Alcoholics Anonymous

Resisting 12-Step Coercion: How to Fight Forced Participation in AA, NA, or 12-Step Treatment

Stanton Peele & Charles Bufe with Archie Brodsky

Stanton and his colleagues respond to the overwhelming use of coercive referrals to substance abuse treatment (read "12-step treatment") in the United States with a primer on the legal, ethical, and clinical aspects of such treatment. The authors find that the empirical basis for claims that 12-step treatment is useful is weak at best. Important research has found no benefits — or even negative results — from assignment to AA and related treatments, and certainly other treatments are at least as effective. Moreover, a personal resolution to participate in a particular treatment is an important component in effective therapy.

Becoming Alcoholic: Alcoholics Anonymous and the Reality of Alcoholism

David R. Rudy

David Rudy, as a participant-observer, attended AA meetings and observed how members were socialized into the AA philosophy. Whatever their drinking concerns or problems initially, all members soon learned — through reward and punishment — to adopt standard symptoms of alcoholism.  When newcomers said they didn't recall if they had ever blacked out, they were told, "Of course, because you don't remember black outs!"  Rudy is not antagonistic towards or belittling of those in AA, but casts a critical eye on the AA process nonetheless.

How Alcoholics Anonymous Failed Me

Marianne W. Gilliam

If Alcoholics Anonymous is so effective, why do fourteen million Americans struggle with alcoholism? Why does the rate of relapse among AA members hover around 70 percent? Can it be that the original twelve-step program — and such offspring as Al-Anon and Narcotics Anonymous — represents not a solution but merely a different facet of the problem? Marianne Gilliam concludes that AA is a fundamentally flawed program. Refusing to accept the idea that alcoholism is a "disease", that she and all other drunks are "powerless", and that twelve-step meetings are the answer, she found a different path to sobriety in a meaningful, love-based approach to life founden on innate self-worth.

Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?

Charles Bufe, introduction by Stanton Peele

This first critical history of Alcoholics Anonymous answers questions about the origins of A.A. and the 12-step program, the program's positive and negative aspects, its effectiveness, and its possible alternatives.

Exceptionally well written... articulate, objective, concise, and complete.
—Basis

The Real AA: Behind the Myth of 12-Step Recovery

Ken Ragge, introduction by Stanton Peele

The Real AA is the result of Ken Ragge's journey through AA and its for-profit institutional variants. The book covers virually all aspects of AA and the traditional treatment system: the disease theory of alcohol abuse; AA's origins and development; AA's ideology and indoctrination process; and AA's institutional forms. An invaluable resource to alcohol abusers, their friends, and their families.

12-Step Horror Stories

Rebecca Fransway

Twelve-Step Horror Stories tells tales of unmitigated horror. And all of them occur either in 12-step support groups or in treatment based on the 12 step of Alcoholics Anonymous. These stories cover a wide range of horrors. There is abuse by alcoholism counselors—many mentally ill themselves. There are therapists who refer people to AA purely because they themselves are alcoholics and who can see no other way of dealing with alcohol problems. They are either incapable of discerning that their patients are having intensely negative reactions to AA or simply can't deal with these reactions—including emotional breakdowns, relapses, and, ultimately in some cases, death. There are AA members who exploit newcomers, both physically and sexually. There are rape victims told to "look for [their] part" and even to "make amends" to their rapists. There are treatment center counselors who recommend jail for coerced clients who, even though no longer problem drinkers, resist AA and the 12 steps. There are AA members who die after taking "medical" advice from their sponsors or other AA members. There are others who are driven to suicide by the cruel treatment they received in 12 step groups. And there are untreated emotional needs—both of the victims of AA groups and 12-step treatment centers, and of the aggressors in these groups. One comes away from these stories with the feeling that one has had a glimpse into hell.