Category Archives: 12 Step Rehab Does Not Work

Author Gabrielle Glaser OP-ED Piece ‘Cold Turkey Isn’t the Only Route’

Posted on by
3

Here is a great Op-Ed piece by Gabrielle Glaser! We are off to a great 2014 already!

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Cold Turkey Isn’t the Only Route

By GABRIELLE GLASER
Published: January 1, 2014 

THIS New Year’s, a good number of those who struggle to control their drinking will resolve to abstain from alcohol. No halfway measures. Quitting is the only way.

The cold-turkey approach is deeply rooted in the United States, embraced by doctors, the multibillion-dollar treatment industry and popular culture. For nearly 80 years, our approach to drinking problems has been inspired by the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Developed in the 1930s by men who were “chronic inebriates,” the A.A. program offers a single path to recovery: abstinence, surrendering one’s ego and accepting one’s “powerlessness” over alcohol.

But it’s not the only way to change your drinking habits.

Bankole Johnson, an alcohol researcher and consultant to pharmaceutical companies who is also the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, puts it this way: “We are wedded to the abstinence model as the goal, despite evidence that there can be many successful outcomes.” Continue reading →

Halloween Night Probation Officers Instruct Sex Offenders To Attend AA and NA Meetings

Posted on by
7

Haunted House - halloween Wallpaper

Please don’t drag your kids to AA or NA Halloween night! Actually anytime is really  very scary………….

 Probation Officers have  instructed sex offenders to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or Narcotics Anonymous meeting during the peak trick or treating time period! Children and minors attend AA and NA Meetings! What are they thinking?!

Sex offenders on probation across the state received unannounced visits Halloween night from their Probation Officers to ensure that they did not open their doors to trick or treaters.

Probation Officers had taken a number of precautionary measures to prevent sex offenders on probation from coming into contact with children, 16 and under, this Halloween.

In addition to the unannounced visits Sunday evening, Probation Officers began warning sex offenders over the past two weeks to not answer their doors, turn on porch lights, or set-up Halloween decorations outside of their homes.

 Probation Officers have also instructed the offenders to attend an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting during the peak trick or treating time period.

http://www.mass.gov/courts/probation/pr110210.html

   Sex offender sign

 

Man That Set Mother’s House on Fire and Assaulted Daughter is Mandated to AA Meetings

Posted on by
Reply

rosewell rear.jpg

Tory Bryant is considered mentally ill and plead guilty for assault and battery for hitting his daughter. In a plea deal they dropped 3 attempted murder charges when he set the house on fire with his mother, daughter and other child were inside. The judge mandated Tory Bryant to AA or NA meetings, anger management and a psychological evaluation!

Tory Bryant admits setting fire to his mother’s Springfield house

By Buffy Spencer, The Republican 
on September 24, 2013

Tory Bryant’s mother Rosalyn Bryant asked Judge Tina S. Page in Hampden Superior Court on Tuesday to find a way to get him help he needs.

Rosalyn Bryant said her son would never have set her house on fire – with her, his 5-year-old daughter, and another 7-year-old inside – if he hadn’t been drunk and high on drugs.

Page said since she was appointed to the bench 15 years ago, she has repeatedly talked about the need for a secure facility to which she could sentence people with mental-health issues such as the 24-year-old Bryant.

But since there is no such facility, Page imposed a 2 1/2- to four-year sentence to state prison. Tory Bryan pleaded guilty to charges, admitting he set the fire at the family home.

Assistant District Attorney Clarissa A. Wright showed Page photos of the Rosewell Street house, which had about $40,000 in damage as a result of the fire. Bryant’s mother, daughter and the other girl got out safely after the alarm sounded, and they saw smoke, according to the prosecutor. Continue reading →

Dangerous and Religious AA Meetings Should Not Be The Only Option for Drug Addiction or Alcoholics

Posted on by
1

The news is finally getting out that this country needs better options than Alcoholics Anonymous or other 12 step programs for drug and alcohol addiction. AA is losing control over preventing anything negative being printed about them in the media. Thanks Chelsea Carmona for writing this excellent piece! AA has been an abysmal failure and the cause of many rapes, deaths and suicides.

TIME

Public Health

Alcoholics Need More Options than AA

It’s no surprise that faith-based programs are particularly ill-suited to atheists and agnostics

By  @CarmonaChelsea    Sept. 19, 2013

Should atheists be forced to participate in faith-based recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)? The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently said no, unanimously siding with drug offender Barry A. Hazle Jr. after state officials mandated his participation in AA. Court documents state that Hazle’s requests for a secular alternative were repeatedly denied by both his parole officer and representatives from the state-contracted mental health service provider, West Care. For violating his parole, Hazle was arrested and incarcerated for over 100 additional days. NA Daytona Meetings in Daytona.

