Alcoholics Anonymous is Broken. Here’s the Cure | The Real Reason AA Doesn't Work

This video discusses the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous, suggesting changes to improve its success rates and questioning why it often has such a dismal failure rate. It challenges the traditional AA meeting approach to alcoholism and alcohol addiction recovery.
BOOKS FOR RECOVERY AND REINVENTION

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK.

THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER

Content opinion of creator only not to be substituted as medical advice  

John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's John Barleycorn. First published 1913 

Transcript

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Could Alcoholics Anonymous be an effective recovery program? Sure, they could, if only they would change the way they do things. And I'm gonna tell you what exactly they should do to change their methods, which would only lead to high success rates, versus the dismal failure rate that you have today, and here's what AA should do. It is true that this endeavor of mine on all the social media usually has been not only instruction on how to holistically recover from the addiction of alcoholism, but a grand bashing of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm harsh with AA. The reason I'm harsh is because not only does their program have a massive failure rate, which the proponents can't seem to wrap their heads around, but their methods are actually harming people who enter its doors. Harming people. Aren't I just being a wee bit extreme? Not at all. Alcoholics Anonymous harms people. It harms them physically, it harms them emotionally. It keeps its members from advancing their lives. It steals their lives to sit in the rooms. The methods and philosophy of AA give great risk that those who enter the door will not stay sober. It operates like a cult, not a support group. Now, when AA was founded in 1935, it was a novel concept: a place for alcoholics to go so they would be inclined, with the support of others, to discontinue their substance abuse. The pressure for men to drink in those days was immense, as described by Jack London in his novel, John Barleycorn. London's addiction took him at a young age. The cause of death was found to be gastrointestinal uremic poisoning, but the real culprit was the toxic friendship during his whole life with Johnny B. In this work, he lamented how he wanted to be free from alcohol, but was constantly surrounded by it with unending pressure to consume. Those who know of his life understand that London wasn't always a writer. He was a seaman, oyster pirate, and other hard-living jobs where men forgot their sorrows with this liquid friendship. And in those times, you weren't considered a real man unless you did drink excessively. As a matter of fact, refusing to drink with another member of Team Mail could get you punched in the face in that era. Could the shelter of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was almost two decades from being founded, save London from his own self-induced demise? A place where no one was shoving alcohol down his throat when he walked through the door? Maybe or maybe not. The draft for that refuge hadn't been drawn yet. And there was no internet to look up holistic recovery to cure oneself from that or any other affliction. No one did yoga or meditation. Physical fitness wasn't nearly mainstream outside of known athletes. So do I fault Bill and Bob for formulating an idea to help alcoholics rid themselves of John Barleycorn's influence? Not at all. But the method should have evolved over time. It was founded almost a hundred years ago. When I began bodybuilding with weights at 14, the year was 1982. My parents bought me a weightlifting set with a bench for my birthday and a Gold's gym book. One of those exercises showed a professional bodybuilder with a barbell and two 45-pound plates on his shoulders bending forward and back up to quote, strengthen the lower back. An absolute god-awful exercise, which will absolutely hurt your back in the long term. No one does that exercise or many other exercises today that we thought were beneficial long ago, to be found later that they are actually harmful to the joints. Because things evolve over time. An AA should have looked at its massive failure rate and changed his protocol with time as well. But they don't. They dig in exactly like a cult and keep insisting that it isn't their program that's at fault, but the members who won't follow that program. They say those who fail weren't at rock bottom yet, as if that should be where you are before you pursue giving up the addiction. They utter a lot of excuses instead of taking that reality check that their program, mostly for the vast majority, simply doesn't work. And I'm not only saying it doesn't work, but it is harmful to those who engage in it. So what should AA do? Am I saying that should close its doors forever? Well, if it won't alter its methods, yes, it would be better to let people peruse YouTube for non-AA advice. Because there are a minority of former alcoholics who are using social media to give a better philosophy to recovery than the one presented with the 12 