BBC NEWS Article

Raising spirits to combat alcoholism

By Tracey Logan
Presenter, Health Check Alcoholism special

Problem drinkers attending the faith-based Alcoholics Anonymous groups are 30% more likely than others to remain sober for at least two years, according to research published this month.

The study, published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found their treatment also costs 30% less than conventional cognitive behavioural therapy.

According to lead researcher Dr Keith Humphreys, based at Stanford University, this is because it requires fewer hospital visits and admissions.

Up to 80% of alcohol dependent patients start drinking again within six months of a hospital detox.

So why do AA members have a better chance than average?

Dr Humphreys told the BBC’s Health Check programme that many AA members point to the spiritual component of their 12-step programme as crucial in fighting the urge to drink.

All faiths

It is non-doctrinal approach means people of all faiths – or no faith – can benefit.

Many people can’t buy into AA’s basic assumption that you’re powerless and have to turn your individual decision making over to a ‘higher power’ Professor Alan Marlatt,University of Washington

Dr Humphreys said: “It used to be accepted dogma that there would never be a 12-step group in an Islamic country.

“But today I would bet that it is Brazil and Iran where 12-step groups are growing the fastest.”

Last year a group of Iraqi clerics visited Britain, where Professor Sadar Sadiq, the country’s National Advisor on Mental Health works as a practicing psychiatrist, to study approaches to alcohol treatment at first hand.

“They attended AA meetings and would like to implement it in Iraq,” said Professor Sadiq.

“But with the conflict and lack of security our progress is very slow.”

Professor Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington’s Addictive Behaviours Centre, in Seattle, said other spiritual approaches must be developed to help alcoholics.

“Many people can’t buy into AA’s basic assumption that you’re powerless and have to turn your individual decision making over to a ‘higher power’.”

Meditation

An experiment in the benefits of Vipassana – or mindfulness – meditation at the nearby King County North Rehabilitation Facility offered the chance for Professor Marlatt to measure its effects among alcoholics and drug addicts.

The ten day programme required the prisoners to meditate silently for up to eleven hours a day.

He said: “We have a technique called urge surfing – you imagine that when the urge comes it is like an ocean wave.

“Starts small, gets bigger. You feel like you’re going to be wiped out. But you use your breath as a surf board to ride the wave without giving in to it.”

The data suggests that there are some really important links between spirituality and health and wellbeing Professor Kenneth Pargament Bowling Green State University

Not only did the meditating prisoners drink and take drugs less after their release, they were also less likely to be depressed or to re-offended than others.

Mindfulness meditation is a spiritual approach that requires no religious faith, said Professor Marlatt.

So is it just as effective a drug as conventional belief?

Pain threshold

A painful experiment at Bowling Green State University in Ohio answered that question for psychology professor Kenneth Pargament.

He gave two groups of people two competing sets of mantras, one spiritual (ie: “God is love”) and one secular (“grass is green”) and timed how long each could keep their hands in a bowl of iced water.

His findings were published, in 2005, in the Journal of Behavioural Medicine.

“We found that spiritual meditators were able to tolerate the pain of the iced water for twice as long as the secular meditators. ” he told Health Check.

“And we’ve replicated the study among people with migraine headaches, and people chanting the spiritual mantra experienced a much sharper decline in the number and severity of their headaches.”

Similarly, ongoing research at the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind suggests religious people suffer less physical pain when focussing on religious images vs non-religious pictures.

Lack of definition

So what is stopping clinicians taking note? Partly the unscientific lack of definition of “spirituality”.

A recent of 265 books and papers on the subject showed researchers can mean at least 15 different things by it.

And even if researchers did agree on what spirituality is, they don’t yet know how it mediates its therapeutic effects in the brain.

In the past, the idea of a science of spirituality was a contradiction in terms and few would risk their reputations to study it.

But that is now changing – thanks in part to the example of recovering alcoholics of AA.

At a time of constrained health finances – especially in developing countries where alcoholism is rising fastest – an effective treatment programme that costs 30% less than usual is generating plenty of interest.

Professor Pargament said: “I think there are a number of scientists who have been sceptical but, like good scientists, have been persuaded by the data.

“And the data suggests that there are some really important links between spirituality and health and well-being.”

For the actual article – dated Monday, 29 January 2007, 13:47 GMT please click HERE

Relapse "Therapy"

The following comes under the heading of “Relapse” as one of two “therapies” for alcoholism touted outside of the Fellowship of AA.

This is what they think of AA:

Psychotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy *

Interactional Group Psychotherapy (12-Step Program ). Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), founded in 1935, is an excellent example of interactional group psychotherapy and remains the most well-known program for helping people with alcoholism. It offers a very strong support network using group meetings open seven days a week in locations all over the world. A buddy system, group understanding of alcoholism, and forgiveness for relapses are AA’s standard methods for building self-worth and alleviating feelings of isolation. AA’s 12-step approach to recovery includes a spiritual component that might deter people who lack religious convictions. Prayer and meditation, however, have been known to be of great value in the healing process of many diseases, even in people with no particular religious assignation. AA emphasizes that the “higher power” component of its program need not refer to any specific belief system. Associated membership programs, Al-Anon and Alateen, offer help for family members and friends.” (Source:http://www.anguillanews.com/Healthinfo/alcohol.html)

So this is how AA is presented by “professionals” Does anyone see a problem here? AA is buddy system - that provides group therapy? That’s what the professional think. That’s what they teach their patients – and that’s what we are dealing with when we encounter relapsers being sent to us, once the “treatment money” is exhausted.

Is it no wonder that Step One is so darned difficult to administer and why we really need to look at Step One as a “deprogramming” Step as much as an “admission” step. Relapsers come to us thinking they are doing “the right thing” and if they run into one of us Program People, we are talking a language of powerlessness which is so foreign and contrary to the language guiding their current “hope” that…well, its just so difficult to get them to our side.

I like to remember that it is not the newcomer who is to blame for being so “hardheaded”.

I think I would be too, given a month or sets of months of indoctrination by “treatments” that are so diametrically opposed to what we in AA KNOW works.

This is compounded by plenty of AA’s within our Fellowship who have been schooled in exactly the same way, learning exactly the same things. It is easy to see why newcomers gravitate toward those people and what is already familiar and middle-of-the-road, isn’t it?………..

…………and we who rely upon God to solve our problem are viewed as oddballs in our own Fellowship?

Peace,

Danny S

*The other “therapy” is called “Psychotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy” which will be touched on in a later article – Part 2.