12-step programs were somewhat mixed. On one hand, I have friends who say that they would never have recovered without Alcoholic's Anonymous (AA). I have never suffered an addiction myself so I cannot presume to judge the validity of their experiences. On the other hand, I often find the language of addiction and recovery, and its insistence upon the '12 steps' to be confining, even cultish in tone.

I attended a 'speaker's meeting' for this assignment. Although meetings are anonymous and closed to observers, at an AA speaker's meeting, a speaker with a year or more of sobriety talks to an open group to relate his or her experience, followed by discussion (Garrett 2009).

The meeting I attended was consistent with the literature I had previously read on AA: "the three important steps to sobriety are admitting powerlessness to alcohol, turning yourself over to a 'higher power' and never drinking...
[ View Full Essay]