steps. Alcoholics Anonymous is living in the land of outdated methods, which they continue to show don't work for most. If AA would adopt a more modern approach, then my mission is done, and these episodes can go into the archives of internet history. Because I don't need to be a career social media influencer or megastar. I've been 80% retired since I was 54, living in foreign lands, existing in a life of complete holistic health, and don't need a dime from this endeavor. But I am also 17 years cured from the addiction of alcoholism, and I didn't accomplish this by listening to the proponents of AA. Note, I said cured. Not someone who is in continuous recovery, not someone who has a disease, not someone working a program with lapses back and forth for the rest of his life, not someone who continues to have cravings and is existing in the past in a circle at nights, rehashing his story. Someone who left a toxic life of addiction behind and hasn't looked back since. So how could Alcoholics Anonymous change its methods from those that produce failure to ones that have high success rates? Through holistic recovery, attacking the planes of being one by one and reinvention of self. The physical plane, the emotional sphere, the career and progressional realm, and finally the spiritual plane. AA not only doesn't address the recreation of these planes, but his philosophy impedes the recovery of them. I state that not only you recover these planes of being, but you make them better than they were before you started drinking. An AA could implement these techniques as well if only they would remove themselves from their cult mindset. First, lose the nicotine break, sugar intake, and coffee at every meeting. These are additives that could be used in the beginning phases of recovery, up to what I call phase two. The first five days is acute alcoholic withdrawal, the next phase to 45 days. This is when the cravings are the most intense. This is where most fail due to these cravings, which are almost continuous up to day 45. The emotional roller coaster always seems to be about to come off its tracks. Anxiety is off the charts, matched with insomnia, severe depression, and a general want to get off the train ride from the planet Earth altogether. This is why in a previous article I suggest there be separate meetings for those in each phase to the two-year mark of cure. You could have a mentor speaking in the room who is further along in recovery, but sub-acute people should be in their own time slots. Because this is where you might smoke, drink coffee, and then take that sugar by the ton. You may need a not so healthy existence just to get through the 45-day mark. And that's fine because it's phase 3, from 45 days to the 6 months clean mark, that I would say to invoke the holistic return of the planes I just mentioned. Until then, you're in survival mode, just checking off the days until these emotional symptoms begin to abate. But the idea that AA keeps feeding these unhealthy additives to its members and its program after 45 days of sobriety is nonsense. Now understand you will still have cravings in phase 3 after 45 days, but not as severe or continuous, unless you are using nicotine, sugar, and caffeine all the time at these nightly meetings. Those substances induce cravings. If you follow my plan of just a few cups of coffee a day, very little processed sugar, and lose smoking altogether, you will find over time the cravings will become less and less frequent until they are nothing but transient and rare for the rest of your life. AA is defeating its own purpose with all these nightly additives and actually increasing the chances of someone relapsing by bringing about more cravings than already exist. Also, if you are continually in meetings for life, you're not exercising. Nothing beats the high of physical fitness that is consistent. And this activity will also reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of cravings that go on and off to the two-year mark of cure. So I want this to absorb into the minds of AA proponents. You are inducing more cravings than necessary with nicotine, caffeine, and sugar at your meetings. You are hurting the chances of your members staying sober. If you don't believe me, find a medical article on the effects of sugar, excessive caffeine and nicotine on the physiological system. Then come back and tell me why you're still operating with this method. The second point that AA needs to change in its methodology is the emotional recovery aspect. They don't have it and actually make one's mental state worse in its program. First, they tell you you are always an addict. No, you aren't. You are not always an addict and forever diseased. You get through two years clean and you can proclaim cure. Telling someone he's always diseased is terrible for rebuilding of self-esteem. It also keeps that person's mental mindset in the past. AA needs to change that to a recovery plan, which the end goal is cure. Now that being said, can one become an addict again once he proclaims cure? Sure, if you pick up that bottle, so keep the contract you made with yourself. Relapse is not part of recovery, which you hear in AA meetings quite frequently. The day you stop drinking is the last