The appeals court ordered a Sacramento district judge to consider preventing state officials from requiring 12-step treatment as a part of the parole program. But it’s going to be difficult, because this one-size-fits-all prescription – 12-step meetings and 12-step-based group therapy for everyone – reigns supreme in treatment today. Nearly eight out of ten private programs use 12-step recovery, with two-thirds compelling patients to attend meetings, according to researchers working on the University of Georgia’s National Treatment Center Study and cited in Inside Rehab by Anne Fletcher. Public programs, frequently starved for funding, aren’t much better. In fact, West Care, California’s sole drug treatment provider, only contracts with religious-based treatment programs.

(MORE: Addiction Treatment in America: Not Based in Science, Not Truly Medical)

But even if they’re rarely acknowledged in today’s treatment community, there are many alternatives to 12-step fellowships such as SMART Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, and Specifically For Women. This is important because a national survey published in 2007 concluded that an addicted person was just as likely to stay sober whether they were involved in AA or another support group. In fact, it would behoove treatment providers to match people with a support system that’s suitable to their preferences, because group participation is associated with increased abstinence. Continue reading →

Killer Goes to AA Meeting After Slitting the Throat and Strangling Mental Health Counselor

Posted on by
16
Lia Yera Tricomo who was known to have mental problems and had been treated at the Pro 12 Step Behavioral Health Resources in Olympia Washingon. This is where she met victim John Alkins as a patient. It appears she was an AA member, considering after the killing she went to an AA meeting to confess. 

May 3rd 2013

Accused killer had moved in with victim on the day of slaying at Sunset Beach Drive

Former Behavioral Health Resources counselor John Alkins, 58, was fired in December after he “violated BHR policies concerning professional boundaries.” Five months later, a 27-year-old Olympia woman who says she was a former patient of Alkins’ at BHR is accused of slitting Alkins’ throat with a folding razor knife at his Sunset Beach Drive home. She told police she later strangled him with an extension Continue reading →

We Can Do So Much Better Than 12 Steps

Posted on by
Reply

Many agree with this letter to the editor!

We can do better than 12 steps

Letter to the editor
Posted:   04/17/2013
Our number one problem (health and otherwise) in Humboldt County is drugs? We treat our alcohol and drug problems with an 85-year-old prescription. I am talking to you, doctors. If your doctor treated your cancer the same way doctors did 85 years ago, you might get a new doctor. The emotional claims that 12-step programs work are over-blown and largely unrealized. It matters if Alcoholics Anonymous works or not. After all, we send our family members to 12-step programs in order for them to get help. We send criminals to 12-step programs for them to get God, stop crime, and clean up our cities. But 12-step programs do not work for most people, so, let’s quit wasting everyone’s money and time on the 12-step movement.

And the anti-progress aspect of the 12-step systems? Their language is archaic. Their practices are almost medieval. They are very much a sexist organization in their language, at least.

”Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” Our kids deserve better!

Let’s find a better way. NADaytona

Rick Boman

McKinleyville

http://www.times-standard.com/letters/ci_23042701/we-can-do-better-than-12-steps

HOW 12 STEP ADDICTION TREATMENT DOES NOT WORK ACCORDING TO ‘INSIDE REHAB’

Posted on by
2

This is wonderful to see a book written about the obvious failings of 12 step addiction treatment inside America’s rehab industry. Anne M. Fletcher also sites many solid evidenced based options and alternatives to the current archaic model of the majority of rehabs.

“Inside Rehab”: How it could work better, and why it doesn’t

A startling new investigation of addiction programs says 28 days and 12 steps add up to inadequate treatment

Sunday February 3, 2013

BY 

Maybe Amy Winehouse had a point: However flippant that sounds, many a reader will be thinking it (or something like it) after finishing Anne M. Fletcher’s “Inside Rehab.” Fletcher visited 15 addiction-treatment programs, from the high-end to the bare-bones, and interviewed staffers, researchers, experts and over a hundred clients and their families. She collected data from an impressively wide range of studies and surveys. Nearly 3 million Americans seek help for substance-use disorders in specialty facilities annually (not including the nearly 2.5 million who opt for self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous) and we spend $35 billion on treating these disorders, so it’s surprising how little most of us know about what goes on in rehab.

Continue reading →