered in a greenish-blue dust. I thought to myself, "OH NO! If I touch this funk, then I can't touch my eyes, or scratch my nose, or touch my mouth, because the poison will get inside me and make me sick". Then it hit me. That is the exact attitude that I should have about mood altering chemicals. Since then, whenever I have stumbled across drugs in any form, that lesson immediately comes back to me, and I feel the same way about it as I did that rat poison. It's poison to me, and I can't let my fingers get into it, or it will screw my life up. That lesson has stuck with me for many years, and has proven to be as valuable as any other tool that I have acquired during my recovery.
I have also used the Bible to supplement my recovery. On the few times I've mentioned that in meetings, it did not go over very well.
It spent two years working my Eleventh Step. And I worked it hard; every day. When I started learning about Meditation, I knew that I had found the key that would at last allow me to be alone with my brain, and not have to constantly try to find something outside of myself to occupy my mind. I researched many forms of non-12 Step literature to learn more about meditation, but what helped me the most was studying Buddhism. From Buddhist works I found my own personal definition of suffering that I often use in my sig files; that being, "Suffering = clinging to that which changes". Mental suffering could arguably be called the ONLY thing that causes addicts and alcoholics to relapse, so learning this truth has assisted me greatly in staying clean.
I would not dare tell someone that 12 Step programs are the only way to get clean, because I don't believe that statement is true. I have seen some of my old using buddies stop using by going to church and getting saved. I have seen others simply stop on their own, without any visible means of support. For me to say that 12 Step programs are the only way to get clean would be violating my own program by not being honest.
Nor are the 12 Steps for everyone. Addiction is a VERY difficult disease or condition to recover from. Many addicts on this planet DON'T find recovery, and go the way of jails, institutions, and death. In my experience in the program, I really do believe that those of us who are recovering have entered through the narrow gate; and that the road to destruction is wide and many more follow it.
Others find themselves unable to accept the spiritual aspect of 12 Step programs. Some people fear or hate God, or want to believe that they are the highest form of life in the Universe. Others have very sincere religious beliefs, and don't like the fact that 12 Step programs encourage us to find our own Higher Power. Many believe something similar to, "It's Jesus or nothing", and do not feel comfortable associating with people who have different beliefs.
If everyone that came to AA or NA stayed, we would have to hold every meeting in football stadiums. That's just the way it is.
And believe it or not, there are also people out there who HATE AA and NA. The Big Book of AA warned us of them. Some people are simply constitutionally incapable of being honest, and will surely fail in a 12 Step program. Some of these people then form unearned resentments toward 12 Step programs for not "fixing" them, and blame all their present and future problems on the program. These types can usually be spotted because they constantly site "statistics" and "studies" that claim that 12 Step programs don't work. In their denial, they also will deny the fact that 12 Step programs have helped millions of people all over the world, and may even tell outright lies in an attempt to disprove that fact.
After celebrating my sixth year of recovery, I found myself in a very dangerous rut within my program, which I recently wrote about in a link entitled "Burnout in Long Term Recovery". I had saturated myself in recovery, at the expense of other parts of my life, and I was starting to notice resentments forming because of it. I decided to search for alternative methods of recovery on the Internet, to see if I could learn anything from them; as I had from "non-approved literature", Buddhism, and other sources.
For my own personal needs as a recovering addict, I was not at all impressed with what I found.
Most alternative programs have these things in common...
1 - They want nothing to do with God. They want to recover relying only
upon their own resources.
2 - They provide their followers with FAR LESS SUPPORT than 12 Step
programs.
3 - They will probably NOT be very effective in helping hard-core addicts
and alcoholics who need more support than they provide.
Here is a brief description of the alternative recovery programs that I have found.
The most notorious of all alternative programs is called Rational Recovery. RR is a for-profit corporation, founded in 1986 by Jack and Lois Trimpey. During those dozen or so years, RR has never gotten off the ground. If you can find any evidence of its existence near you, you are one of the few.
