We’re Treating Addiction All Wrong
I was visiting the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous three, four, five times a week for eight years. I did not relapse. I was sober. If you’re reading this, and you’re nodding and thinking, “Well, she did it then, she conquered the dreaded drink”: how WRONG you are.
And here’s why…
Twelve step programs focus on abstinence. They do not focus on what’s causing the problem behaviour. They focus on powerlessness. They do not help us realise that we are capable of making choices, that we have — for years — been making choices, just the apparently wrong ones.
My eight years in AA kept me sober, they did not keep me sane. I was still as mad as the metaphorical box of frogs. The alcohol had stopped croaking, the underlying emotions, trauma and sadness were still ribbit-ing away like crazy.
And who wants that kind of cacophony in their brain? Not me.
I know that twelve step programs work for some people. I was not one of them, and given the high relapse rate in general — 90% of those treated for alcoholic use disorder relapse within four years — surely it’s time to look at other options?
What happens when you do relapse? You go back into the rooms of AA. You sit there, staring nervously at your lap, your palms getting sweatier, until your turn to share. Then you open your mouth, the torrent of shame and embarrassment tumbling from your lips. You have failed. You have broken the main rule of the program: abstinence.
Even if you’ve never been affected by addiction, you’ve probably felt shame at some point in your life. It hurts, doesn’t it? And think about that shame for a moment, let it suffuse your body — does it make you feel empowered? Does it make you feel ready to grow and progress?
Or does it make you feel embarrassed, and like you just want to curl up and die? Hardly a great impetus for moving forward with your life, and making better choices, huh?
Of course, if you do relapse on a twelve step program, you’re reminded of The Label. You are an Addict. You always will be an Addict. You cannot afford to forget that for one moment, because therein lies the path to “jails, institutions and death” (an AA favourite slogan). Cheery stuff, right?
The crying shame is that there are ALTERNATIVES to the twelve step programs that are seen as the ‘gold standard’ to recovery. They don’t have the same rhetoric around them, of course, and they don’t fit in so well on those Hollywood shows that love to show meetings and have their characters uttering, “I’m Jessica and I’m an alcoholic”.
Showing the amazing program that I’ve been taking for around eight months now is not as exciting. There are no fireworks and fandango around steps and rules and acceptance of powerlessness. What there is, is a deep focus on what’s BEHIND the problematic behaviours.
I don’t drink or use any others of my unwanted behaviours in a vacuum. I’m not stupid: I have reasons for everything that I do. Think about that for a second: what if I said to you that you are reading this, purely because you read. Not because you want to learn, or because you enjoy reading, or because it gives you the opportunity to broaden your mind. Just for the sake of moving your eyes across the page. Crazy, right?
We do not operate in a vacuum. Every behaviour we undertake has a reason, simple or more complex. The IGNTD Heroes recovery program (and others, like SMART Recovery) sees that we make choices, that we have traumas and previous experiences which shape those choices, and helps us recognise the feelings that lead us to drinking, watching too much porn, binging, starving, cheating, and so on.
I know the reasons why I use the ‘bad’ behaviours now. I see how they helped me in the past: to be more sociable, to feel less anxious, to reduce my loneliness. I am grateful, in some ways, that they were there for me at times, but I’m more thankful that I now recognise the underlying feelings and emotions.
Don’t think it ends there, though. My current learning curve (a steep one, truth be told) is twofold: I am looking for the underlying reasons for feeling those emotions in the first place, whilst also discovering healthier ways of managing them. It’s harder work than simply stopping drinking, but — wow! — I have learnt more in eight months than I did in my eight years in AA.
One aspect that comes up a lot, when I discuss the IGNTD program is cost. I calculated something really interesting. I would ‘donate’ £5 every time I attended an AA meeting in London; at a minimum of three meetings a week for (at least) fifty weeks a year for eight years… a cool £6,000. And I still needed therapy on top of that! The IGNTD Heroes program cost me less than a sixth of that.
And so, do I really believe there is no place for AA? I believe there are significantly better methods for many people — I’m lucky to have found one of them. But, if AA has worked for you or someone you know, that’s awesome — the way I see it is that I want as many people as possible to be recovered or in recovery.
If you’re struggling, reach out — there are more options than ever before available to you, and also tonnes of free advice online (check out Dr Adi Jaffe from IGNTD’s Instagram, for example, for tonnes of value, or the IGNTD Friday Recovery Secrets podcast). You don’t need to struggle through life, you can get well and find help — do yourself a favour and find what works for you.
