So I departed on a business trip on American Airlines today and perused the inflight magazine. The good news was, there was an article called "Stepping Away from the 12 Steps, A new approach for attacking addictions using science as its main weapon." The bad news, it didn't really give any details about what the science being used is! The only medications they mentioned were buprenorphine and vivitol, but they did talk about treating it like an illness instead of a personality disorder. Some key plugs in the article were some place called Enterhealth in Texas that is hitting the problem from all angles (still sounds like big business rehab with massage, acupuncture, etc.) and a book called "Healing the Addicted Brain" by Dr. Harold Urschel.

The Article does talk about NIDA's research, and has what's becoming the classic quote: "if you were diabetic, would you go to meetings to talk for an hour a day about how to not eat sugar? People chuckle, but that's essentially what we're doing now." And they did talk about AA's low success rate.

The other think I did like is that they talk about the number of health care professionals getting trained in these newer methods as compared as to the number of people that need help. "There are maybe 60 to 80 new adiction psychiatrists coming out of residency programs a year for the whole country. That's not enough. Humphrey says there are more than 10 million peole in recovery right now. Drug and alcohol addiciton is a national crisis and it makes sense to bring every weaspon to bear in combating it."

Anyway, overall the article was lame, but at least it was there.

I'm pretty sure this Dr. Urschel is closely connected with the enterhealth facility and contacted this writer to do the article, but here are some additional links.

http://www.americanwaymag.com/national- ... specialist

http://www.recovery-science.com/healing ... brain.aspx

Illuminae,

Thank you for posting this. I'm not anti-AA but I do find it puzzling that modern medicine and treatment of our collective illness places so much stock in it. If I had a strong spiritual belief, it might come easier but I've always been way too science-minded.

"if you were diabetic, would you go to meetings to talk for an hour a day about how to not eat sugar? People chuckle, but that's essentially what we're doing now."

I haven't seen this before but it is very true. I wish doctor would be given more license to treat our illness like an illness.

in hindsight I guess I should have posted this in the forum "Naltrexone in the News" since Vivitrol is some sort of injected naltrexone. I was just kind of disappointed in the article and the response to it.

illuminae,
i think it was fine to post this here. i did look at the article when you posted it but did not think much of it. it seems like an advertorial. not really an article, closer to an ad for one particular clinic. this clinic seems to use a variety of methods which i'm sure is more beneficial than just AA, but it struck me as offering a smattering of techniques rather than a new or scientific approach.
just my (admittedly cynical ) 2 cents,
path