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Alcoholics Anonymous · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
• 0:16
  what we do. Hi. My name is Abraham and I'm not an alcoholic.
• 0:20
  Hi. My name is Shane and I'm quarter ordered to be here.
• 0:24
  Where Psychology Podcast we talk about the things that people do and the things animals
• 0:29
  do, and sometimes we talk about the ways that we try and help other
• 0:32
  humans when they're in struggling times. Yes, and today is part of our
• 0:37
  suite on our series on addictions and all the things that go along with that,
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  And we are going to talk about the one thing that I think a
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  lot of us have maybe heard about, which is Alcoholics Anonymous. Yes,
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  an intervention program for folks that struggle with alcohol abuse. Yeah. So,
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  as we're unpacking our understanding of addiction and tree and around addiction and various aspects
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  of policy around addiction, which will be in future episodes, it seems like
• 1:06
  a really appropriate first stop is like, what do most people think of when
• 1:08
  they're even thinking about addiction? And I think one of the first things is
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  Alcoholics Anonymous. So we need to dive into this, understand where it came
• 1:17
  from, the research behind it, and where it's going to some extent and
• 1:22
  you know, unpecks of myths, I think, really dig into the things
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  that people may or may not know about how it works. But otherwise it's
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  worth understanding psychologically what's going on with alcoholics. Anonymous. Yeah, I mean
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  we already did an episode on alcohol specifically and what it does, so this
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  will not cover that so much. This will cover just kind of this intervention
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  program that people kind of go to as part of their treatment package or as
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  part of maybe recommend people recommend this all the time. So but we'll kind
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  of we'll get into we'll get into some of that stuff. Yeah. I
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  think arguably, if you were to go back and listen to her archive,
• 1:57
  if you haven't been with us the whole time anyway, you would find that
• 2:01
  we spend a lot of our time talking about sleep and drugs. Yeah.
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  I think that makes up those two topics cover a get the lion's share of
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  the number of episodes dedicated to those topics. Yeah, I'm not sure why,
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  but I think neither, but you're around ourselves. Yeah, yeah,
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  we should probably maybe just do an episode where we evaluate why we talk about
• 2:24
  sleep and drugs so much. We could do it maybe like an anniversary anyway,
• 2:29
  If you like what you hear today and you would like to support us,
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  you can join us on Patreon. You can pick up some merch you
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  can leave us a rating and review, you can tell a friend about us.
• 2:37
  You can do all kinds of things like that and more. And I
• 2:38
  will talk about that at the end of this discussion today. But first I
• 2:43
  would like to welcome you here. Thanks for being here. And if you
• 2:46
  are joining us on the day that this publishes, which is April third,
• 2:50
  then we'd like to issh you a happy American Circus Day. I just went
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  to circus. It was animal free and it was it seems like it was
• 2:55
  a lot of fun. Nice. It also don't go to work unless it's
• 2:59
  fun day, so that means everybody's quitting their jobs. Yeah, the employers
• 3:04
  love that one. It is find a Rainbow Day. I think you're gonna
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  have better luck if you can find rain first, Find the Rainbow Day.
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  Yeah. It's also fish fingers and Custard Day. I didn't even bother to
• 3:15
  look this up. I have no idea what it is or what it means.
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  Yeah, moving on, it is Global Day of the Engineer. I'll
• 3:23
  tell you what we do take for granted the fact that our lives are made
• 3:29
  possible by engineers, Like, we would live in a very different world if
• 3:32
  we did not have that incredibly essential profession. So definitely go go buy a
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  drink or a snack or you know, thank an engineer for them doing the
• 3:44
  work that they do. Yeah, we've all seen Prometheus, so we have
• 3:47
  the engineers to thank for even being here to begin with. So, it's
• 3:53
  National Chocolate Moose Day, which I am a big fan of that dessert.
• 3:58
  Yeah. Yeah, you can find them. The moose in Canada often chocolate
• 4:03
  brown moves. All right. It is National Day of Hope. Ah.
• 4:08
  It's National Film Score Day, so go listen to Oh Brother, Where art
• 4:11
  thou? Because that is the best soundtrack of any movie ever. Wow.
• 4:16
  It is National Walking Day, huge fan of that. Yeah. It's also
• 4:19
  Golden Rule Week, so be nice to everyone. International Dark Sky Week.
• 4:25
  Cue, maybe make your sky dark. I don't know what to do that
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  one, but that's sky Week. Sure, yeah, don't be I mean
• 4:30
  it sounds scary. It's also laugh at Work Week, so for those of
• 4:33
  you who are having fun today, go enjoy entire week of laughing. There.
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  I guess that makes sense with don't go to work unless it's fun.
• 4:40
  Yeah, some extent National bake Week. Does this have anything to do with
• 4:44
  The Great British Bakeoff? I think it might. I don't know. I
• 4:46
  hope so, because that show is just so wholesome and wonderful. It's also
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  a Testicular Cancer Awareness week, so that's a that's a big deal. Pay
• 4:53
  attention to your balls. Ah. It is National pickleball a month, although
• 4:58
  given the trends lately, I' wondering if it's just National Pickleball decade. At
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  least in the month, my neighborhood wants to build a pick a ball court
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  and I'm like, why would you do that? It's a trend. You
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  live in Florida. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. Anyway,
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  it's uh, it's Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month. Oh that's good.
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  That maybe is a little bit harder with the walking day, but you
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  can have prosthetics and cadavers whatnot. Absolutely, it is National Brunch Month,
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  so just for the just for the month of April, you can have brunch.
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  Otherwise it's it's out uh huh, mimosas for everyone. It's also National
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  Volunteer Month, so go do some good work for free. It is also
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  National Autism Awareness Month. Yay yay. And finally a very important one is
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  it is prevent child abuse awareness. Yes, awareness of preventing a child abuse.
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  It's it's prevent child Abuse Month April is so yes, yeah, always
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  important. Don't abuse children yep. I think that's a mantra of the podcast.
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  Yes, and it's not like sometimes don't abuse children, it's like never
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  for ever, never the time like never. Yeah. Usually we like to
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  say what you should do instead, what you should do is not abuse them.
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  Yeah, you should treat children with love and kindness. Do not abuse
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  them. Treat them with loving kindness, yes, yeah, be compassionate.
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  You have a blanket like, don't ever do this sort of thing. Those
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  can be useful rules, and that's a good one. Yeah. Anyway,
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  we spend a lot of time on that. We need to dive into our
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  topic, which, as we said, is alcoholics anonymous. So thank you
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  so much for being here. Let's start talking about the history of well,
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  before you even get into the history, we need to unpack a little bit
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  of the background of alcoholics anonymous and even alcoholism. Yes, so alcoholism is
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  attributable to three point three million deaths every year. This number is ten times
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  higher than the number of fatalities that every other drug combined has caused. So
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  this is a major, major concern. Alcohol is one of the most powerful,
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  most destructive, and most dangerous substances that we have ever created. And
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  we say one of we do know about Fenton also when you go to reach
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  out and say that, we are very well aware of that. But alcohol
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  is a very costly thing as we're seeing here. Yeah, a lot of
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  deaths can be attributed to alcohol. Not necessarily alcoholism every time, but to
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  alcohol for sure. This was surprising me because there's more research that has been
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  coming out on this, and even research into babies that were born to like
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  crack addicted mothers do not seem to have the kind of challenges that we thought
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  that they might. But when you see babies who were born with fas fetal
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  alcohol syndrome, often or usually they suffer extremely debilitating neurological disruptions that result in
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  lifelong need for additional therapeutic and medical interventions. It seems like even some of
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  the drugs we would consider some of the hardest, worst, most intense drugs
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  are not even as bad in multiple ways as what we've seen alcohol do.
