{"id":24685,"date":"2014-03-16T09:27:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T14:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24685"},"modified":"2014-03-16T09:27:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T14:27:22","slug":"alcoholics-anonymous-and-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/16\/alcoholics-anonymous-and-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcoholics Anonymous and addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Maclean’s<\/em>, Kate Lunau<\/a> talks to Dr. Lance Dodes about Alcoholics Anonymous:<\/p>\n

Dr. Lance Dodes has spent more than 35 years treating people who are battling addiction, including alcoholism. In his new book (co-written with Zachary Dodes), The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry<\/em>, Dodes takes a hard look at Alcoholics Anonymous, a worldwide organization that describes itself as a \u201cnon-professional fellowship of alcoholics helping other alcoholics get and stay sober.\u201d Today, there are more than 5,000 AA groups in Canada alone, which are free and open to anyone. Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, argues that some groups \u2014 and many for-profit private rehab centres based on the 12-step model \u2014 are often ineffective, and can cause further damage to addicts.<\/p>\n

Q: How did you come to work on addiction?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I first became involved with alcoholism and addiction in the \u201970s, when the place I was working, which is now part of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, needed to develop an alcoholism treatment unit. I was director of psychiatry, so I said, \u201cI\u2019ll develop it.\u201d Afterward, I became involved in various addiction treatment programs, including running the state\u2019s largest compulsive-gambling program. Over the years, I became very familiar with AA. It became clear that, while AA works for some people, the statistics just didn\u2019t back it up. The real problem is that [doctors] refer 100 per cent of their patients with alcoholism to AA, and that\u2019s the wrong thing to do 90 per cent of the time.<\/p>\n

Q: AA has more than two million members around the world. You say its success rate is between five and 10 per cent. How, then, do you account for its enduring popularity?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: AA is a proselytizing organization. The 12th step is to go out and spread the word, and they do. Because there are so many people in prominent positions who are members of AA, it gets tremendously good press. If AA were simply harmless, then I would agree that a seven per cent success rate is better than zero. But that\u2019s not the case. It can be very destructive. According to AA, AA never fails \u2014 you fail. AA says that if you\u2019re not doing well in the program, then it\u2019s you. So you should go back and do the same thing you did before: Do more of the 12 steps, and go to more meetings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Maclean’s, Kate Lunau talks to Dr. Lance Dodes about Alcoholics Anonymous: Dr. Lance Dodes has spent more than 35 years treating people who are battling addiction, including alcoholism. In his new book (co-written with Zachary Dodes), The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Dodes takes a hard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[59,104,513],"class_list":["post-24685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","tag-addiction","tag-booze","tag-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6q9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24686,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions\/24686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}