Any followers who are struggling with drug addiction
I am begging you, unless it's really really working for you, don't turn to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous as a solution. I'll give you a better solution after I explain why AA is terrible for the majority of people who use it.
-AA has never changed its guidelines since conception. They do not update anything from doing research or from their negative results
-Speaking of research, there was no research contributed to the creation of AA. some dude just thought "this seems right for good christian men" and made up a bunch of stuff around dogma
-AA tends to rely on faith, shame, and high control. It is bad enough that there have been real dangerous cults formed under the guise of AA
-There is 0 regulation on who can host AA groups. Pretty much anyone is allowed to host AA.
-They tend to be abstinence based, meaning things like dangerous cold turkey cutting of use, and avoidance of all substances which can include medication for some higher control groups. People are heavily shamed for relapses because of their insistence on pure abstinence which is not viable for a lot of users.
-There is a 70% failure rate at best, only 5%-30% of people who attend AA successfully maintain sobriety long term
if you need some good therapy research based substance abuse help, I'd reccomend the SMART Recovery program. Unlike AA they continuously update their program and it has actual theraputic research behind it that works, there's online groups, it focuses on coping skills and problem solving and is not abstinence based but rather maintenance based. And the best part is you don't need to surrender to a higher being, you just need to heal.