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  I mean my experience, I don't know if you've had this experience, but
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  my experiences, I've worked with more learners with fetal alcohol syndrome than I have
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  with any other subset abuse issue. Yeah, as a result of their development.
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  So that is something I see consistently. I've worked a lot with folks
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  that have fas. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty profound. And I
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  think that that speaks to I mean you certainly, I think the skeptical listener
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  will hear this and say, yeah, well there's a lot more alcohol around,
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  it's a lot more readily consumed, which is definitely true, and that
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  would be part of it. But it also seems like the cases where there
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  are children who are born to mothers who are addicted to other substances, they
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  just don't seem to have as severe problems in most of these cases as the
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  children born to parents who used alcohol while they during pregnancy. That being said,
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  like, it's not we don't advocate you take any drugs you know,
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  as part of you know, having or raising a child. So it's it's
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  generally not a successful recipe to ensure success for that individual, Right, but
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  it does seem like alcohol might be one of the worst that you could right,
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  right, absolutely, So today we are talking about this idea, this
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  treatment called alcoholics Anonymous. You'll hear it sometimes abbreviated as alan on or AA.
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  And so this is currently the most well known addiction treatment program in the
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  United States. Like this is it's in kind of like the cop it's in
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  the lexicon, it's in common discussions around treatment, drug treatment, and so
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  I think it's a pretty popular thing. But what is it and where did
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  it come from? Yeah, and I will say, as we're jumping into
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  the more of the background here, it is implemented in countries around the world,
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  but I don't know how well known it is in those other countries relative
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  to its inescapable, inescapably ubiquitous nature in the United States, where you can
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  like be court ordered to attend this program, right, which is not a
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  federally run program. So that's it's not super common to have it be the
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  case that the court can sort of specifically recommend an intervention that they have no
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  say in how that intervention is being implemented, right, But nevertheless, there
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  it is. So let's talk about where Alcoholics Anonymous or AA came from a
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  Wall Street professional named Bill Wilson. Also loved that William Wilson or Bill Bilson.
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  I like that mix that up. So Bill Wilson was a serious alcoholic
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  in nineteen thirty four. But it's important to consider that prohibition ended in nineteen
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  thirty three, so we're not sure how to interpret that. But as you
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  as we'll see when we get into the War on Drugs episode spoiler alert,
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  alcohol consumption did not decrease at all during prohibition. Just so you know that.
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  Definitely not for Bill Wilson. Definitely not for Bill Wilson. So alcohol
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  was ruining his life. Yeah, so he was aware that it was getting
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  pretty out of control. And then he met another addict, doctor Bob Smith,
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  in nineteen thirty five while attending a non alcoholics spiritual fellowship called the Oxford
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  Group. And so in nineteen thirty five they're both in Akron, Ohio.
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  Then they meet each other and they have these similar values, similar ideas,
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  and so in nineteen thirty five is when they found Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean
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  they found it. They began the program, right, and so through his
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  program, Wilson is able to maintain his sobriety. He saw alcoholism as a
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  disease of emotions, mind, and body outside of his control. And I
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  think that kind of framing is going to come back a little bit when we
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  start talking about this more. H. Yeah, definitely pretty central to the
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  whole program here. So essentially through the program, and part of what he
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  attributes to him being successful is that he shared his experiences with others. His
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  experience is struggling with alcohol. He shared them with other people who are struggling
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  with alcoholism, and he found that that helped both helped him maintain his sobriety
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  and it helped those other people achieve their and maintain sobriety. And so he
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  just wanted to share and expand his strategies to help people that were struggling with
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  addiction to alcohol specifically. Right. So Wilson and doctor Smith they worked together
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  to form the Twelve Steps of AA and several more groups formed, and pretty
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  quickly, pretty pretty quickly, we're talking this is this started in nineteen thirty
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  five and nineteen thirty nine they published the AA book. Yes, four years
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  they've got a book in a program. Yeah, And this the programs were
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  starting to pop up all over the country. There was a lot of traction
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  for a lot of people were signing up for these so they were gaining a
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  lot of members. And this is a totally non profit organization, right,
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  they wanted to have this be as accessible as they possibly could, and so
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  in the book that they published they outline their the whole program and all of
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  that. And then and comes with that is the twelve steps that you maybe
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  have heard of of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you, I think a lot of
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  people will have heard twelve steps and associate that correctly with AA, but not
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  necessarily know what all those twelve steps are. So let's go ahead and just
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  read the list of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in order one through twelve.
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  Yeah, let's do that. So step zero is ADS. All right,
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  we're back from the ads. We can actually do the real twelve steps
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  now, all right. Step one, we admit we are powerless over alcohol,
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  that our lives have become unmanageable. I've also saw this wrote in a
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  more sort of perfect past tense, that we admitted that we were powerless over
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  alcohol. Our lives had to become unmanageable. But yeah, so step one
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  we admit we're powerless yep. Step two is we have come to believe that
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  a power greater than ourselves should restore us to sanity. Step three. Will
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  make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
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  God as we understood him capital h him. Step four is we have made
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  a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step five admitted to God,
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  ourselves and to other human beings the exact nature of our wrongs. Step six
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  is we were entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.
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  Step seven ask him God to remove our shortcomings yep. Step eight is
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  to make a list of all the persons we have harmed and become willing to
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  make amends to them all. Step nine make direct amends to such people wherever
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  possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Yeah.
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  Step ten is we continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong,
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  promptly admitted it. So we have to kind of say, oh,
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  this is what's going on. I'm going to admit that I messed up.
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  Step eleven seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as
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  we understood him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the
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  power to carry that out. And then step twelve is that we have a
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  spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message
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  to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Okay,
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  there was definitely a theme I picked up on tw steps. Yeah, a
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  little bit, we'll unpack that, Okay. So, although AA was founded
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  in response to alcohol abuse, people with other drug addictions may attend to this.
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  I think that's a common question maybe people may have, is like,
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  is this only for alcohol It was founded with the intention of supporting people with
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  alcoholism, but people with other substance abuse disorders certainly have shown up and are
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  welcome to show up to these meetings if they wish. Yes, and AA
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  as it always has been deeply rooted in Christian faith. If you did not
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  pick up on that theme as we were going through the steps, it's pretty
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  clear there's a lot of capital h's in there. But nonetheless, criticisms of
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  the overt religiosity of the group apparently led them to adopting the terminology higher Power
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  more often than God specifically, so there was a little bit of a switch
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  to that term higher power from God because of some of the criticisms of that.
