About Me: Male, 36, Omaha, NE, member since May 2008
Opiate addict (OC and hydro) Replacement Therapy/Harm Reduction is state of the art at this point. 12 Step/Abstinence is completely useless for opiate addicts. Anyone who tells you different is a cult member. For any substance 12 step success rate is 15 to 20 (chari
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[More]tably) percent affective 1 year out. Now if a doctor treated your life threatening, chronic, but manageable disease with a program with that kind of track record, that doctor would be sued for malpractice and never work again. Maybe 12 step is all there is for alcohol, meth, crack, coke, etc. but thank G-D there are replacement therapies for opiates . The important thing is to get into talk therapy to work thru the real and deep issues at the heart of your problems. AA or NA groups can be useful in finding friends who don't use/drink, the social side, but they don't address the physical side of addiction (kinda important!) As for spirituality, AA/12 step is great if you're born again fundamentalist, and believe in JC as your personal trainer/life coach, but ridiculous if you are Catholic, Jewish, Greek or Russian Orthodox, any Eastern religious discipline that knows G-D is there but not there, that we can never see the face of G-D as it/he is mysterious and not anthropomorphic. In other words, get real medical help and consider psychotherapy if you can afford it. That self help/tough it out stuff is B.S.
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