I have never liked them, too preachy, too focused on how we're all just fucked up and can never get better. I hate something that says you are "in recovery" forever...no, I believe that you CAN grow beyond your addictions and broken pieces...and it's THERAPY, LOTS OF IT that does the heavy lifting. NO magic god is gonna absolve you and make you whole...

Had a BF back in college get busted for weed and they sent him to NA. It was all well and good for him, till he told me at some point our whole relationship never 'counted' because he was smoking ot at the time. It was so hurtful! we were engaged and he was one of the loves of my life... sad that he became a god freak and decided to get holier than thou with everyone.

Sent to NA for smoking weed?

Overkill.

Yes some can't handle booze or drugs. I've heard it said that AA programs for relapse. It is also a form of self handicapping. Addictions start as being behaviors and those need to be altered and people need to learn to live with temptation around. Most people just need to avoid it and should not feel like they are trapped in a spiral if they accidentally pick up a drink. What I don't like is how courts encourage people going to meetings, which sort of sets them up with a similar peer group rather than say doing volunteer work with people who aren't drinking but doing good for others.

I know a lot of people who have been sober for years through it. I have nothing but good to say for its auxiliary, Al-Anon. It helped me work on myself as a co-dependent until I could stand on my own two feet and leave a marriage in which my late ex would not get sober by any means. So whatever.

But it doesnt mean it is the best thing for everyone. Being forced by the courts into it also should not he constitutional since it centered around being christian, or a god of some sort.

When first-time DUI arrests are ordered into AA.

Three years, and once I figured out the how-to s, I left.

For whatever reason.

Most of what we learned was how to run a testing program, but we had a couple days out of the week in which we learned about alcoholism, how to do a “bringing up the bottom” session, those sorts of things. We had to do an outside project, were given several choices, and one of them was “attend an AA meeting and write a report on it.” I did that.

The next day I went to the instructor. “Jerry, for my outside project I’m going to redesign all the paperwork we use so it looks good. I could never send a soldier to that. It was so depressing I left the meeting and went to have a beer.” Turns out half the students in his training sessions do the same thing.

Today people think they represent the science behind addiction, but the AA philosophy is not data driven, they have created a set of "facts" that don't represent reality. You do have power over your addiction. You're not an addict forever, you can use some substances responsibly, you don't need to "bottom out". It's basically an ideology masquerading as clinical psychology.

Isolation accompanies addiction. Finding other humans in struggle is a lifeline for many.

I couldn't believe how much 'religion' was involved.

They do NOT like atheists.