The Problem with Treatment Programs

If you struggle with an addiction or a mental illness, finding a solid treatment program is easier now than it has ever been. There are dozens of them to choose from. Overeaters Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, and of course the one everybody knows, Alcoholics Anonymous. That barely scratches the list. My own favorite turned up almost by accident: someone at a church Celebrate Recovery group told me to look up Anger Anonymous, and in the process I stumbled onto Emotions Anonymous. I signed up for their email list and joined their Facebook group. What follows is a look at what these groups do well, plus the single flaw I keep running into when it comes to actual self-development and growth.

Start with what works. The social side might be the strongest thing these groups offer. Join a decent support group and you get fellowship with people who are fighting the same battles you are. My own group is mostly online, but those people feel every bit as real to me as anyone I run into face to face. (Some days I wonder whether the people I meet out in the world are even real.) There is something to that line from the father on Family Guy, where he says social media is bringing us all closer together. On top of that you have video tools like Skype, so you can actually see the people you meet online. It reminds me of the old penpal programs kids used to do back in grade school. You can even travel to another city and visit one of these new friends, which turns the whole thing into a genuine, personal connection. The single biggest payoff, though, is accountability: someone to keep you honest, as long as both of you are serious about growing.

Now the flaw, and there is really only one worth talking about. Conventional treatment plans are built around abstinence. Stay away from the drugs and the alcohol, and call your sponsor when you slip. Viewed holistically, the trouble is that abstinence never touches the thing that drove the person to drink or use or overeat or bury themselves in work in the first place. Quit the one thing and the appetite goes looking for another home. Stop drinking and you may find yourself eating more, or logging more hours at the office. The root of most addictions is emotional pain that was never properly worked through, so a person who simply abstains ends up pressing those emotions down even harder.

Repressed emotions are the number one driver of mental illness. If you drink or use to get away from reality, then white-knuckling your way into abstinence mostly teaches you to bottle the feelings up and find some other outlet. Often that outlet is a psychiatrist's office, a diagnosis, and a prescription you may stay on for the rest of your life. Plenty of spiritual teachers and professional life coaches have said the same thing about Anonymous groups and classes like Anger Management: they are not as effective as advertised. You never confront the real problem. You just shove it onto the back burner so you can keep functioning. That is no way to build a fuller life, because the issue keeps festering, which can feed more anger and a deeper reliance on medication. And the medication does work, by the way, at suppressing emotions you have left unbridled. Give it enough time and you tend to need more of it, either for new physical symptoms or to fight the side effects of the psychotropic drugs already in your system.

The one thing that genuinely moves you toward a richer life is personal growth, and that means actually learning how psychology works. The business world studies psychology constantly, mostly so it can nudge you into buying things. There is no reason you cannot study the same basics on your own and use that knowledge to live a more wholesome life.

Here is a small irony about a lot of these Anonymous groups, and you will catch it if you pay any attention at all. Most of them exist to help people break free of substance problems rooted in deep emotional pain, yet the first thing you notice when you walk in the door is a giant coffee pot. There is no Caffeine Anonymous, even though caffeine is probably the most widely used drug on the planet. It even carries a few health benefits.

None of this means support groups are bad when they are used right. Turn one into a group gripe session and you go nowhere. Use it to encourage people and push one another toward real growth, and it can do a lot of good. The catch is that only a handful of people ever recognize they need self-development in the first place. Most are too tangled up in the surface-level worries of daily life to carve out time for it. Only someone determined to overcome will bother. Those are the real leaders, and if enough of them keep working together and healing alongside each other, they could set off a genuine shift in consciousness.

- Erwin Wooten