>>then push you out the door and tell you to find an AA group.
What is it exactly you want the hospital to do if your friend won't stop drinking?
What is it exactly you want the hospital to do if your friend won't stop drinking?
I spent a lot of my childhood at AA meetings with my alcoholic mother. I am also an alcoholic and struggled for years because the only answer I was ever offered was AA/NA. I tried it for myself a few times (usually to please others) but was always instantly turned off by it's cult like attributes. I eventually found help through a few different paths.
disclaimer: my half-sister's mother was in a cult (Alive Polarity Fellowship) for 20 years.
So thanks anyway but I don't need any help, especially brainwashing. My mind is too analytical to respond to it anyway ;)
> Say you’ve been diagnosed with a serious, life-altering illness or psychological condition. In lieu of medication, psychotherapy, or a combination thereof, your doctor prescribes nightly meetings with a group of similarly afflicted individuals, and a set of 12 non-medical guidelines for recovery, half of which require direct appeals to God. What would you do?
You can ignore the religious stuff and still make use of AA's highest-impact features:
- regular meetings, no appointment required
- being open and vulnerable in front of other people who understand the hell of addiction in ways your partner or family won't.
- having an accountability partners to call during moments of temptation, and having that reciprocal commitment is a far stronger deterrent to relapse than calling a crisis hotline offering scripted responses.
I'm an atheist, and I've been to years of AA meetings. There is no requirement of religious belief for participating. The concept of a "higher power" is an important part of dealing with our narcissistic ego defenses, but it's not necessarily a religious concept. God just happens to be a convenient implementation of a "higher power" that works for a lot of folks.
Now, there are plenty of people in AA, attending and running meetings, who DO have religious beliefs. A lot of AA literature is written by people who have religious beliefs... The people who founded AA had religious beliefs. So I think it's understandable that religion appears a lot in the mix.
Plenty of modern AA groups explicitly address the "God not required" issue... Maybe it helps that I live in a big city, but I've never had a problem with being an atheist and participating in AA.
Even then, the most the hospital can really do is counsel and recommend inpatient treatment at a specialized facility. I really hope the 'pushed out the doors comment was a slight exaggeration. They should have at least talked about the treatment options, given them a brochure/info for a treatment center. It's not much, but that's basically all they can do.
This whole thread is making assumptions as it wasn't mentioned if the person would consent to treatment.
That said, most people don’t become addicts in a vacuum. Many people become addicts only because a life under the influence beats their life otherwise. Unfortunately it’s a lot harder to fix someone’s life than it is to get them sober. But the poor sober life is, in my opinion, the actual underlying condition which leads to addiction. We don’t really have a framework for treating that as a society nor through the medical system.
Maybe the 'they' that should do something is you?, but I guess it's actually easier to blame 'them', because 'they' should do something.
Even AA doesn't want people that won't admit they have a problem. because 'they' can't do anything for them either. The problem lies with the drinker, if they don't want to stop, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
How do you fix a problem that the patient won't admit they have?
I guess you are in the camp that thinks everyone can help themselves? All I would say to this is that there's lots of evidence around you that proves this idea is wrong.
My guess is you have never worked in primary care, if you did, you would have a very different opinion about the limits of how much you can help someone that won't help themselves, or even admit they have an issue.
Easiest thing in the world to say is 'someone should do something', and what you usually mean is 'someone else should do something'.
As someone who is working on this, I don't think it's unfair for people who aren't experts in the field to recognize and call out the fact that something should be done differently. The experts agree, and many of us are trying to figure out a better path forward.
I guess the alternative is to do nothing and expect people to cure themselves purely through sheer will, as, more or less, what happens now?
Please explain how this is working?