I never said AA doesnt stop people from drinking or doing drugs.
i said that they never get truly sober, because AA/NA never gets them truly sober, they stop doing drugs by tricking themselves and devolving psychologically. you are ignoring the meat of my post and just tearing at the skin, and yet again, you use argumentum ad populum (free market has spoken... :roflmao: ). according to you, the means justify the ends; you are the extremist here. To me, no means justify the ends, and i feel to get to that end, the only way is through personal willpower, not through sacrifice of independent thinking to a higher power.
and sorry to burst your bubble, but AA/NA actually doesnt work for more people than it does, and it's recidivism/relapse rates, and the number of individuals who add marks to their rap sheets while in the program, are higher than in any other treatment methodology. Furthermore....how many people are actually helped by AA, and how many people are tricked into thinking they were helped by AA? afteall...as another poster pointed out, they go to meetings and sit there NOT DRINKING. no higher power gets you to stop drinking. you stop yourself from drinking, but sometimes it takes tricking someone into thinking a higher power helped them stop, when it was really themselves.
just by going by the phrase "...you refused to do the work" i can tell you're just a programmie. You're right, i didnt do the work. Instead, i decided to become TRULY honest with myself and quit on my own. did you hear that? i recovered from a SERIOUS physical and mental addiction to both heavy opiates and stimulants, without the need for a false higher power or group meetings. Everyone i know that did likewise....is clean as a whistle and have not looked back. relapse is not in their vocabulary. my friends that joined NA....the're all still stuck thinking they are addicts and relapsing regularly. so there you go...the free market has spoken. :sue: .
also, AA sure as hell (as admitted by anyone who read the book) doesnt help anyone forced into the program. then why, tell me, do programs force people into AA? why does the legal system consider AA a viable method of treatment in leu of jail for some offenses? How many people are at AA that actually want to be there, and how many people are there because they are forced to go by their parents/probation officer/judge/residential treatment center?
You need to learn how to look between the lines, and not accept everything you are told at face value.
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.htmlhttp://www.addictioninfo.org/articles/1 ... Page1.htmlhttp://www.morerevealed.com/library/coc/chapter7.htmfurthermore, not one single respectable medical society supports, endorses, reccomends, or even recognizes alchoholics/narcotics anonymous. It is not, by the medical field, considered viable treatment. go wrap your mind around that, Mr truth is found in argumentum ad populum (free market).
also, you might want to consider the fact that you are the extremist here, and i'm the realist. You have undying loyalty for a cult program and your only defense towards it is that i am lazy and crazy and argumentum ad populum will prove it works (it actually proves it doesnt....read the links), I have a very logical set of reasons why AA does not work, or if it does, works through dishonest means. If you actually talk to some non-AA-brainwashees for once in your life (i know, it's hard, "they dont understand you"), you will find that you are actually the minority and extremist. No one with a head on their shoulders considers AA to be an honest and effective way to get sober.
you should also consider facts that public AA meeting attendance AND retention is lower in places like NYC and LA than it is in places like Knoxville TN or Tallahassee FL. educated people know better than to allow someone to convince them to lie to themselves.