As Ole' Jack's website clearly demonstrates, RR's primary activity is bashing AA. RR's few followers LIVE to bash AA. Many of them HATE AA or NA for not "curing" them; sometimes going as far as claiming that the 12 Steps "hurt" them. Incredibly, they claim that RR has the "cure" for addiction, and that the followers of this cult-like organization can be "instantly and permanently cured" of their addictions just by reading the RR website.
Ole' Jack makes this same claim about his website himself on Usenet newsgroups, as follows...
"If you desire, you may completely recover from
your addiction to any
substance by visiting there alone. Really. It happens all the
time."
JACK TRIMPEY, promoting his
"Rational Recovery" website...
To any true addict or alcoholic, this claim can be easily seen through as false and stupid. However, RR's target audience includes people who hate AA and NA so obsessively that they will grasp at any straw to "prove AA wrong". Some of them will even grasp at this invisible straw.
RR, as with other alternative programs, provides its followers with very little support. RR pushes AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Technique) as the "cure" for addiction. In all fairness, there are some people that could benefit from AVRT. People, that is, who have never been addicts in the first place. The technique may benefit a "non-addicted" businessman who recognizes that he drinks one too many martini's at lunch, or someone similarly situated. It may also be used as a small part of an addicts program. If you take out the bull crap like, " Recovery is not a process; it is an event", "abstinence soon becomes effortless", and, "It's not hard" to quit using, most addicts use techniques similar to AVRT to deal with the "monkey on our backs". We just have never placed a name on it, nor tried to make money off of it.
AVRT is explained on the RR website as follows...
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
"The following 200-word description of AVRT may be enough for you to
break
through and end your own substance addiction, right now!"
"Observe your thoughts and feelings, positive and negative, about drinking
or using. Thoughts and feelings which support continued use are called the
Addictive Voice (AV); those which support abstinence are you. When you recognize
and understand your AV, it becomes not-you, but "it," an easily-defeated
enemy that has been causing you to drink. All it wants is pleasure. "I want
a drink," becomes, "It wants a drink." Think to yourself, "I will never drink
again," and listen for its reaction. Your negative thoughts and feelings
are your AV talking back to you. Now, think, "I will drink/use whenever I
please." Your pleasant feelings are also the AV, which is in control. Recovery
is not a process; it is an event. The magic word is "Never," as in, "I will
never drink/use again." Recognition defeats short-term desire, and abstinence
soon becomes effortless. Complete separation of "you" from "it" leads to
complete recovery and hope for a better life. The only time you can drink
is now, and the only time you can quit for good is right now. "I will never
drink/use again," becomes, "I never drink now." It's not hard; anyone can
do it."
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I do believe that this technique could help a normal person who is just recognizing that they are "starting to drink too much". Not listening to the monkey on our backs when it says "one drink won't hurt" is also a part of every recovering person's program. But to argue that to "Just Say No" to your "Addictive Voice" is an instant cure for addiction is an insult to those who are truly addicted. Nancy Regan tried that "simple cure" for America's drug problem in 1980. It had no effect whatsoever on addicts.
SMART stands for Self Management And Recovery Training. SMART used to be a part of Rational Recovery, until they struck out on their own in 1994. As you can see from the section above on Rational Recovery, having been spawned by RR gives SMART no credibility whatsoever.
One of the main things that I don't like about SMART is that it states that addiction is a habit, rather than a disease. I'm not sold on the disease concept of addiction, either. But to claim that addiction is merely a habit demonstrates a blatant lack of personal knowledge of addiction. This belief demonstrates that the people who started this organization must never have suffered the pain of living the lives of addicts or alcoholics, since their drinking was merely a "bad habit". Drinking when you know that one more drink will probably kill you is an addiction. Shooting up in the veins of your feet because the veins in your arms have collapsed is an addiction. Biting your nails is a habit, and is probably not life threatening. Depending, of course, upon where your nails have been.