day you touch it. Ever. You make the contract and you keep it. No matter what happens in your life, if you lose your job, wife, house, and dog, then sit on a street corner with the juice in your hand and plan how you're gonna come back. But you never touch alcohol again. I file this contract I made 17 years ago, hence I remain cured. This is the mindset AA should be promoting: a future life where one reaches cure, not the propagation that you are forever diseased. The other way AA keeps you in the past is this ridiculous storytelling in the circles of how screwed up your life was under the tutelage of John Barleycorn. This activity is something you do in phase two. So you do get a clear understanding that first, you were an alcoholic, and second, possibly trace back to why you began to drink in the first place. Because usually it goes back to a horrific childhood. AA should have volunteer counselors there to rectify this with these recovering alcoholics on their way to cure. If you mentally fix what was wrong with you, that will give leaps and bounds of not having to need to return to your old painkiller for that past. But AA doesn't do that. Their members live every meeting in their screwed-up addiction days. As long as they keep entering the doors of the rooms. AA needs to propagate a return to good mental health with activities like yoga and meditation. They should give the person who is making his way to cure the tools to achieve a tranquil emotional health. Don't send him home from every meeting with the remembrance of his entirely stupid alcoholic days. And that's why there should be separate meetings for those in phase two to 45 days and the other phases. Phase two should be when you investigate with yourself and others why the alcoholism began. Phase three to six months and phase four to two years is the progression to regain emotional health. And when you lead those horrific days of addiction in that past. Alcoholics Anonymous should, by phase three, now adopt a method for its members for the progression of self. When people begin to see how to progress the career they've neglected so long with John Barleycorn. By now, the meeting should be less frequent for this group and focused on rebuilding their lives. You could bring in volunteer career counselors. Or, for example, the meeting that week focuses on finding a side hustle to advance self. How one is going to find his place as a small but important member of this functioning universe. AA should be adopting an ideology of progression in life, not living in the former addictive life. And the spiritual plane of fulfillment will follow. I describe the spiritual plane as a landscape one sees outside of his domain. When one really feels a connection with our earth and universe and knows his place in them. AA doesn't have this effect on its members because it isn't rebuilding the other broken planes of being. And all that needs to change, AA. And finally, Alcoholics Anonymous needs to be a temporary measure. It should be a finite road to cure at the two-year mark. In the beginning, the newly sober probably do need to go to meetings every single night as a place of refuge for those unforgiving and continuous cravings. After 45 days, as one enters phase three, the frequency of attendance should diminish. It diminishes because here is when one begins their physical fitness program, meditative work, healthy diet, and the beginnings of career progression or other self-advancement. The frequency of the rooms diminishes even more. At the two-year mark of sobriety, one would end his relationship with AA. He announces cure, has a final ceremony in the rooms, and then walks away to go on with his life. Coming back to occasionally give a motivational speech to the newer members could be encouraged, not making the rooms a part of your regular life for life. The purpose of AA shouldn't be to live there forever. It should be a place that gives you the tools to progress your now healthy existence, sharpen them over the two-year program, and then send you on your way. This is the program I created for myself, and now I have a holistically healthy life as I follow that program today. Everyone should follow this program, former alcoholic or not, to gain the best possible version of themselves. But think about this, AA member. What is the better life? A life where one is physically healthy, on a clean diet, where one has a tranquil mind and is advancing his life, or the existence of an unhealthy life where you think you're trapped in a disease that may come out of remission anytime, rehashing your former existence through yourself and others in a world of addiction that you should have left in the past. For the second option keeps you in a prison. An Alcoholics Anonymous needs to alter its program so its members have the key to walk out of the cell door. Now, if you want some other reasons why AA is destructive for you, check out my playlist card at the end of the video. Check out my own detailed book on the matter, The Small Book How I Beat Alcoholism and Why Alcoholics Anonymous Doesn't Work. Link is on the video description as well as the channel page banner. And remember, keep your contract. Be sober at sundown, and I will see you at the next sunrise.