12-Step Groups
and other
SELF HELP GROUPS
12 - Step History and
Foundations
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Ideologies spawned from Christian religious sect “Oxford
Group”
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Temperance movement ideas and concepts
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Connection to and between struggling alcoholics (Bill Wilson
/ Dr. Robert Smith)
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Founded June 10 1935
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Conversation with Carl Jung
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Bill’s Spiritual Awakening...
Bill W. Reports:
Lying there in conflict, I dropped into the blackest
depression I had ever known. Momentarily my prideful
depression was crushed. I cried out, "Now I am ready
to do anything - anything to receive what my friend
Ebby has."
Though I certainly didn't expect anything, I did make
this frantic appeal, "If there be a God, will He show
Himself!" The result was instant, electric beyond
description. The place seemed to light up, blinding
white. I knew only ecstasy and seemed on a mountain.
A great wind blew, enveloping and penetrating me. To
me, it was not of air but of Spirit. Blazing, there came
the tremendous thought, "you are a free man." Then the
ecstasy subsided. Still on the bed, I now found myself
Bill continues...
I thought, "So this is the God of the preachers, this is the great Reality." But soon my
so-called reason returned, my modern education took over and I thought I must be
crazy and I became terribly frightened. Dr. Silkworth, a medical saint if ever there
was one, came in to hear my trembling account of this phenomenon. After questioning
me carefully, he assured me that I was not mad and that perhaps I had undergone a
psychic experience which might solve my problem. Skeptical man of science though
he then was, this was most kind and astute. If he had of said, "hallucination," I might
now be dead. To him I shall ever be eternally grateful.
Good fortune pursued me. Ebby brought me a book entitled "Varieties of Religious
Experience" and I devoured it. Written by William James, the psychologist, it suggests
that the conversion experience can have objective reality. Conversion does alter
motivation and it does semi-automatically enable a person to be and to do the
formerly impossible. Significant it was, that marked conversion experience came
mostly to individuals who knew complete defeat in a controlling area of life. The
book certainly showed variety but whether these experiences were bright or dim,
cataclysmic or gradual, theological or intellectual in bearing, such conversions did
have a common denominator - they did change utterly defeated people.
An A.A. Briefing
❖
Most frequently consulted source for help with drinking
problems
❖
Approx. 1 in every 10 adults in the US has attended an AA
meeting
❖
2/3 of these have attended ONE meeting because of another
person’s drinking
❖
Empirical evidence on 12-steps efficacy is sparse and
inconclusive
Membership Stats
❖
Currently there are 97,000 groups spread over 150 countries with a
total membership estimated at 2 million
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1.2 million of these are from the U.S. and Canada
❖
As of Jan 2006 - Canada reportedly had 110,449 members in AA
(General Service Office of AA, 2007).
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Non for profit group
Anonymity, Open Groups,
Closed Groups
❖
Three types of closed meetings (members only)
1. Designated speakers (one member will talk at length)
2. Theme meetings (all members are offered to speak about
particular problem / concept)
3. Step Meetings (talk about particular steps, how each
person understands that step, how it is being put into
practice)
Open group - any interested person may attend
Primary Purpose ?
❖
Provide its members with a program for ‘living” without
chemicals / behaviours
❖
Carry message to other addicts who still suffer - there is a way
to sobriety!
❖
This is done with a language an addict understands
❖
BECAUSE AN ADDICT IS TALKING TO Another ADDICT
How it works?
❖
“Mirroring” break thru defences
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See through the preoccupation with the “self”
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Spiritual growth includes self - but learn to be apart of...
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Seeing the “one as whole”
Offered a choice: New life or Old life
Here’s the Kicker
❖
Requires active
participation!
❖
Not passive attendance
❖
You have to work the
program
❖
Accept you are
powerless and your life
has become
unmanageable
The Bottom Line
❖
Stop looking for a cause and take responsibility for your
actions
❖
Come to see that YOU ARE YOUR PROBLEM - not the
drug of choice or behavior
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Lifelong process
❖
Research has shown that it might take a member 20
months before admitting to being member and 8 months
upon beginning program to stop drinking/using/behaving
How it works (cont.)
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Challenges and usurps,
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Loneliness
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Uniqueness
Provides and offers
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Distillation of Hope
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Predictability
Narcotics Anonymous
❖
Founded in 1953 - honors AA - but is somewhat different -
❖
Its foundations are not so tightly bound to a religious group or
temperance ideology
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Both programs though are ABSTINENCE BASED
❖
Identification of addiction is all inclusive - “disease” called
addiction
Narcotics Anonymous
(cont.)
❖
Some would say that NA is more spiritually based as
opposed to God based (found in AA)
❖
God in NA - good orderly direction
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Difference may lie “within group” dynamics
Al-Anon and Alateen
❖
Born (1948) from a wife of one of the founding
members of AA (waiting for husband to emerge from
his meeting)
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Eventually became family support group
❖
Alateen - 1957 / teenagers of alcoholic parent /
alcoholic family
❖
Essentially learn or detach emotionally from parent(s) behavior
and learn to love the individual
Support Groups Outside of
12-step Traditions
❖
Emerging in mid 1980’s
❖
A great deal of these group were made of women and
or people who were less invested in the idea of
god/spirituality or breaking down personality / defects
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Some are abstinence based some are not
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Some are groups consist of women only / some are
mixed
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You can belong to 12-Steps if you so chose as an
adjunct
Common Traits of other Support
Groups
❖
More Psychological in Nature
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CBT orientated
❖
Some groups are advised by mental heath professionals
❖
More individually driven - “You have the potential within you to
not use”
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Challenge marginalization / oppression / depression / guilt / build
self-esteem
❖
Encouraged to leave group when you feel you have recovered
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Build upon current life strengths / what is positive now
❖The
12 Steps of
❖Alcoholics
Anonymous
12 STEPS OF ALCOHOLIC ANONYMOUS
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Step 1 - We admitted we powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable
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Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
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Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him
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Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
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Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
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Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
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Step 7 - Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
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Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to
so would injure them or others
do
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and
the power to carry that out
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to
carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs