Alcoholics Anonymous & Narcotics Anonymous

Self-help groups which are also known as mutual help, common aid, or support groups, are groups of people who provide mutual support for one another. In a self-help group, the members share a common problem, often a common disease or addiction. Their common goal is to help each other to handle with, if possible to cure or to recover from, this problem. In a modern society, the social support that is composed of family and friends may oftenly disrupted due to mobility and other social factors. Therefore , people tend to choose to be a part of a group that can help them to share their interest
s and concerns. The shared context emerge through self-disclosure, sharing stories, stresses, feeling, issues and recoveries. The cornerstone of this group model is giving the people the feeling that they are not alone and they are not the only ones facing the problem. This feeling reduces the isolation that they are dealing with as a social support. There is no hierarchy a ladder-like model of power or authority. Self-help groups have the linnear – parallel model of power among each other. Nobody is superior than anyone. Peers can be role models for healing each other. The person who has already experience that kind of problem, situation or the feeling helps the newer member. Through peer influence, the newer member become inspired and affected by the experience-based knowledge in a way that there is no point of doing the same “wrong” thing. On the other hand another effect of this peer model is empowerment. Self-help group members are interrelated to each other , they feel like they are bonded because in the journey 

of learning how to control the problem in their lives , they are together without judging each other.

The origin of self-help groups was Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a world wide organization that is a social support group for people with a desire to quit alcohol. The main aim of the organization is to help its members stay sober and to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. The group was founded in 1935 by William Griffith Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith. In 1937, they published the initially-titled book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism from which AA got its name. Conversationally called "The Big Book", it suggests a twelve-step program in which members accept that they are powerless over alcohol and need help from a "higher power"; look for guidance and strength through prayer and meditation from God or Higher Power of their own understanding; take a moral inventory with care to include resentments; list and become ready to remove character defects; list and make amends to those harmed, and then try to help other alcoholics recover. The second half of the book, "Personal Stories", is made of AA members' redemptive autobiographical sketches.These developed steps are : 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we

understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (as cited in: Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010).

Based on these steps , By 1946 AA co founder Bill Wilson had more clearly demonstrated the basic ideas as the Twelve Traditions which are directly from such correspondence with groups), setting guidelines on how groups and members should interact with each other, the public, and AA as a whole. The method of AA is based on not just altering the drinking habits , it aims to change the way that people think about alcohol through spiritual awakening which is achieved by following the Twelve Steps. This program is also going to be the base of Narcotics Anonymous ( NA) and other self-help groups as well. Alcoholics Anonymous runs also self-help groups for those who are affected and closely related to the alcoholics. Al-Anon is for family members and friends of the alcoholic and Al-Ateen is for the children of alcohol addicts. These groups meet regularly and share the members share their experiences.

From very early on, AA was faced with an unclear problem that indicates what should be done for the drug addicts .They preferred to concentrate on alcohol so the alcoholic sees the message, but drug addicts go there discussing drugs, unwittingly weakening their atmosphere of identification.The steps were written, the Big Book was written and there was not any possibility to rewrite these steps again for the drug addicts. The problem must have been a big one for them. As the initiators of Narcotics Anonymous modified AA's steps, they came up with a "ten-strike" of perhaps equal importance. Rather than converting the First Step in a natural, logical way ("we admitted that we were powerless over drugs..."), they made a radical editing in that step. They wrote, "We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction..." Drugs are different group of substances, the use of any of which is but a symptom of their

disease. When addicts gather and focus on drugs, they usually focus on their differences, because each of them used a different drug or combination of drugs. The one thing that they all share is the disease of addiction. By that single turn of a phrase, the foundation of the Narcotics Anonymous Fellowship was laid. On September 14, 1953, AA authorized NA the use of AA's 12 steps and traditions on the condition that they stopped using the AA name, causing the organization to call itself Narcotics Anonymous which is titled as a "fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a core problem" and it is the second-largest 12-step organization that was founded in California by Jimmy Kinnon and others. NA’s only need for membership is "a desire to stop using". NA members can meet regularly to help each other stay clean, where "clean" is stated as complete abstinence from all mood and mind-altering substances. Addiction is stated as progressive disease with has no any cure, that affects every area of an addict's life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.This disease of addiction can be arrested, and recovery is possible through the NA twelve-step program. The steps never indicates drugs or drug use, rather they choose only to addiction, to indicate that addicts have a disease of which drug use is the single symptom. Other symptoms include obsession, compulsion, denial, and self-centeredness Membership in NA is free, and there are no dues or fees. But after each meeting they put money in a box of their group for their payment of the place they meet and the bills. Even the money they put in the box is also useful for buying coffee and water for their meetings. They do not accept any money from the guests or outgroups. Subsequently they neither endorses nor opposes any other organization’s philosophy or methodology. Their main focus is making a recovery atmosphere whereby drug addicts can share their recovery experiences with one another. By remaining free from the distraction of controversy, NA is able to focus all of its energy on its particular area of purpose.In 1954, the first NA publication was printed, called the "Little Brown Book". It contained the 12 steps, and early drafts of several pieces that would later be included in

subsequent literature which is composed of It Works: How and Why offers detailed discussion of the twelve steps and traditions and is often called the "green and gold" after its cover , The Step Working Guides is a workbook with questions on each step often called the "Flat Book", Just For Today is a book of daily meditations with quotes from the Basic Text and other NA approved literature including the "Information Pamphlets", Sponsorship is an in-depth discussion of the role of sponsorship in NA, including the personal experiences of members, Miracles Happen describes the early years of the NA organization. This book contains many photographs of early literature and meeting places and "Living Clean-The Journey Continues" contains member's experience's of staying clean and in recovery as they go through challenges in life such as illness,death,parenthood,spiritual paths,and employment.

Overall, the most important common point of both groups is they believe in a higher power which is “Good Orderly Direction” as God. Individuals from different spiritual and religious backgrounds, as well as many atheists and agnostics, have developed a relationship with their own higher power. The only suggested guidelines are that this power be loving, caring, and greater than one's self. The twelve steps of the NA program includes spiritual principles, three of which are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, embodied in the first three steps. According to members of the two groups these principles, when followed to the best of one's ability, allow for a new way of life. As a closure of their meetings they pray to their God with a group hug. The most common prayer is "God, Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.". Additional to their core common point, calling each other with their first names is also their tradition as in the spirit of anonymity. It can be referred as placing "principles before personalities" and recognizing that no individual addict is better than another, and that individual addicts do not recover without the fellowship or its spiritual principles.

Aslıhan TÜZÜN

Psikolog

References

Alcoholics Anonymous. (2001). Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition. New York: A.A. World Services.

Narcotics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Issue 1101. World Service Office, 1988.