Op-Ed People Have a Right to Nonreligious Rehab

[thegreenhand]

People Have a Right to Nonreligious Rehab​

Maia Szalavitz
New York Times
11 Mar 2023


Excerpts:

In December, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York unexpectedly vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have required judges to inform drug court participants of their right to choose nonreligious rehabilitation.

The governor didn’t dispute that New Yorkers are entitled to secular care when ordered to treatment. Rather, she said she nixed the bill because disclosure requirements could become a burden for judges. But the omnipresence of religious addiction programs — and the rarity of therapies that don’t preach reliance on God — is a burden for people with addiction.

Today, around two-thirds of American addiction treatment programs for alcohol and other drug disorders, including over 90 percent of residential treatment centers surveyed, use the 12 steps originated by Alcoholics Anonymous, often telling patients that this is the only way to recover. These 12 steps — common to other “anonymous” groups, like Narcotics Anonymous — are based on Christian principles. A.A.’s founders were members of an early-20th-century revival movement known as the Oxford Group, and they adopted the steps from its doctrine.

Many people find success with A.A. However, fewer than half of 12-step participants are abstinent for a year after starting, and it is clear that additional options are needed. Since the 1990s, researchers have known that different approaches for alcohol use disorders — such as cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy — are just as effective at reducing heavy drinking and its consequences.

Given all of this, since 12-step groups are free and easily available outside of professional treatment, it makes little sense for government or insurers to pay rehabilitation centers that use the 12 steps in therapy groups and daily programming for these services, as they do currently. Instead, government payers and insurers should spend their limited funds on approaches that aren’t free elsewhere and that don’t have constitutional issues.

 

[GamallSkóli]

People Have a Right to Nonreligious Rehab​

Maia Szalavitz
New York Times
11 Mar 2023
Al

Excerpts:

People Have a Right to Nonreligious Rehab​

Maia Szalavitz
New York Times
11 Mar 2023


Excerpts:

At least AA/NA gives you the responsibility to name your 'higher power'. It can be anything at all as long as it gives you peace.

Now, religious rehabs are freaking terrifying! I was coming out of the hospital after detox. I called my sister to get her to hook me up with a rehab I could go to that same day. I should have been more specific. Turns out it was not only religious, it was Pentecostal! The 3rd day they were speaking in tongues! I was out before daylight the next day. Luckily I found a place that cared more about getting me right, than trying to save my soul...

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Not sure what is meant by “disclosure requirements” but I agree, people should definitely be made aware that that’s something which is available to them

It’s funny, some guy on here recounted his experience at Scientology rehab…he blacked out in a drug binge, then woke up under a large portrait of L. Ron Hubbard and then thought, hoooo boy I’m fucked now lol