Alternatives to AA: The non-12-step recovery approach
Maybe you have tried Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) before and their 12-step program, and maybe it just wasn’t the right message for you. Let us assure you that there are alternatives to AA. As one of the largest alcoholic recovery options in the nation, AA is widely utilized, but they run off a single belief system, and not everyone in recovery benefits from their system.
Research-based support groups, secular support groups, telehealth, and more options are available for individuals looking to cut back or quit drinking and want to take on a different route than AA.
AA may have been able to help millions on their journey to recovery, but it should not be and is not the only option. Through different studies and different ways of thinking, our society realized that not everyone is the same, and the same is to be said about their recovery process.
Below we will discuss the alternatives to 12 step recovery and how they work, allowing individuals options for their own journeys.
What are AA alternatives?
1. Magnify Method
This new approach combines psychology, philosophy, fitness, and nutrition, to help clients think differently and behave differently, so that they can drink less or never again. The focus lies in “Magnifying The Good in Life”, and “Starving the Darkness to Feed the Light.”
The main pillars of The Magnify Method are tailored to the individual needs of each client.
Understanding Limiting Beliefs: Paradigm Shifting
Re-Creation of Self: Exploring Attitude & Identity
Working in Harmony with the Natural, Universal Laws
Higher Faculties of Intellect: How to Think Your Way to Success
Nutrition Negates Addiction
Physical Fitness Leads to Mental Fitness
The Magnify Team believes that Alcohol Use Disorder, a Spectrum Disorder, needs to be treated on an individual basis as well as community basis, for there could be no “one way” to recover when each person’s drinking behavior is unique.
The culture instills an energy of empowerment and self-control. Individuals who have gone through The Magnify Method program(s) report heightened confidence levels, increased peace of mind, and an apathetic attitude towards alcohol; they are no longer enthused by the idea of drinking.
2. SMART Recovery
SMART stands for Self-Management And Recovery Treatment. They believe in 4 points:
1. Building and Maintaining Motivation
2. Coping with Urges
3. Managing Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors
4. Living a Balanced Life
At SMART recovery they believe that a person’s recovery journey is their own and that only you know what moves and changes are best. They allow people to be in contact anytime anywhere with online chat rooms, 24/7 chat rooms, and messaging boards.
They want you to realize your strengths and build off of your own confidence. They do not use labels such as alcoholics or junkies. They are a judgment, blame, and shame-free place and do not want you to feel any of those if there happens to be a bump in the road.
3. Women for sobriety
Women food sobriety is a female only based recovery platform that is focused on individuals quitting drinking and staying sober. WFS recovery path is allowing women to find discovery of self. Their main focuses are on self-growth, emotional growth, self-esteem, and a healthy lifestyle.
4. Moderation Management
With Moderation Management (MM), they don’t want to focus on complete sobriety or ask the members to quit drinking completely. Instead, it is a program that teaches individuals to control and moderate drinking behaviors.
With the Moderation Management approach, you can catch yourself before alcohol takes over, they teach how to control your drinking through goal setting, self-management, and drinking monitoring exercises.
MM uses a 7 stage approach, below are the steps, and it does not matter in which order they are taken but that a little time is spent on each.
Start keeping a diary of your drinking, to help learn how your problems with drinking occur.
Look at the limits of drinking for moderate drinkers, and some of the practices and attitudes that go with moderate drinking, to get a clear picture of the moderation objective.
With that clear picture of what moderation looks like, consider whether moderation or abstinence seems the better objective for you. Also, score your problem severity with a self-test, and consider other factors, to see whether moderation would be workable for you.
Make an extensive list of the problems drinking has caused you, and the benefits you expect from moderation, to strengthen your resolve.
Start on a period of abstinence of 30 days or more, to experience the positives of non-drinking. During this period away from alcohol, you can work through some steps to help you achieve moderation.
Learn skills for avoiding drinking on occasions when you choose not to drink.
Learn skills to control drinking on occasions when you do drink.
Identify the key triggers that lead you to over-drink, and develop means to neutralize those triggers.
Develop your own personal rules that will keep your drinking moderate.
Identify and start new spare-time activities that will displace drinking in your life.
At the end of your period of abstinence, you can start drinking again cautiously, being mindful of your limits and personal rules for drinking. Maintain a high degree of attention to your drinking during this period, including keeping a diary.
If, and when, you have slips, do a post-mortem to see what went wrong, and change your personal drinking guidelines if necessary.
5. Secular Organizations for Sobriety Sobriety(SOS)
SOS Sobriety takes on a secular approach meaning they are not looking for a higher power such as god, instead, it focuses on the individual. This platform focuses on sobriety to alcohol, drugs, and foods. SOS is a group-based organization with in-person and online group meetings.
Throughout the recovery process, they encourage scientific-based research and do not limit their paths to one idea or theory of addiction.
What is AA?
AA is a recovery option for alcohol addiction. It was first founded in 1935 in Ohio between a stockbroker and a surgeon. One man began to follow the spiritual beliefs of a friend and was able to maintain sober. When learning that sobriety was possible they believed that they could help others.
AA follows these twelve steps:
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 or others.
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 the 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 practice these principles in all our affairs.
These 12 steps ask the fellow addict to turn themselves over to a higher spiritual power and maintain abstinence from alcohol. These 12 steps have worked for many people for many years, but is not the only approach when discussing alcohol addiction.
What are the differences between 12 step and non 12 step approaches?
12-step approach and non 12-step approach may have some similarities, but they most definitely have their differences, too. The 12 -step approach is in their name, they follow a set of steps and don’t move on before the step before is done.
When looking at alternatives to AA and the 12-step program, the alternatives are much more structured to the individual and what they need at that time.
Both approaches work respectfully with the right audience. When talking about the 12-Step approach, it’s complete abstinence, time commitment to meetings, and relying on a higher power, some just find that unproductive.
When looking at the alternatives to 12-step, it’s for individuals looking for either abstinence or moderation, a variety of meet-ups or online help, and using secular or naturalistic approaches.
Below we will outline the main differences between the 12-step approach and the alternatives that we’ve found from our own experiences and those recorded through conversations and observations.
Final Thoughts
AA has been around for many decades now and has helped many people, but for those who want a different approach and want to find the answer within themselves and not a higher power there are options for you. There are many alternatives to AA with different paths because everyone’s recovery story is different so should their approach.