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  So I imagine that some of this was rewritten to be something like making
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  a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of a higher
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  power as we understood it, or something like that. Right, it's probably
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  how many of those were have been a little bit rephrased. Now reportedly this
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  idea of a higher power, which is fairly ambiguous. There was one AA
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  member who decided that doorknobs were a higher power and that praying to doorknobs would
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  help him achieve sobriety and keep it and and allegedly that this was a real
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  belief that he had. And you know, I was thinking about it,
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  and I was like, that does seem silly and kind of weird, but
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  it's really not that different to like praying to some invisible sky wizard, except
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  that doorknobs are real. You know, I was, I was reading that
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  note, and I was like, that feels like like sarcasm, like not
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  not that last part, but like I was like that that story feels like
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  it's made up, And apparently right it does, because like it's so hard.
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  Sometimes when I read your notes, I'm like, did Abraham make that
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  up? Usually when we get to end, I'm like, okay, so
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  anyway, we're good. Now, how's the report that I found? At
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  least? Yeah, hey, listen, it's sometimes it's how that's what happens
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  when we do our research. We find these tidbits, these nuggets of interesting
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  things. Yeah. Now it is free to anyone. Anyone who wish to
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  use it can join in. New members are recommended to attend three straight months
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  of meetings to develop new habits, to receive advice from veterans, and practice
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  the steps of the program. Ninety meetings in ninety days. That's also part
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  of this too. Yeah, they're encouraged to actually attend meetings for the rest
• 17:17
  of their life essentially. But the strong recommendation, the like this is the
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  dose that's required to get yourself into a sober lifestyle from AA at least is
• 17:30
  three months, So they want the ninety days. I don't know why I
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  didn't go for seven, you know, since the theme all but you know,
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  I thought that was too much. Yeah, they were, but you
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  know it's interesting though, Like I think about that and then like just from
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  a purely behavioral standpoint, like creating a new routine and getting into a habit
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  for that long would be interesting to see, like its maintenance, right,
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  Like if I start, if I start a habit and I get into a
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  habit, like and I do that same thing for ninety days, I would
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  imagine that I would build a pretty strong habit and come fluent in that pretty
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  quickly. You know, yeah, absolutely, we will get into I think
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  the parts of this that are probably somewhat effective, right. Another I think
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  piece of understanding alcoholics anonymous is the anonymous part of alcoholics anonymous, And that
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  may seem fairly obvious, but it's worth asking, like what does that mean
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  to say that as alcoholics anonymous? Because you go to these meetings, people
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  can see the faces of the other people there, the people can see you
• 18:26
  when you're there, and you hear the stories about the attendees that visit aa
• 18:30
  GRIP meetings. So like, there is that part. But the what's anonymous
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  about it, or what's supposed to be going on here is that each each
• 18:37
  member is told not to disclose their full name or any identifying information. And
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  this is really founded in the belief that if people can remain anonymous, they
• 18:48
  will feel more safe and open and more willing to share their experiences without fear
• 18:53
  or judgment or retaliation you know, from anybody who might hear it. And
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  further, it is meant to create some amount of sort of equality and equity
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  between members, so that they're not behaving with respect to their social status or
• 19:07
  lack thereof. They're not there like defending or or participating with respect to their
• 19:12
  wealth, their fame, or really anything else that could get in the way
• 19:15
  of their ability to listen and share. So it's really nat to say,
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  the thing we have in common is the important reason why we're here, So
• 19:23
  whatever else is going on in your life does not need to be the thing
• 19:27
  that's influencing your ability to participate in these meetings. Yeah, and I actually
• 19:32
  think that that's a pretty decent sentiment when you consider that the value is like
• 19:37
  keeping people safe and like and trying to give everybody an equal playing field,
• 19:41
  Because yeah, I think there's something really nice about that, right, Sure,
• 19:44
  Yeah, that's my thought, But it is difficult to imagine how well
• 19:48
  it works to remain anonymous. So we kind of talked about that idea in
• 19:52
  that issue. We have heard the stereotypical introduction of the meeting. Hello,
• 19:55
  my name is blank and I'm an alcoholic, often shared by extremely personal story
• 20:00
  worries. They will also be situated to some extent around that person's specific context,
• 20:03
  which will likely include their status. So there's going to be some information
• 20:07
  that comes up as a result of that. Someone sharing about sleeping under a
• 20:10
  bridge gives a lot of way about their financial status as to someone sharing about
• 20:15
  missing their private Jet de France because they drink too much. I mean,
• 20:18
  there's context clues that kind of unlevel the playing field a little bit as you
• 20:22
  kind of explore this. Yeah, so the extent to which that part of
• 20:26
  it works unclear. But the process of AA involves several important steps, and
• 20:33
  these will become very relevant as we start to impact the components and their relative
• 20:37
  potential for effectiveness in the extent to which people who attend AA are successful through
• 20:45
  the program. And the first one, as we said, is that people
• 20:48
  attend regular meetings with other people in which they report on their continued progress or
• 20:53
  if they have, you know, had some some struggles or setbacks or even
• 20:57
  failures in the status. Either way, they are attending regular meetings with other
• 21:03
  people and they report on what's going on with them, So which means that
• 21:06
  there's sort of a group accountability aspect of this, right. Another part of
• 21:11
  this is that the people in this program that are involved have to practice honesty
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  and disclosure to a group of people who specifically acknowledge and praise their successes in
• 21:18
  honesty, And that I think is an important thing. Is sometimes people are
• 21:22
  going to mess up, but if they're being honest about it, and they
• 21:26
  get praised and support around being honest, they're more likely to engage in more
• 21:30
  honest disclosures when they go into these meetings. Like, it's sometimes very difficult
• 21:34
  to be very honest about something when that disclosure can result in a lot of
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  harm or punishing contingencies around that disclosure. Which is why you know kids lie
• 21:47
  a lot, is because when they do something and they're honest and they get
• 21:49
  in trouble, they're like, well, I could lie and not get in
• 21:52
  trouble, or I could be honest and maybe get grounded or in trouble that
• 21:55
  way. So, like, it's nice to be in a space where honest
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  disclosures get some kind of reward and support, even if it is somebody messing
• 22:03
  up. Yeah, and it means that they can share about their successes because
• 22:06
  there's a certain vulnerability to like I have been dealing, Like there was this
• 22:12
  time that I really wanted to drink and I chose not to. And if
• 22:15
  you say that in front of a group of colleagues, you're like, WHOA,
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  you were trying to drink during that And that's like not the reaction they're
• 22:22
  looking for. The reaction they're looking for is the group of people saying congratulations,
• 22:26
  that was a huge milestone. I know it must have been tough,
• 22:29
  and so they can sort of have that opportunity to receive acknowledgment for the success
• 22:33
  that it was without the judgment that would come from the context in which that
• 22:37
  decision may have been made right where I think other people might miss the important
• 22:41
  part. And and you know, I think understandably, like if you're if
• 22:44
  you were like a surgeon, who is like, you know, I was
• 22:45
  going to pull my glass, my bottle of vodka out right before the surgeon
• 22:48
  I decided not to, and everyone's like, you have a bottle of vodka
• 22:52
  in your desk right, like, but I didn't, though, So understandable
• 22:57
  that they would get a lot more out of this group of people willing to
• 23:00
  acknowledge that as a victory for them. Yeah. Absolutely. People can also
• 23:04
  get a person assigned to them, which is they're called a sponsor. You've
• 23:07
  probably heard some version of that. And that person who has been successful in
• 23:11
  the program, and the person with the sponsor can turn to their sponsor for
• 23:15
  support whenever they need it, whenever they need some guidance around something, whenever
• 23:19
  maybe they have a disclosure that can't wait until the AA meeting. There's a
• 23:23
  lot of kind of support and like almost like mentorship that happens in that relationship.
