> "Opinion A can make people feel powerless. I’m an addict and I’ll be that way forever- it creates feelings of shame and being a victim. It also creates a stigma in society that addicts are somewhat broken and can’t be fixed.
Opinion A seems a little bit outdated. Abstinence isn’t necessarily the goal."
This isn't a very informed argument at all. One, abstinence isn't the goal of AA or 12-step ; recovery is the goal, and it starts with abstinence. Two, addiction is best defined as having lost the power of choice. So not only does this opinion ignore that, it propagates the very stigma it intends to diminish.
The ironic thing, as a former smoker, is that we never lose the power of choice. We simply choose not to exercise it, and perhaps forget that we can. But it's always there. And the one weakness of many of these programs is that they never force the person to confront that uncomfortable reality within themselves. IMO.
Reminder: AA and 12 step are faith-based, and aren't very effective when actually measured (roughly equal to the effectiveness of not using AA/12-step).
"The 2020 Cochrane meta-study of Alcoholics Anonymous says that, based on randomized controlled trials, AA-oriented therapies have a 42% abstinent rate one year after treatment, compared to the 35% abstinence rate with other therapies."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_...
Sorry, there are untold (but not unknown) millions more people around the world who've recovered from addiction with 12-step than anything medical. AA was founded in part by a doctor (himself an alcoholic) who recognized that medical science had no solution to alcoholism. Fast-forward to now and the 'medical solution' to addiction is usually another addictive substance. Can those help? Sure, and they do. But I don't think there's been any significant studies confirming medical science has a better solution than 12-step. If you have evidence that relapse rates are lower outside of 12-step than within, please share because I've never heard of it.
Here's an article from The Atlantic that you might want to read.
> Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found dozens of other treatments more effective.
> But I don't think there's been any significant studies confirming medical science has a better solution than 12-step.
This is false. 12-step is a faith-based system, and is approximately equal to other unscientific systems in terms of success rate.
The AA book itself perpetuates the lie of its effectiveness:
> Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.
I went to AA when I was concerned about my drinking. A fair few people there seemed to have swapped alcohol dependence for AA meeting dependence.
Definitely better to be reliant on a supportive group of peers than something that'll eventually kill you, but felt like swapping smoking for vaping - definitely better for you, but not solving the underlying cause.
And their view that you're always going to be an alcoholic, for the rest of your life feels like a belief rather than scientific fact, and sometimes, a self-fulfilling prophecy when members relapse.
But ultimately, it works for some people, so more power to them.
Your dismissal of 12-steps system purely due to it being faith-based, is unscientific. Psilocybin (a religious experience inducing substance) appears to be a very promising treatment.
"This drug induces hallucinations. Some people interpret those hallucinations to be religious in nature. Therefore, this drug is faith-based."
That's not a very strong chain of logic. The 12-step system is, at least based on my very limited understanding, founded with assumptions that the people using it will be either Christian or theistic and raised in a culturally Christian society, and thus have a similar notion of "faith in a higher power". That's what "faith-based" means.
Psilocybin has a distinct spiritual phenomenology that not all hallucinogens have.
While there is a difference between a faith and a spiritual experience, they both work within a religious framing of life, which might be helping the individual with addictive behavior here.
Opinion A seems a little bit outdated. Abstinence isn’t necessarily the goal."
This isn't a very informed argument at all. One, abstinence isn't the goal of AA or 12-step ; recovery is the goal, and it starts with abstinence. Two, addiction is best defined as having lost the power of choice. So not only does this opinion ignore that, it propagates the very stigma it intends to diminish.