Marc
Galanter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and
Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at
NYU Langone Medical Center
Substance
Abuse Journal
|
Doctors
Treating Alcoholics Should Go to Some AA Meetings: Expert
By Celia Vimont | April 30, 2013 | Filed in Addiction, Alcohol,Healthcare
& Recovery
Clinicians who treat
patients dealing with alcohol abuse often refer them to
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but many have never gone to a
meeting and are not familiar with what goes on there, according
to an expert on Twelve-Step programs.
“Any doctor treating
addicted people should go to at least a few AA meetings,
so they can discuss it with patients in a knowledgeable
way,” says Marc Galanter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry
and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
at NYU Langone Medical Center. “It’s very experiential,
and doctors should have a sense of it. They should also
learn the steps of AA.”
Dr. Galanter, who has
studied the long-term outcomes of AA and Narcotics Anonymous
members, says his findings are encouraging. He discussed
them at the recent American Society of Addiction Medicine
annual meeting.
In one study, published
last year in the Journal of Addictive Diseases, he found
that among 266 highly committed young adult AA attendees,
the average length of abstinence was 44 months. They had
attended an average of 233 AA meetings in the previous year.
He found 66 percent had served as sponsors, and 92 percent
reported experiencing an AA “spiritual awakening”
which decreased the likelihood of alcohol craving. “Their
craving for alcohol was inversely related to their involvement
in the group, and the degree of spiritual awakening they
reported,” he notes.
In a soon-to-be-published
study, Dr. Galanter found similar results with a group of
physicians who were long-term members of AA. He noted that
unlike most studies of the AA fellowship, which tend to
focus on people who have recently come out of treatment,
his research centers on people who are long-term stabilized
AA members. “They have been abstinent on average for
five years and they go to an average of five meetings a
week. Most serve as sponsors for other members. Almost all
of them work the AA steps.”
“Long-term members
constitute the majority of people who are at an AA meeting
at any given time—they are the core of the fellowship,”
Dr. Galanter observes. “They make AA work because
they set the tone for it, and they are very stable.”
Doctors should
understand the types of people their patients will meet
at AA, who will serve as their sponsor, and the nature of
the group’s spiritual orientation, he says. “We
found that the majority of members we asked said they experience
God’s presence on most days—that’s a particular
kind of experience that is not necessarily what clinicians
would expect. It’s important for them to appreciate
it, because that’s what their patients will encounter.” |