• 23:29
  Yes, and then they might feel accountable to that sponsor of like,
• 23:32
  if I fail, that means that I failed my sponsor who's like here for
• 23:37
  me, so like I want them to be proud of my successes. And
• 23:41
  then it flips so the person who's been successful under the guidance of their sponsor
• 23:47
  and through their attendance of the program, they could potentially get assigned a person
• 23:49
  that they sponsor, and then they feel responsible for that person's success and they
• 23:53
  feel accountable to continue to demonstrate the success so that that person sees them as
• 24:00
  a I can do this too, because my sponsor has you know, they're
• 24:03
  going through this and they're being successful, and so then the sponsor has that
• 24:07
  sort of sense of responsibility and ownership over somebody else. And so there's a
• 24:11
  really tight, like super little small, but I mean it's a really important
• 24:15
  and meaningful social dynamic between those relationships. Yeah, and speaking of social dynamics,
• 24:22
  the folks that are joining this program are actually disconnecting from social groups that
• 24:25
  would enable that high rated alcohol consumption, if that's part of it, right,
• 24:29
  So they may remove themselves from those context of those situations or those people
• 24:33
  at least for the period of time while they're kind of recovering and getting some
• 24:37
  foundational skills around this, right. Doesn't mean they're cut off from them forever.
• 24:40
  It just means that they're kind of like removing themselves to build skills to
• 24:42
  go back to that ideally, And so what might happen is while they've removed
• 24:48
  themselves from the social groups, they're creating new connections with new social groups that
• 24:52
  not only enable alcohol abstinence or avoidance, but they actually can help them kind
• 24:57
  of stay out of those social activities to be in different new social activities that
• 25:02
  are alcohol free and kind of create some new learning histories around that too.
• 25:07
  Yeah. Another aspect of this is these people who are members here, they
• 25:10
  go out, as we mentioned as part of the twelve steps, they repent
• 25:12
  to the others that they feel that they have wronged. And they often do
• 25:17
  this by confronting them directly, or they might write them a letter, or
• 25:19
  they might do both of those things. But out they specifically go face to
• 25:22
  face and talk to the people that they think that they have wronged in some
• 25:26
  way in relation to their alcoholism. Yeah, and then you know, people
• 25:30
  pray a lot, are compelled to join other religious activities as part of it,
• 25:33
  which is you know, I think perfectly fine if that's something that works
• 25:37
  for you, and we'll kind of unpack some of that stuff. And then
• 25:40
  people are often recommended substitutions for their consumption habits. So figuring out some kind
• 25:44
  of replacement to fail that gap because one, you know, and we know
• 25:48
  this from like a behavioral perspective, when you remove a behavior that contacts so
• 25:52
  much reward, then you basically create this kind of like behavior vacuum, right,
• 25:59
  like the response vacuum that happens, and that's going to be filled with
• 26:03
  either that skill that you got rid of it's going to come back or some
• 26:06
  other problematic skills. So teaching some like suitable consumption habits replacement skills around this,
• 26:11
  it's going to be super important. As part of this, you got
• 26:14
  to think, like, when their solution in the past had been, you
• 26:17
  know, drink for whatever the problem that they were facing was, Now when
• 26:21
  they're facing the problem again, what are they going to do? So having
• 26:22
  something else to do is really important? And I was kind of wondering,
• 26:26
  like, would we suffer adverse consequences by comparing the damage of alcoholism to advertisements
• 26:34
  Let's find out. All right, we reached a really nice sort of segue
• 26:45
  point because we've been unpacking sort of what's going on in the alcoholics anonymous sphere,
• 26:52
  right, And again a lot of this is information many of you will
• 26:55
  have known about, but there were certainly pieces that were details that I was
• 26:59
  less clear on until I was sort of, you know, doing some specific
• 27:02
  reading on the aspect. But the critical I mean, we're a science podcast,
• 27:07
  I think as much as we are as a psychology podcast where science dissemination
• 27:10
  podcast, or at least I like to believe that that's what we do,
• 27:12
  and hopefully I am right. And so it's important then to actually dig into
• 27:18
  and evaluate what's the research say on all of this. Yeah, and really,
• 27:22
  I think a question that people would ask is does this work? And
• 27:26
  if it does work, how do we tell if it works? And you
• 27:27
  know, it might seem like an obvious answer or an obvious approach, like
• 27:32
  maybe people are drinking less, or they stop drinking altogether, people maintain their
• 27:36
  sobriety, or they have low levels of consumption. You might look at recidivism
• 27:40
  rates around this, and you might look at group participation and what that looks
• 27:44
  like. I mean, there's a lot of different things that might be simple
• 27:48
  I think measures or outcomes related to this, but it is quite a bit
• 27:52
  more complicated than that, I think. Yeah, and it sounds a lot
• 27:56
  simpler than it turns out that it can be for a variety of reasons that
• 27:59
  we'll get into. And let's start with the fact that there has been a
• 28:03
  lot of skepticism about the effectiveness of AA's programs pretty much since the beginning,
• 28:07
  right very early on, people have sort of wondered, but like, does
• 28:11
  this really does it really work? And I think an important feature here that
• 28:15
  we want to get into why this is so important Toward the end is that
• 28:19
  as recently as twenty fifteen, well controlled scientific studies continued to report mixed results
• 28:26
  on the outcomes of attendees of AA. Further, the extent to which it
• 28:33
  might work was so unclear that it was basically opaque. I mean, and
• 28:37
  what I mean by that is like you could not tell if there was anything
• 28:42
  that worked about alcoholics anonymous what it was right, And we couldn't even tell
• 28:48
  if it worked better than doing nothing at all, better than other intervention programs,
• 28:52
  better than medication, better than therapy, was it worse than those?
• 28:56
  It was really difficult, and most the studies were really all over the place.
• 29:00
  You had some that said it was worse than some that said it was
• 29:03
  better, right, which I think you know, when you're talking about something
• 29:07
  that you're trying to gather evidence for, that doesn't sound like evidence because it's
• 29:11
  like your answers to a question could be multiple and and that you know,
• 29:15
  I mean, we already know that from just like a basic human behavior standpoint,
• 29:18
  that you know, there's not a one size fits all type of circumstance.
• 29:22
  But if we're talking about like a pretty consistent effect, it doesn't It
• 29:26
  didn't look like we were seeing that just yet. And what we found was
• 29:30
  that most research looked at how people who joined AA achieved sobriety. But that
• 29:34
  in itself is a complicated question. What does that mean? Is it are
• 29:37
  we talking about sobriety for one day? Are we talking about that they only
• 29:41
  drink alcohol and moderated amounts at irregular intervals? Does it mean complete abstinence and
• 29:47
  if so, for how long? And what we actually kind of found was
• 29:49
  that h or what the studies found was that most of these studies looked at
• 29:52
  relatively short windows. We're talking three to six months was a pretty common measure,
• 29:56
  and it was all self reported, which again and there's some issues with
• 30:00
  self report data in general, but kind of as we unpack this, those
• 30:03
  are some things that we have to look at from the skeptical side, going
• 30:07
  okay, but still, what does this mean? What does this look like?
