Twelve-step program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following are the original twelve steps as published

by

Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

In some cases, where other twelve-step groups have adapted the AA steps as guiding principles, these have been altered to emphasize principles important to those particular fellowships, and to remove gender-biased language.

Most of the alternate wordings are in Step 1 and Step 12.

Gamblers Anonymous has made significant changes to Steps 2,3,4,5,6,7 and 12 by reducing references to God, including a financial inventory, and eliminating "Spiritual Awakening".

Twelve-step program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Alcoholics Anonymous is the largest of all the twelve-step programs (from which all other twelve-steps programs are derived), followed by Narcotics Anonymous; the majority of twelve-step members are recovering from addiction to alcohol or other drugs. The majority of twelve-step programs, however, address illnesses other than addiction.  About twenty percent of twelve-step programs are for addiction recovery, the other eighty percent address a variety of problems from debt to depression.   It would be an error to assume the effectiveness of twelve-step methods at treating problems in one domain translates to all or to another domain.

A sponsor is a more experienced person in recovery who guides the less-experienced aspirant ("sponsee" or variously, "sponsoree") through the program. New members in twelve-step programs are encouraged to secure a relationship with at least one sponsor. Publications from twelve-step fellowships emphasize that sponsorship is a "one on one" relationship of shared experiences focused on working the Twelve Steps. According to Narcotics Anonymous:

Sponsors share their experience, strength, and hope with their sponsees... A sponsor's role is not that of a legal adviser, a banker, a parent, a marriage counselor, or a social worker. Nor is a sponsor a therapist offering some sort of professional advice. A sponsor is simply another addict in recovery who is willing to share his or her journey through the Twelve Steps.

Sponsors and sponsees participate in activities that lead to spiritual growth. These may include practices such as literature discussion and study, meditation, and writing. Completing the Twelve Steps implies being competent to sponsor to newcomers in recovery. Sponsees typically do their Fifth Step, review their moral inventory written as part of the Fourth Step, with their sponsor. The Fifth Step, as well as the Ninth Step, have been compared to confession and penitence.  Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, noted such practices produce intrinsic modifications in the person—exonerating, redeeming and purifying them; relieves them of their burden of wrong, liberating them and promising salvation.

The personal nature of the behavioral issues that lead to seeking help in twelve-step fellowships results in a strong relationship between sponsee and sponsor. As the relationship is based on spiritual principles, it is unique and not generally characterized as "friendship". Fundamentally, the sponsor has the single purpose of helping the sponsee recover from the behavioral problem that brought the sufferer into twelve-step work, which reflexively helps the sponsor recover.

A study of sponsorship as practiced in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous found that providing direction and support to other alcoholics and addicts is associated with sustained abstinence for the sponsor, but suggested that there were few short-term benefits for the sponsee's one-year sustained abstinence rate.

Most studies evaluating the efficacy of AA are not definitive and for the most part, they associate the duration of participation with success in quitting drinking but do not show that the program caused that outcome.  Further, about 40 percent of AA members drop out during the first year (although some may return), raising the possibility that the people who remain may be the ones who are most motivated to improve.  Their varied success rate and the belief in a Higher Power suggested in them, are common criticisms of their universal applicability and efficacy. Only about 3 percent of people suffering from alcoholism and attending Alcoholic Anonymous involved in a study found recovery results without relapse from the 12-step program's treatment.

"YOU JUST SAID,

'SEEK HELP FOR MY CRYSTAL METHS ADDICTION!' 

(having to interject myself into a vagina monologue rant)

Don't you...OFFER IT...there?"

~(Simply Jim:  Mature Methodist Crackhead)~

"Yes,

WE DO...have...GROUPS...that...MEET...here...REGULARLY

 on

Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings!"

~(Rev. Dr. Beth LaRocca-Pitts: Senior Pastor St. Mark United Methodist Church)~

"But...I'M... NOT...anonymous?"

  ~(Simply Jim:  Methodist Fag the Political Catalyse)~

"NEITHER ARE THEY...
REALLY!"

~(Beth: Catholic Fag Hag Paid to be Methodist Administer to T(he)G(ay)O(ne) Church)~

The Twelve Traditions encourage members to practice the spiritual principle of anonymity in the public media and members are also asked to respect each other's confidentiality. This is a group norm, however, and not legally mandated; there are no legal consequences to discourage those attending twelve-step groups from revealing information disclosed during meetings. Statutes on group therapy do not encompass those associations that lack a professional therapist or clergyman to whom confidentiality and privilege might apply. Professionals and paraprofessionals who refer patients to these groups, to avoid both civil liability and licensure problems, have been advised that they should alert their patients that, at any time, their statements made in meetings may be disclosed.

One review warned of detrimental iatrogenic effects of twelve-step philosophy and labeled the organizations as cults, while another review asserts that these programs bore little semblance to religious cults and that the techniques used appeared beneficial to some. Another study found that a twelve-step program's focus on self-admission of having a problem increases deviant stigma and strips members of their previous cultural identity replacing it with the deviant identity. Another study asserts that the prior cultural identity may not be replaced entirely, but rather members found adapted a bicultural identity.

Social stigma:

is the extreme disapproval of (or discontent with) a person or group on socially characteristic grounds that are perceived, and serve to distinguish them, from other members of a society. Stigma may then be affixed to such a person, by the greater society, who differs from their cultural norms.

Social stigma can result from the perception of mental illness, physical disabilities, diseases such as leprosy (see leprosy stigma), illegitimacy, sexual orientation, gender identity, skin tone, education, nationality, ethnicity, ideology, religion (or lack of religion) or criminality. Attributes associated with social stigma often vary depending on the geopolitical and corresponding sociopolitical contexts employed by society, in different parts of the world.

According to Goffman there are three forms of social stigma:

Overt or external deformations, such as scars, physical manifestations of anorexia nervosa, leprosy (leprosy stigma), or of a physical disability or social disability, such as obesity.

Deviations in personal traits, including mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and criminal background are stigmatized in this way.

"Tribal stigmas" are traits, imagined or real, of ethnic group, nationality, or of religion that is deemed to be a deviation from the prevailing normative ethnicity, nationality or religion.

Goffman divides the individual's relation to a stigma into three categories:

1. the stigmatized are those who bear the stigma;

1. the normals are those who do not bear the stigma; and

1. the wise are those among the normals who are accepted by the stigmatized as "wise" to their condition (borrowing the term from the homosexual community).

The wise normals are not merely those who are in some sense accepting of the stigma; they are, rather, "those whose special situation has made them intimately privy to the secret life of the stigmatized individual and sympathetic with it, and who find themselves accorded a measure of acceptance, a measure of courtesy membership in the clan." That is, they are accepted by the stigmatized as "honorary members" of the stigmatized group. "Wise persons are the marginal men before whom the individual with a fault need feel no shame nor exert self-control, knowing that in spite of his failing he will be seen as an ordinary other." Goffman notes that the wise may in certain social situations also bear the stigma with respect to other normals: that is, they may also be stigmatized for being wise. An example is a parent of a homosexual; another is a white woman who is seen socializing with a black man. (Limiting ourselves, of course, to social milieus in which homosexuals and blacks are stigmatized).

Until recently, this typology has been used without being empirically tested. A recent study showed empirical support for the existence of the own, the wise, and normals as separate groups; but, the wise appeared in two forms: active wise and passive wise. Active wise encouraged challenging stigmatization and educating stigmatizers, but passive wise did not.

Goffman emphasizes that the stigma relationship is one between an individual and a social setting with a given set of expectations; thus, everyone at different times will play both roles of stigmatized and stigmatizer (or, as he puts it, "normal").

Individuals actively cope with stigma in ways that vary across stigmatized groups, across individuals within stigmatized groups, and within individuals across time and situations.

The stigmatized are ostracized, devalued, rejected, scorned and shunned. They experience discrimination, insults, attacks and are even murdered. Those who perceive themselves to be members of a stigmatized group, whether it is obvious to those around them or not, often experience psychological distress and many view themselves contemptuously.

Although the experience of being stigmatized may take a toll on self-esteem, academic achievement, and other outcomes, many people with stigmatized attributes have high self-esteem, perform at high levels, are happy and appear to be quite resilient to their negative experiences.

From the perspective of the stigmatizer, stigmatization involves dehumanization, threat, aversion and sometimes the depersonalization of others into stereotypic caricatures. Stigmatizing others can serve several functions for an individual, including self-esteem enhancement, control enhancement, and anxiety buffering, through downward-comparison—comparing oneself to less fortunate others can increase one's own subjective sense of well-being and therefore boost one's self-esteem.

21st century social psychologists consider stigmatizing and stereotyping to be a normal consequence of people's cognitive abilities and limitations, and of the social information and experiences to which they are exposed.

Current views of stigma, from the perspectives of both the stigmatizer and the stigmatized person, consider the process of stigma to be highly situationally specific, dynamic, complex and nonpathological.