Another thing that detracts from SMART is the fact that 100% of its representatives that I have met on the Internet are HARD CORE atheists. If you believe that there is no God, and think that you can recover from your addiction all by yourself, this may be the organization for you. This "Ungodly" attitude becomes evident from its website, which states that, "you can empower yourself to quit." That may be true if you simply have a "bad habit", but not when dealing with the very complicated matter of a life-threatening addiction.
SMART is a very tiny organization with very few resources. Its national office consists of two people, both of whom work part time.
As with the program from which it was spawned, SMART just doesn't seem enough to provide meaningful help for those who genuinely suffer with addiction.
A dividing line needs to be drawn at this point. In my studies of alternative
programs, they seem to fall into two major categories. The first category,
the "Resentment Driven" programs, seem to be
fueled by a hatred for AA and a tendency to blame all of the ills of the
world upon it. I honestly believe that Rational Recovery and SMART belong
to this category. The other category is the
"Non-Resentment Driven" programs, which include
all of the following. Their motive seems to be a genuine desire to help people
with drug and alcohol problems.
Moderation Management's "low budget" website makes no claims that it has the cure for addiction. On its links page, it gives a brief description of itself as follows...
"Self-management, moderation, and a balanced lifestyle
emphasized.
Note: Not intended for alcoholics or those severely dependent on
alcohol."
Those of us suffering with addiction have seen over and over what happens when alcoholics try to drink "sociably" again. MM advocates drinking in moderation, or limiting your quota of drinks to a specific number, in an attempt to avoid becoming an alcoholic.
Secular Organizations for Sobriety can be described as AA with the "God parts" taken out. They teach self-reliance, rather than reliance on a power greater than ourselves.
SOS's target audience is people who want nothing to do with God; or people who have very strictly defined religious beliefs and don't want them "diluted" by spirituality. If they "hit" their target, their meetings should be very interesting; a collection of "heathens" and religious people.
SOS does not agree with a lot of what AA stands for, but does not bash it either. It does not discourage its members from attending AA meetings.
Click here to check out the Canadian SOS site.
Women For Sobriety, a
self-help program for women only, bears little resemblance to AA. It does
not follow the 12 Steps. The WFS "New Life" Program is based upon a "Thirteen
Statement Program", also referred to as "The Thirteen Affirmations", which
can be found on its website. WFS states, " As a Program, it can stand alone
or be used along with other programs simultaneously".
The Crack Busters Workbook describes itself as, "The First & Only SELF HELP BOOK On Overcoming Addiction to Crack Cocaine. It has step by step instructions and workbook exercises that individuals or substance abuse counselors can use to help the individual addicted to Crack Cocaine".
Although working a 12 Step program is probably a crack addict's best
available source of help, they can use all the help they can get. This website
offers some good suggestions for staying away from, and off of, the devil's
main recipe.
These alternative recovery programs have a place in our society. In addressing
addiction, 12 Step programs require you to do a lot of things that are not
always "appealing". Like humbling yourself, and admitting that you're powerless
over your addiction. Like taking a moral inventory. Like making amends to
everyone that you've ever harmed in your life. I believe that AA and NA are
designed for the "worst case scenario" addicts and alcoholics, and some people
with addiction problems are able to quit using without resorting to the stringent
procedures followed by 12 Step programs. These people aren't likely to hang
around very long at a 12 Step meeting, and may find alternative programs
more to their liking.
Addiction is a very complicated condition to deal with, and no one recovery
plan will ever be suitable for all people. I support addicts and alcoholics
getting clean by whatever method best works for them.
To check out the websites of alternative recovery programs, click on their links below.
Rational Recovery
S.M.A.R.T. Recovery
Moderation Management
Secular Organizations for
Sobriety
Women For
Sobriety
The Crack Busters Workbook
For rebuttals to the opinions on this page, click here.
Click this link, to read about
"Burnout
in Long Term
Recovery".
To return to my home page,
click
here.
To return to the "Home Grown" links, click here.