• 30:08
  And how are we gathering these data exactly right and like? And how
• 30:14
  to what extent can we accept the reports that we're given as being good accurate
• 30:19
  reports. If someone feels really strongly about alcoholics anonymous, whether or not they've
• 30:25
  been successful, maybe they contacted a piece of success that resulted in one really
• 30:30
  substantial meaningful change for them, And even though they didn't maintain their sobriety,
• 30:34
  they wanted to look good. And so they're asked, did this work for
• 30:38
  you? Are you sober? They might say, I'm sober enough to say
• 30:44
  yes, right, I'm not as drunk as I have ever been, so
• 30:48
  yes, let's go with us, you know, sure, And so I
• 30:52
  think you could imagine that that would be the case if they don't have another
• 30:55
  way to like really clearly determine those sorts of things. And so there's a
• 30:59
  lot of different used to ask these questions and try and determine the effectiveness of
• 31:03
  this. Some research looked at how long it maintained but long compared to what
• 31:07
  like how long they maintained sobriety through AA compared to like using pharmaceuticals for their
• 31:14
  sobriety, how long they maintained it compared to other therapies, how long it
• 31:18
  maintained compared to just controlling it on your own, like there were those might
• 31:22
  be very different comparisons to make that some of them would show a less robust
• 31:27
  comparison and others might show a huge difference in comparison. Right, and so
• 31:33
  It's like, how well did people maintain their alcoholism when they also then picked
• 31:40
  up doing like heroin Like not right? You know, so heroin bad intervention,
• 31:45
  but we won't call it heroin. We'll just call not AA, right,
• 31:49
  And those are some complications, I mean some other ones too, And
• 31:52
  I think it's important to note that the research up until this time was that
• 31:56
  was favorable for AA was generally self report, self select and conducted by groups
• 32:00
  who were generally biased toward AA, like they actually found those programs to be
• 32:07
  really helpful and they actually had like a particular leaning to that. Now on
• 32:10
  the other side of that, research against was also generally self reported, self
• 32:15
  selected, but it was conducted by people who didn't really care about the outcome
• 32:19
  for AA or like wasn't really in favor. So you can see kind of
• 32:22
  how biases might show up in this space and in that regard makes it really
• 32:28
  complicated to kind of rifle through the results of the studies that have been done
• 32:30
  so far. Now, recall that I said that this was up until until
• 32:35
  about twenty fifteen, But in twenty twenty things changed. The most systematic and
• 32:39
  largest meta analyzes like ever conducted to date was published that both weeded out weaker
• 32:45
  studies and included a lot more studies that were of sort of higher scientific rigor.
• 32:52
  And the conclusion was drama all right, AA was some effective. So
• 33:00
  in these about fifteen to twenty five percent of people remain abstinate in non AA
• 33:06
  groups compared to twenty two to thirty seven percent and AA. So let me
• 33:10
  just say those numbers again, About fifteen to twenty five percent versus people in
• 33:15
  AA was twenty two to thirty seven percent, which is higher. I mean,
• 33:20
  yes, that's not a slam dunk. That's not like one hundred percent
• 33:22
  of people. It's not even fifty percent of people, but it is higher.
• 33:24
  Yeah, it almost reads it's like it's better than nothing. Yeah.
• 33:28
  And these were in direct comparison to pretty much everything besides AA. So this
• 33:32
  was like nothing. It may have been other intervention programs that may have been
• 33:37
  pharmaceuticals, but it was like AA compared to all the other things. Yeah.
• 33:42
  So I mean that's promising at least, But again, I think there
• 33:45
  is the difficulty in how we're studying this. I mean, consider those who
• 33:50
  are approached to participate. If we are already being successful, then they might
• 33:53
  be more likely to agree to participate, and the pressure of participating in research
• 33:58
  might further influence them to gain and maintain sobriety. So there is kind of
• 34:01
  like that eatrogenic effect of the study that shows up and produces that type of
• 34:07
  outcome, right, Like, Hey, I did a study, I said
• 34:08
  I was good. I want to keep that up. But people who are
• 34:10
  struggling to maintain sobriety may be less likely to want to participate in studies because
• 34:15
  maybe they're embarrassed about it, maybe they're not at the stage where they're disclosing,
• 34:19
  maybe they haven't hit that step yet and they're they're not really prepared to
• 34:22
  do that. And because of that, questions that specifically ask about drinking may
• 34:25
  not get answered. Or people who are still drinking but still participating in these
• 34:30
  programs are very unlikely to participate in studies like this. And generally speaking,
• 34:35
  they want to have some kind of randomized assignments for people who are and who
• 34:38
  are not participating in AA so that they can weed out like what other elements
• 34:44
  may have brought them there. Right, If it's randomized, then you should
• 34:46
  have an even mix of people with high and low motivations, and like variety
• 34:51
  of circumstances in each group. That's really difficult to do. They did have
• 34:54
  some studies that managed to pull that off, but it's important to consider that.
• 34:59
  Let's say someone ended up in a control group. You can't ethically or
• 35:05
  even practically ask the people in the control group not to seek help for their
• 35:08
  drinking right, and that could include them using AA if they wanted to do
• 35:13
  that right. So you might then say, like they're in the control group
• 35:15
  and they're like, yeah, but I'm not going to wait around and like
• 35:19
  let this continue destroying my life. I want to take action and do something
• 35:22
  about it, and they might even go join AA as a way to do
• 35:24
  it. How would you how do you control for that? You can't it
• 35:29
  would be ethical and inappropriate. Also, there are people who who were in
• 35:32
  the AA group who then chose not to attend AA and therefore it went undetected
• 35:37
  by the study. So how would they account for a lack of success when
• 35:40
  they're not part of the pool anymore, even though they're not being successful,
• 35:45
  even though they were assigned to that. So it makes it difficult then to
• 35:49
  be really clear on like what exactly was going on and the range, so
• 35:53
  that the number we gave you, those are sort of like the overall outcomes.
• 35:59
  The the actual outcomes did differ quite a bit from study to study,
• 36:02
  right, And I think one thing too to account for is that we are
• 36:06
  talking about and this is true for just about any sort of like drug counseling
• 36:10
  type of space or substance abuse type of space where recidivism rates are fairly high
• 36:17
  or relapse rates are very high. Right. So, so like I think,
• 36:22
  you know, when if you hear the number, like you know,
• 36:24
  twenty two to thirty seven percent, and you're thinking that's a pretty low number.
• 36:29
  Yeah, that's a pretty low number, but that number, those low
• 36:31
  rates of success compared to relapse are pretty consistent among most addiction programs. Just
• 36:37
  they vary, they vary, right, But there are typically pretty low success
• 36:42
  rates in general because relapse rates can be so high as a general rule.
• 36:45
  So I just want to kind of orient everybody to that as well as we
• 36:49
  start to explore some of the other things, and we'll talk more about those
• 36:52
  data in those specific context but I think it's important to kind of give a
• 36:54
  little bit of frame on that too. I think that's fair, and I
• 36:58
  also think it's you know, when we talk numbers like this, I think
• 37:00
  we sometimes forget like these are people in their lives, right, and we
• 37:04
  want to acknowledge and celebrate every life that is improved by a successful intervention is
• 37:09
  important and that it matters. So it's like just to saying that, like,
• 37:14
  yeah, but it wasn't you know, as many people, and we
• 37:16
  don't know what the factors around that always were. But the people who were
• 37:20
  successful, like when it was a larger number, like that matters, Like
• 37:22
  it is important even if it's not, like as I said, it's not
• 37:25
  a slam dung. It wasn't everybody who was able to work their way through
• 37:29
  it. But any success where we can find it, we want to acknowledge
• 37:31
  like those those people like those are people. Yeah, we do want to
• 37:36
  sort of celebrate that to the extent. Yeah, absolutely. Now, some
• 37:38
  other questions as we kind of unpack the research part, are, you know,
• 37:42
  questions about what about people who attend to AA but get other support and
• 37:45
  treatment to manage their addictions. So maybe there's like what you can describe as
• 37:47
  multiple treatment effects. You know, they might see a therapist, they maybe
• 37:51
  prescribed medication, or they might do any other number of things that result in
• 37:55
  success that's completely unrelated to AA. So it might be that they're successful because
• 38:00
  they are in the AA program, but it might also be that there's an
• 38:04
  outside, extraneous active ingredient that makes it look like AA is the thing that
• 38:08
  works really well. You know. Yeah, Like let's say that they join
• 38:12
  AA, but they also joined a pickleball league and they don't drink alcohol while
• 38:16
  during, before, during, or after playing pick a ball, and so
• 38:19
  like that was actually the critical thing is they have a new group of friends
• 38:22
  that are promoting exercise that is counter like alcohol will be counterproductive to that,
• 38:27
  and they really enjoy their pickleball and so now that is actually the thing that's
• 38:30
  the most effective at helping them achieve and maintains a variety even though they are
• 38:35
  also going to AA. It could happen, Yeah, it could absolutely.
• 38:38
  Pickleball is the new intervention. I think many people swear by the effectiveness of
• 38:44
  AA for themselves, and there are plenty of success stories out there. So
• 38:47
  what we're just trying to do is like say, most more than anything,
• 38:52
  how difficult it is to impact the research here and to conduct the research right.
• 38:57
  But it's also like those numbers are clear that this is not for everyone,
• 39:00
  and probably most important, it's very unclear what part of the program is
• 39:05
  working when it does work, right, Well, we'll need to talk about
• 39:08
  that here in just a second, right, And I think the other side
• 39:10
  too, is like this idea of effectiveness. Right, So if this were
• 39:15
  if we were pointing out like that this was a highly effective program, or
• 39:19
  if this were a highly effective program, it wouldn't have taken so long to
• 39:22
  find that out. We would have had some good scientific evidence. That is
• 39:27
  all in the fact that it's only coming out just now, finding that there
• 39:30
  is a statistically significant difference, I think we can kind of argue it's pretty
• 39:35
  damning evidence about how either the research around this was conducted or whether or not
• 39:38
  this was a highly effective program. What we're kind of leaning on here and
• 39:43
  what the studies are saying is it's modestly effective for some people sometimes, you
• 39:49
  know, and again that's not necessarily a bad thing, But I think there's
• 39:52
  difference between kind of like spelling out like explicitly, hey, this doesn't work
• 39:57
  for everybody, but this seems to work for some folks really well, So
• 40:00
  like maybe consider that versus going this is the program to go to, period,
• 40:06
  like the fact that there are court orders to go to these programs and
• 40:07
  stuff like that for a program that maybe works it close to forty percent of
• 40:14
  the time, I think is a concern that we should look at. Yeah,
• 40:17
  yeah, it's exactly. It's important to I think, understand what the
• 40:21
  major caveats are and that like a court ordered recommendation that someone do this,
• 40:27
  I think you could say there's a forty percent chance that that will be an
• 40:30
  effective, you know, strategy for that right, And even that I think
• 40:34
  is not a totally accurate characterization of what the math says. And so that's
• 40:38
  why part of what needs to what has happened, and what needs to happen
• 40:43
  is starting to understand what does and doesn't work about this, which you'll have
• 40:47
  to wait for after these ads. Okay, so let's I think unpack generally
• 41:01
  speaking, any kind of treatment addiction. What this is going to be primarily
• 41:06
  oriented around alcoholism and treatment for alcoholism, but there are aspects of this that
• 41:10
  are true for kind of anything. So let's start to unpack what works and
• 41:15
  what doesn't. Here, as a general rule, there are three kind of
• 41:17
  domains or aspects of addiction recovery that are worth taking note of there's detox,
• 41:22
  there's pharmaceuticals, and there's therapeutic support, and so I think the when it
• 41:27
  comes to alcoholism, we have to talk about this idea of detox and what
• 41:30
  that means. And detox is not a thing where you go to the local
• 41:34
  smoothie place and get like a detox smoothie to feel better. Just to be
• 41:37
  clear, okay, like that's what you're livering body and mud? Yeah,
• 41:43
  like that's a that's your body already does that? You got kidneys? What
• 41:45
  do you think of kidneys are for? Is all I'm saying. So detox,
• 41:51
  though, is a critically necessary component of any sort of addiction recovery,
• 41:54
  but it can be very dangerous, especially when it comes to alcohol. And
• 41:58
  it's rare, but people can dive alcohol withdrawal symptoms during their detox. I
• 42:01
  mean, it's I know this is not comparable, but I know that there
• 42:04
  are days when I don't have coffee in time and I feel terrible and and
• 42:09
  you know, like I mean my head hurts and like I can't it's it's
• 42:13
  it's awful. You know, I can't imagine like this level. And like
• 42:15
  I said, I'm not comparing it. I'm just saying that, like that
• 42:19
  is just a small taste of what some folks go through on like this higher
• 42:22
  intensity level. And so what this means, this detox process means. It
• 42:27
  means that it's a process that should always, without exception, be supervised by
• 42:30
  medical professionals or a team of trained medical support staff. And there are many
• 42:35
  low costs or even free programs around the country and in many countries around the
• 42:38
  world to support this detox stint that somebody has to go through, which may
• 42:43
  be anywhere from a couple of days to maybe even a couple of weeks.
• 42:45
  So I think it's really important to kind of keep that in mind, and
• 42:47
  that all depends on the severity of the substance, the substance that's being detoxed,
• 42:51
  and the severity of the addiction itself. Right. Yeah. Another stuff
• 42:55
  is pharmaceuticals, and this one is a little bit trickier. I think filling
• 42:59
  people with pills can be dangerous, and you also could essentially just substitute one
• 43:05
  addiction for another if you're not being careful. But some of the most commonly
• 43:08
  accepted drugs for alcoholism that to support achieving sobriety include naltrexone, which is designed
• 43:15
  to reduce the pleasure that is derived from drinking disulfarram I think is how you
• 43:21
  say that? People will have heard of this. The idea of this drug
• 43:23
  is that it's designed to cause nausea and discomfort which when drinking, to essentially
• 43:28
  pair drinking with like extreme nausea and distaste. And then the last one is
• 43:34
  a camper sate I think is how you say that, which is designed to
• 43:37
  suppress alcohol cravings by essentially replacing the neurologically the chemicals that would be associated with
• 43:46
  like alcohol seeking type behaviors. And so those are sort of the three different
• 43:51
  pharmaceuticals that might be prescribed to help people who are trying to kick the habit.
