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Define Your Recovery, Design Your Life
Published in Joi Andreoli, The Recovery Cycle, 2023
If anyone has a judgment about being passionately consumed with recovery, that’s your right, but think about it a minute. If Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, hadn’t been fanatical about his own recovery, the program of AA wouldn’t be around today. And, because of the successful, widely used Twelve Step program of AA, there are now programs for almost any addiction. Many people are living successful, dynamic lives without their drug because of this one man’s fervent focus. Keep in mind, however, that sometimes an obsessive focus on the program, for some, can become a secondary addiction.
The Adolescent Cocaine Addict
Published in Jennifer Rice-Licare, Katharine Delaney-McLoughlin, Cocaine Solutions, 2014
Jennifer Rice-Licare, Katharine Delaney-McLoughlin
Twelve-Step programs provide an excellent means for adolescents to stay away from cocaine and other drugs. Participation in a Twelve-Step program such as Cocaine Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous can make all the difference to recovery from addiction. The crucial component of these programs is a social network of drug-free teens. This is crucial for a teen’s development as a source of peer approval and acceptance.
Sexual Abuse
Published in David F. O'Connell, Dual Disorders, 2014
A careful probing of the sexual offender's childhood is important to uncover any abuse the patient may have experienced. Typically, these patients have been abused themselves, and have repressed and defended against powerful feelings associated with the abuse. The therapist can usually be certain that the offender is troubled by anger and rage and has psychologically mishandled and misdirected these emotions. Often, the anger is intimately tied in with the offending behavior, although the patient may not acknowledge this connection. The therapist should point to the dehumanizing, manipulative aspect of the patient's sexually offending behavior as evidence of extreme anger. If the patient is stable enough, role-playing and psychodrama techniques can be used to draw out anger, humiliation, and other feelings. These techniques can also allow the offender to empathize with and understand the victim. A twelve-step program such as Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous should be explored with the patient. If it can be arranged, the patient should attend one or more of these meetings while in treatment and report on his experiences in group or individual therapy. It should be explained to the sexual offender that the problem is chronic and lifelong, and a commitment to an ongoing daily recovery program is absolutely essential for his recovery from both the sexual disorder and the addictive disease.
“We all need Purpose and Reason to be here.”: A Qualitative Investigation of howmembers of Alcoholics Anonymous with Long-term Recovery Experience Aging
Published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 2022
Kevin McInerney, Gulcan Garip, Tony Benson
AA emphasizes that the Twelve-step program of recovery is spiritual and not religious (Alcoholics Anonymous Great Britain, 2021b). At the beginning of his recovery for instance, Jack, who does not believe in either, religion or dogma, had a “profound and sudden experience that gave me an insight and awareness of my true self.” Most AA members, however, do not have such epiphanous experiences, and are more likely to undergo a gradual “spiritual awakening,” which develops “slowly over a period of time” (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001, p. 567). Moreover, because AA encourages personal agency, each member has a very personal understanding of spirituality: Great Spirit of the Universe. Everything, everything I do that I like doing and I enjoy doing enhances my well-being. Nourishes me really, nourishes my spirit, my psyche, my emotions … (Jack)So, there’s always something on the horizon, or coming up for me, you know, and it all enhances my well-being, physically, mentally and spiritually, yeh. (Jack)
A Phenomenological Study: Exploring the Meaning of Spirituality in Long-term Recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous
Published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 2021
Kevin McInerney, Ainslea Cross
Adopting a spiritual approach meant letting go of old ideas, and a willingness to begin trusting in something other than self. So, trust, an “alien” (Elizabeth) notion when they were drinking, led to a change in attitudes that became the key to the participants’ spiritual development. A.A., however, does not prescribe a specific spiritual pathway, that decision is one of personal agency. Indeed, in A.A. there are many paths to spirituality (AAWS, 2014), with A.A. emphasizing that their twelve-step program is a suggested program rather than a stringently mandated one (AAWS, 2001). It is coincidental that the participants have all chosen secular pathways to spirituality, despite three of them being raised as Catholic Christians. That said, they are in agreement that institutional religion has no meaning for them. That is not to say they believe religious pathways cannot lead to spirituality. On the contrary, they all agree that constructing spirituality and religion as being in opposition, is a false dichotomy. Kurtz and White (2015), have addressed the religion, spirituality argument by positing the notion of a recovery spirituality, so named because it encompasses a number of spiritual constructs that traverse religious, spiritual, and secular belief systems (i.e., gratitude, forgiveness, and humility).
Combining medically assisted treatment and Twelve-Step programming: a perspective and review
Published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2018
AA’s effectiveness in combination with professional treatment has been observed among diverse groups of patients and at different levels of participation (12), as well as for persons dependent on drugs other than alcohol (13). Moos and Moos (14) conducted what is apparently the longest follow-up (16 years) on persons treated for alcoholism. They found that following the six months of the initial treatment for alcoholism, AA participation was associated with a better outcome than additional professional care. Based on these findings, they concluded that although an initial episode of professional treatment for alcoholism may be beneficial, subsequent participation in a Twelve-Step program appears to be a more important determinant of long-term outcome (15). The medical community, however, is hardly influential as a source of referral to AA. Only 5% of AA members indicate that there were introduced to AA by a “medical professional,” (10) and only 33% of NA members were referred to NA by any professional at all (16).