Alcoholic Advice: Is Alcoholics Anonymous Against Medications?
Question by indiechick: Is alcoholics anonymous against medications?
Someone was trying to tell me that alcoholics anonymous is against the use of medications and therapy and actively promotes this. I went to 4 narcotics anonymous meetings and 1 AA meeting back in the day and don’t remember any of this (of course I don’t remember much from those days…). Anyway, Does anyone know?
Best answer:
Answer by raysny
AA’s official position is in the pamphlet “The AA Member–Medications and Other Drugs”:
http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/p-11_aamembers.pdf
It says:
“The experience of some A.A. members reveals that drug misuse can
threaten the achievement and maintenance of sobriety.
Yet some A.A. members must take prescribed medication in order to
treat certain serious medical problems.”
and:
“3 No A.A. Member Plays Doctor.”
The pamphlet then tells three stories about people who relapsed one who was on medication, one who used street drugs, and one who used prescription drugs that were not their own. The pamphlet makes no distinction, lumping them all together as “drugs”.
I bounced in and out of AA for 20 years. I was told by different people, in different AA groups, that if I used medication, I wasn’t “really sober”.
A study in 2000 on the use of anti-craving medications reported:
“Only 17% believed an individual should not take it and only 12% would tell another member to stop taking it. Members attending relatively more meetings in the past 3 months had less favorable attitudes toward the medication. Almost a third (29%) reported personally experiencing some pressure to stop a medication (of any type).”
http://www.jsad.com/jsad/article/Alcoholics_Anonymous_and_the_Use_of_Medications_to_Prevent_Relapse_An_Anon/730.html
Note: “of any type”. This study shows a pro-AA stance with “only 12%”, that’s one in eight! And they’re the ones that attend more meetings, obviously the movers & shakers of the group.
I was in an AA themed Yahoo group where one of the members talked about a new member coming in “high on antidepressants”. I asked the members what they thought about the use of medications, the response was a cut and paste of AA’s official view in the group and a half-dozen off board responses predicting relapse and death for anyone who used meds.
It is nothing new. Corolyn See, step-daughter of one of Bill’s favorite mistresses, Wynn Corum, wrote in her book review of My Name is Bill:
“Full disclosure: I grew up with a stepmom, Wynn, who had been fully prepared to marry Bill. He disengaged himself but put her “story” in the second edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous,” in which the accounts of recovering alcoholics were included for the first time. She married my dad, her fifth husband, as a sort of consolation prize. Wynn was a wonderful woman, but I saw AA then from the point of view of a prissy, still-sober teenager, watching members bicker about whether taking an aspirin for a headache constituted a “slip,” listening to stories of their friendships with a Personal God — “I told God to have you call me today,” my stepmother would say after I moved out of the house.”
These days I work in mental health, primarily with those who have coexisting substance abuse issues. At the last program I worked for, all our clients were dually diagnosed and every one of them reported being told to quit their medication. I have talked with several people who unsuccessfully attempted suicide after following this “advice” from sponsors or oldtimers.
Not all members are anti-medication, but rarely do they speak up when someone goes on a rant against meds.
What do you think? Answer below!
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