• 43:55
  An important piece of this, though, is to consider it depends on
• 43:59
  how people are using the alcohol right. Some abusers use it as a sleep
• 44:02
  aid, okay, and in these cases of sleep medicine is probably the best
• 44:07
  treatment option for them. Some people might use it for pain management, and
• 44:10
  so a better pain medicine possibly other medical intervention. When we're not trying to
• 44:15
  get people hooked on their hits here might be a more appropriate type of medication
• 44:20
  is to help them manage their pain in a different way, and so like
• 44:22
  it's worth considering what role the alcohol fills chemically and medically that people are using
• 44:29
  it for. That is then the thing to replace it with, because it
• 44:31
  may not be that you want something that mimics the effects of alcohol or makes
• 44:36
  it taste disgusting, because they might even fight through that if the motivation is
• 44:40
  to overcome their pain, right right, So, just I think it's it's
• 44:44
  important to understand contextually and functionally how it's being used, right absolutely. There's
• 44:49
  also that third level, which is the therapeutic support, and many people are
• 44:52
  able to successfully quit drinking by just committing to the change through some type of
• 44:58
  support. But most people need or would at least benefit from having someone to
• 45:01
  talk to, just as a general rule, not even in addictions. Right
• 45:05
  outside of that, people just generally have they benefit from having somebody to talk
• 45:08
  to who they can seek help from, and having them navigate feelings, but
• 45:10
  especially in addiction, navigating feelings and thoughts they're having around their use of substance
• 45:16
  of choice or seeking that or triggers around what might be causing those cravings or
• 45:22
  that need. And so therapy is a good idea in general for most if
• 45:25
  not all people just as a general rule, but also especially for folks who
• 45:30
  are kind of managing and kind of navigating recovery, because recovery is a long,
• 45:35
  bumpy process that is going to have a lot of u turns and detours,
• 45:38
  and having somebody to kind of help guide through that is incredibly helpful.
• 45:44
  Yeah. Okay, now we've actually we've been talking about sort of just treatment
• 45:47
  for addiction generally speaking, so we haven't actually gotten into the AA part.
• 45:52
  Okay, So coincidentally, when we're trying to figure out what parts of AA
• 45:57
  work, most people don't totally know, but a lot of the researchers have
• 46:00
  like a suggestion for what they think is probably going on, and they pretty
• 46:05
  much all independently agree on what that is. Coincidentally, AA actually has some
• 46:09
  features that are found in other forms of scientifically validated effective treatments for other types
• 46:15
  of addiction, notably identifying a replacement for consumption, which we talked about,
• 46:21
  getting a different social support group, which we've talked about, being accountable to
• 46:24
  someone else, and frequent acknowledgments for successfully maintaining new habits. This actually can
• 46:31
  include non chemical addictions to behavioral addictions, which we'll we talk about in later
• 46:37
  episodes. It's like a kind of landed on those sort of convergently outside of
• 46:43
  like the plan that they had in place. That is a thing that kind
• 46:46
  of works in general, and so will kind of work here. This has
• 46:50
  actually been supported by other research too. The number one most effective part of
• 46:53
  AA is almost certainly the social support aspect, which we have talked about in
• 46:58
  our episode about Armageddon. How humans tend to be social creatures and we need
• 47:01
  that social support, so that social support pieces. It seems like that that's
• 47:06
  the active ingredient, and that is what we're saying specifically in the AA context
• 47:09
  is extricating people from social groups and situations that tend to facilitate and encourage drinking
• 47:14
  and replacing those social groups with social groups and situations that do not include and
• 47:19
  possibly even discourage drinking and reinforce and reward those situations where you actively choose not
• 47:24
  to and the success is around that, and also the validation piece around that.
• 47:28
  So having the social group that like is aligned with your desired outcome really
• 47:34
  can make a difference here. Another important social aspect of this is that sponsor
• 47:38
  sort of mentor mentee relationship. We talked about now, it would be difficult,
• 47:43
  if not impossible, to engineer that kind of relationship dynamic that's created in
• 47:47
  the sponsor to new member relationship from AA in that is sort of like a
• 47:53
  go to the doctor they prescribe you a sponsor type thing. That probably wouldn't
• 47:57
  work very well, right, right, But what's going on here, as
• 48:00
  we mentioned, is like this is being held accountable to someone who depends on
• 48:04
  your success for their own success, and that that is plenty effective in other
• 48:08
  circumstances, right, think of like other places where this versions of this kind
• 48:14
  of exist. You see this in training for team sports can work in this
• 48:16
  way where like you're accountable to the other people on your team, or to
• 48:21
  your coach, or to someone on the team who's sort of taking you under
• 48:23
  the wing advisor. And student relationships can work this way when you go to
• 48:28
  school, and when you go to college or grad school, that someone who's
• 48:30
  sort of there who like they are then responsible for you, and so it
• 48:36
  helps keep them accountable to stay on top of their research and conducting themselves in
• 48:39
  an ethical manner. And we know that that doesn't always happen, but that
• 48:43
  is going to be true in the sponsor relationship to their mentee. Sometimes as
• 48:46
  well, like the sponsor could fall off the wagon, But it seems that
• 48:51
  and more often than not, that kind of dynamic works for both people,
• 48:54
  the person who's responsible for the new person and the person who feels accountable to
• 48:58
  their sponsor. And plenty of examples have demonstrated how effective it can be to
• 49:02
  be responsible for someone and have them depend on you as a reason to do
• 49:07
  or not to do something. Yeah, and I think of also training for
• 49:09
  the Olympics, like you've got a coach who you sort of feel obligated to
• 49:14
  them, and they feel obligated to you. So we engineer these we cut
• 49:17
  into engineer, but we create these dynamics in a lot of situations, and
• 49:22
  we find that that can be a very powerful way to motivate a particular type
• 49:28
  of behavior change that sometimes feels almost impossible when you're first doing it, when
• 49:32
  you're first training for the Olympics, or you're first picking up a brand new
• 49:36
  habit, or you're trying to kick some physical dependency to a chemical that a
• 49:40
  substance that you've used. Can feel impossible at first, but we've seen people
• 49:45
  overcome this by having that responsibility and accountability to someone who's there for them absolutely.
• 49:50
  Now, as part of this we mentioned before, there's a Christian leaning,
• 49:52
  kind of faith based approach to some of the structure of this, and
• 49:57
  that means that prayer may be included, and prayer can actually be an effective
• 50:00
  behavior change procedure for some people in some situations. I mean, there are
• 50:06
  studies on magicalmands, and what that means is is kind of like for our
• 50:09
  behavior nerds out there, Like, I think that's kind of a fun thing
• 50:13
  to explore. The problem with prayer is that it's wildly unpredictable about how effective
• 50:16
  it will ever be and can even go the opposite direction for some folks,
• 50:21
  and it's unlikely an important part of why AA works for the vast majority of
• 50:24
  folks. In and of itself, prayer does not always produce the overall outcome
• 50:30
  or reward that people expect, and so because of that, it's kind of
• 50:34
  haphazard or kind of creates almost like a I don't want to degrade the for
• 50:38
  folks that find prayer powerful, I don't want to like diminish that, but
• 50:43
  ultimately, every one of your prayers does not get reinforced, and the ones
• 50:47
  that do get reinforced or rewarded. Are kind of variable at best, and
• 50:52
  so by itself as an intervention does not work as consistently effectively as some other
• 50:58
  parts of this people people, We'll see it as a I did my time
• 51:01
  praying, now I don't have to change my behavior, right, and so
• 51:06
  that's where it can be counterproductive. So we're we're kind of now moving on.
