Author: donh

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:57 pm

This is so very interesting. Somehow 12-step has become the "gold standard" of treatment. I’ll bet if you ask most people in the world, they would tell you that 12-step works well, that it is the undisputed way to treat addiction, that it is the undisputed way to go – just about like having an ear or throat infection and taking an antibiotic to treat it. I’ll bet most people see them both the same way, while the fact is, they are not.

I have been involved in emergency medical services for coming up on 25 years now. We have had something similar that was and often still is thrown out called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing or CISD. It was "invented" about 25 years ago and even sprung up CISD teams throughout the United States, training programs, etc. The drill goes something like this, EMT/Paramedic/Firefighter/Police Officer experiences a horrific incident – like violent death of a child, death of a co-worker, etc. Everyone on the call then comes to a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, led by one of the CISD teams, talks about the call, blah, blah, blah. This then somehow magically makes them feel better and keeps them from have problems down the road and having to leave the profession. The only "problem"???? IT HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN TO WORK. In fact, some have shown evidence that it is actually harmful. That’s right, some studies have shown that people who took part in CISD actually did worse than those who did not. It became very controversial a dozen or more years ago in the industry, yet, if you know anyone who is a paramedic, firefighter, police officer, first responder, ask them about CISD and see what they have to say. I’ll bet you they say it’s great, it works well, yadah, yadah, yadah — just like 12-step. Ask a dozen [non-addict] friends what they think the percentage is of people staying sober with 12-step and I’ll bet it’s much higher than it really is.

Worst of all, we really don’t know. Meanwhile the courts, the "experts", the treatment centers, the halfway houses, on and on – even some Sub providers – all require involvement with 12-step programs. But does it really work? From everything I can find or have read it seems like it works 10% of the time – pretty much like everything else non-12-step does… other than Sub where I see success rates as high as 50% depending on the study.

So my question then is, yeah, I’m finally getting to it…, How long will it take the USA and the world to actually decide that 12-step doesn’t work nearly as well as it was thought? Which will come first, we get proof that 12-step doesn’t work as advertised or global warming is a farce? I’m betting on the latter.