Comment by IlikeKitties
1 day ago
Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales. It's obvious that the modern society requires addiction counseling and rehabilitation facilities, what we don't need is even more outlets for cults of all color to pray on people in dire situations.
Just the very 12 Steps themselves are enough to show you that[0]:
> We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
> Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
> Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him
> Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
> Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
> Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
> Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
> Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
> Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
> Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
> Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
> Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
> Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales.
One of my old friends was a staunch atheist since middle school. He joined AA after some struggles.
He said it was no problem at all. They told him his “higher power” could be anything he chose, such as nature or the universe. The prayer part was just meditation. Nobody tried to push religion on anyone.
I don’t know if his experience was typical or not, but he didn’t think it was a problem at all.
I haven’t kept up with him for a while but last we talked he was still doing well, many years later.
> I don’t know if his experience was typical or not, but he didn’t think it was a problem at all.
His experience is typical. I know have someone very close to me in AA+12-step. There is no pressure to have your higher power named "God". It could be anything; the point is to have a power higher than the one over you (the addiction).
> There is no pressure to have your higher power named "God". It could be anything; the point is to have a power higher than the one over you (the addiction).
The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us. Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe that provides no evidence that there is any form of "higher power" than uncaring entropy could very well be the definition of modern atheism.
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It seems strange that one of the steps is admitting you have no control over your addiction. I feel like the first step should be deciding that you do. But that kind of self assuredness doesn't really align well with whole surrendering to Jeebus thing.
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Yep that was a deal-breaker for me going to AA. I eventually just quit drinking on my own after a few years, but AA being the only option for addiction support groups in many places is a bummer.
Yup. The steps are definitely rooted in Christianity, but you can exercise them however you want. As you might imagine, most people suffering with addiction are not that religious (if at all) and the same thing goes in those groups.
the vast majority of the law systems surrounding the global west are rooted in Christianity. you need to pause for a moment and stop equating religion with evil.
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What’s interesting to me about all this is it sounds like people are defending appropriating religious practices but de-mystifying them. Even though belief in god is explicitly mentioned in the 12 steps, people claim to have had success by just ignoring the god parts -
But at that point, why is The Twelve Steps as an institution still pedaling belief in the supernatural, when it’s ostensibly just as effective with the Christian mythology removed?
Why not make the atheist version the baseline, and allow members to mix in religion if they find it to be useful - as opposed to making religious belief the default, and allowing users to substitute other things for religion if they find that to be useful?
I think the thing that most atheists are objecting to, with ‘religion as default’ situations like this, is the way religious belief is treated as the norm. I remember growing up and going to church, hearing about how “everyone had a god-shaped hole in their heart” - and each person would inevitably find a way to fill that hole, but nothing would ever quite fit, because that hole was god-shaped and could only properly be filled by god.
So when you run up against this kind of language in a system that’s supposed to be helping people free themselves from addiction, it’s off-putting to run into language that coerces them into making themselves beholden to magical thinking and supernatural beliefs, in gods and higher powers. “It can be whatever you want” feels like a cop out - it’s merely a softened stance on what I described above - “everyone has a god-shaped hole in their heart, and it’s okay if you fill that hole with love for your daughter or pride in your work.”
It’s still a turn-off for people like me, for better or for worse - maybe it’s a filter, maybe I’m not the kind of person who would need or would do well in that kind of program.
Yes exactly that "religion by default" is what bothers me too. Good way of putting it. It's like seeing atheists as a bit disabled, and the praying as something necessary in life that atheists can do with a workaround.
All that groveling, the idea of putting your life in the hands of this entity, humbly improving my connection with them etc. There's no way I will do that.
I'm more than atheist, I'm anti-religious. I don't care what other people do, if it makes them happy that's cool for them, but I don't want any of that stuff in my life.
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No but it's kinda passive aggressive isn't it? It's built on the belief that having religion is the standard.
Also, many of these staps make no sense.
I don't believe in higher powers and I don't want to humbly beg them to remove my character flaws. If I want those removed I have to do it myself.
Some of the steps make some sense but there's way too much senseless groveling in there.
The AA program is at least as informed by anarchy as it is by Christianity. Interesting history there.
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This is ENORMOUSLY variable based on the specific group you wind up with.
It can be extremely christian, it can be not substantially christian.
It is very much based on religious hokum. While technically you can choose anything as your “higher power” your options are either embrace Jesus (which people in the program tend to be very happy about) or essentially cosplay embracing Jesus, just with a one-word substitution.
That’s why it has been recognized as religious or “based on religious principles“ in court several times. For example, in the court case Inouye vs Kemna it was ruled that NA/AA “has such substantial religious components that governmentally compelled participation in it violated the Establishment Clause“
>It's obvious that the modern society requires addiction counseling and rehabilitation facilities is it? or is that your opinion? Why don't we look at actual evidence:
"There is high quality evidence that manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, such as CBT, for increasing abstinence. Non-manualized AA/TSF may perform as well as these other established treatments. AA/TSF interventions, both manualized and non-manualized, may be at least as effective as other treatments for other alcohol-related outcomes. AA/TSF probably produces substantial healthcare cost savings among people with alcohol use disorder."[0]
[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32159228/
That's a great resource because it's a meta study collecting data from other studies, thank you i was searching for something like that! Unfortunately your quote is misleading as it leaves out some serious issues with the evidence and studies used. I recommend reading the "Main results" parts in your link in full.
But, it works, right? 12-step type programs are also widely-available and low-cost.
Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. Otherwise, people wouldn't practice them. With moderate practice, you can easily achieve a state of 100% internal peace.
> Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil.
True, being religious would cause me a lot of anguish and turmoil. Just the idea that I'm not in control of my life. I don't consider that a positive of any kind. That scene from the Matrix really speaks to me and always has :)
I think for people that like it it could have positive effects. Just like team sports would have negative effects for me but positive ones for others (I'm totally not a "team player")
> Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. Otherwise, people wouldn't practice them.
I don’t think that follows. Plenty of people practice religion because they’re terrified of the consequences of not doing it, because they’re have been indoctrinated from a young age to believe that to turn away from God is to be tortured in hell for all eternity. (Or in the case of some religions, you can be straight-up executed for leaving.)
12-step programs have a 5-10% success rate.
You can also just meditate or engage in other practices that have nothing to do with religion. Religion is unnecessary.
I'm as rational atheist as they come, and was nevertheless helped, for a while, by a 12-step program. You don't need to believe anything other than that not everything in life is under your control.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44531234.
I would recommend Refuge Recovery over AA any day. It's still buddhist inspired but it doesn't ask you to believe in a deity and basically just sticks to principles of buddhism like "be nice, be compassionate, to both yourself and others"
> to principles of buddhism like "be nice, be compassionate, to both yourself and others"
Principles shared with most religions and most non-religious people are hardly a mrk of Buddhism.
Buddhism is not a theistic religion, but it still requires a lot of religious beliefs (reincarnation, enlightenment, nirvana) and a lot of concepts such as detachment.
There is a BIG difference between "not monotheistic" and "not religious".
It depends a lot on the variant of Buddhism.
There are plenty of us who do not believe in those things. In particular, we see rebirth as a way of framing what Rawls called the Veil of Ignorance
Self compassion is a major part of any kind of recovery really, life is really dark when you hate yourself for being who you are.
>pray on people
bravo
I'm gonna leave that in.
What do alcoholics do for recovery outside the US?
I'm in the former USSR; this thing is very popular among alcoholics I know personally or have heard of from friends and relatives:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кодирование_от_алкоголизма
The article in Russian is much more thorough than the English one, run it through Google Translate or something.
There are various ways it's practiced in my area, all of them can be summarized as follows: a medical professional performs some procedure (sometimes just hypnosis, but it can get more physical), which either "cures" your alcoholism, or convinces you that you're going to die horribly if you have even a drop of alcohol. The process depends on who is doing it.
It's basically just placebo and is pretty useless in practice (most alcoholics I know haven't stopped drinking for more than a couple of months), which doesn't prevent it from being widely used.
That seems insanely dangerous. As far as I know, once you are physically addicted to alcohol, you can't even go cold turkey without risk of literally dying.
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This is why ex-USSR countries have so many programmers - we did a lot of coding :)
As Alcoholics Anonymous operates in 180 countries quite often people outside the US do go there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous#Internati...
In civilized countries? Get support from Doctors, licensed psychologist and addiction counselors. In less civilized countries? Die.
> In civilized countries? Get support from Doctors, licensed psychologist and addiction counselors
All of these are available and common in the US.
12-step programs and AA are available in many countries outside of the US.
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You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about Christianity, and that's your right. But in the course of that you may overlook that faith-based treatment of problems is a powerful tool that serves some people well. Consider the culture of people taking a break from alcohol over Lent for several weeks each year.
Get proper treatment by professionals.
Die by drinking and driving, mainly.
I mean listen. If humans have to abstract a belief into something to get them through tough times then so be it.
It does not help anyone to pretend that the universe is some sort of pure logic and reasoning machine and that a human can operate that way, because we are governed by and a slave to our emotions.
Religion and God exist for a reason, and that reason is that the world is inconceivably complicated and if you dont create a mental and emotional reasoning system that helps see beyond the complexity then you are going to have a really tough time.
Now, churches and cults and all that preying on vulnerable people is a whole other subject. But God and religion is a powerful tool humans have turned to for millennia.
“Religious nonsense” is such an engineer minded thing to say.
I’m with you for sure, but the truth is systems like religion, art, design, etc all serve a functional purpose to trick the mind, calm the mind, etc.
I would invite you to look into how modern cults started. Jonestown, Scientology, Children of God, Haven's Gate, Branch Davidians, Mormonism, etc.
It's really, really fascinating and there's tons of resources out there how they get started, how they function and why. Once you understand the functional purpose of them, you'll never look at other religions the same.
Plenty of non-engineering types are also atheists with a dismissive attitude. Putting art and religion in the same bucket like they belong to the same thought process is a ... very engineer minded thing to say.
>Let's not forget that the "12-step-infrastructure" is a VERY American thing based around mostly christian religious nonsense and is by design completely inaccessible for people without a belief in fairy tales.
This is both wrong and deeply harmful. As others in this thread have pointed out, you can choose any higher power you want, whether it's a tree or the inevitable increase in universal entropy. Don't throw away the whole thing because you might have to talk to a Christian.
Free, accessible addiction help is hard to come by so it's terrible to discourage people based on misinformation and culture war bullshit.
You are mistaken if you think AA has anything to do with religion. Methinks you're just parroting what you've read without actually verifying anything. Amplifying this nonsense just causes people in need to reconsider getting help.
> You are mistaken if you think AA has anything to do with religion
Reread the 12 Steps.
Go to a meeting. There is no pushing god unless the group is explicitly religious.
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folks doing their best with what they've got, a huge portion of the population this language speaks to, your contempt is not helpful to them