• 51:09
  We were sort of trying to cover the spectrum of what works and what
• 51:12
  doesn't, starting with the most powerful thing, which is a change in your
• 51:15
  social structure, to the least powerful thing. And I think so prayer is
• 51:21
  kind of a wild card. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The
• 51:23
  next step in here is this expressing regret and guilt and doing appendance to others.
• 51:29
  This is likely completely ineffective. There's really no evidence that this has ever
• 51:34
  been a long term strategy for successful behavior change. Is going over rehashing all
• 51:37
  the things you've ever done wrong, right, like we've we've never seen that
• 51:42
  work anywhere else. So it's unlikely that that's actually an important part of any
• 51:45
  of the aspects of the intervention, and likely if you threw it out,
• 51:51
  not only like there would be no change and outcomes. At worst, you
• 51:54
  need to be no change, you know, so right, yeah. Another
• 51:58
  one of the last effects strategies is the sharing and hearing from other struggles as
• 52:02
  like a part of a group exercise. Right so. Twenty twenty three report
• 52:06
  suggested that as many as forty percent of new members to AA actually leave after
• 52:10
  just the first meeting because the horror stories people share are so depressing, disheartening
• 52:15
  and even traumatic to hear, and then sharing their own stories just makes people
• 52:20
  relive some of the worst and most harrowing events of their lives in gruesome detail,
• 52:23
  and this can actually motivate people to self medicate with the thing that they
• 52:27
  usually use to feel better alcohol, So they kind of leave those and they
• 52:30
  go, oh, that was so bad, I got to have a drink,
• 52:32
  And that in itself is kind of like what they found is sharing and
• 52:36
  hearing. Is it really the thing at least in the group setting, right,
• 52:38
  is not the thing that's the most that's helpful here, Like maybe having
• 52:43
  a sponsor and being able to have your feelings validated in those experience validated and
• 52:46
  stuff like that, that part might be the helpful part, But doing the
• 52:51
  sharing and hearing in the group context is not the thing that works for folks,
• 52:53
  and when that works, that often is an effective part of a therapeutic
• 52:59
  relationship with a trained therapist. Like just going over the shotgun approach to a
• 53:04
  bunch of strangers that are not trained therapists. They don't know how to react
• 53:08
  to that kind of thing. Oftentimes it's just sympathy. Sometimes it's trying to
• 53:12
  give you advice. A trained therapist as someone who knows how to engage with
• 53:16
  and direct that kind of verbal exchange so that it can be productive. These
• 53:22
  other spaces, you don't know what you're gonna get, and it can actually
• 53:24
  be very counterproductive to essentially re experience that trauma again if you don't have someone
• 53:31
  who's there to be a support. So in a therapeutic context, that might
• 53:36
  and very likely will be an aspect of it. In this context, probably
• 53:40
  dangerous, right right, Like I'd strongly actually encourage that they take that aspect
• 53:45
  of it out. The sharing can instead be things like sharing how you were
• 53:51
  faced with a situation and like this is how the choice I'm made to overcome
• 53:54
  that that whole group acknowledgement of celebrating and acknowledging your victories can be good but
• 54:00
  this whole just like, here are all the terrible things I've done and all
• 54:04
  the people I've heard can just be really horrific, right, And I imagine,
• 54:07
  I imagine there's probably been some shift on that if they're responding to people
• 54:12
  leaving, right, Like I mean, if it's a responsible program, Like
• 54:15
  if they're a responsive program, then they're going whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 54:20
  Our membership is going down, and we're noticing that people are leaving. After
• 54:22
  this first meeting, I wonder why maybe we need to kind of structure our
• 54:25
  sharing to mostly share successes or share like kind of overcoming barriers. It might
• 54:32
  not necessarily be a success on its face, but it might be just like,
• 54:36
  hey, here's how I overcame this particular issue, which is something that
• 54:39
  was historically a problem for me, And that might be a better way to
• 54:43
  go about that without having to retrigger or distress anybody else in that space.
• 54:46
  Yeah, and I don't know if they are. I would say, typically
• 54:51
  I expect any organization that's foundation is primarily religious to ignore the usually forge ahead
• 54:59
  in the absence of evidence, And so I don't know, but it's possible
• 55:05
  they did land on some effective strategies, and presumably because they worked, so
• 55:08
  it is possible. Now the last thing we'll talk about here, so arguably
• 55:14
  the least effective and probably even counterproductive part of AA is this aspect that is
• 55:21
  actually step number one in the program, and this is the imbuing people with
• 55:25
  the notion that they lack control. You would think, like, I don't
• 55:30
  even understand the logic of this one. You would think that the better strategy
• 55:35
  would try to be to empower people to believe that they can and do have
• 55:38
  the control to be able to direct their behavior in a more value driven direction.
• 55:44
  That is a very common approach to other behavior trained strategies. And the
• 55:47
  other thing that's confusing about this is this isn't even contradictory to a religious orientation,
• 55:54
  and specifically a Christian one. You can be empowered to pray to God
• 55:59
  for help with controlling your behavior or see God as delivering you to have the
• 56:04
  control to change your behavior. In many of these religious circles, they like
• 56:07
  to say God helps those who help themselves, right, and so like don't
• 56:12
  I don't even understand the logic of this piece of it, of like saying
• 56:15
  you don't have the control, but change your behavior anyway, right, well,
• 56:20
  I don't know that doesn't make any sense. So I think that that
• 56:22
  piece of it, which weirdly is like step number one in the program is
• 56:28
  shooting themselves in the foot, Like what they do have that might be effective
• 56:32
  is probably being actually tamped down by this aspect and some of the others we've
• 56:37
  mentioned, like this traumatic reliving of terrible events. Yeah, I'm wondering if
• 56:43
  like a revision to that would be more useful where it's something like it's not
• 56:46
  necessarily that's out of your control, like it is in your control, but
• 56:51
  something has happened and you've lost control, so now we're working to regain it.
• 56:55
  Or maybe a better way to say it is it's not your fault,
• 57:00
  so like you know, it's not your like and that's and that's it's not
• 57:04
  your fault and things can get better with action, right like, and that
• 57:08
  is like talking about that values based, going going forward type of piece.
• 57:12
  I think you know, by saying it's out of your control also gives people
• 57:15
  the ability to go, well, it's not my fault. It's out of
• 57:19
  control this way, and like I can't do nothing about it. I don't
• 57:22
  know why I'm just assuming this a group is in New York, but it's
• 57:25
  or New Jersey or New Jersey or whatever. Like, dude, I can't
• 57:30
  do nothing about it, you know, dude. But I was thinking about
• 57:31
  that, and I was like, I feel like a better way to go
• 57:34
  about it is saying, like, you know, you are not an alcoholic,
• 57:37
  but this is maybe you know, like thinking, I'm just thinking of
• 57:39
  like behavioral ways to say this that would be so much more empowering and building
• 57:44
  that foundation of like this, you have the strength to do this thing.
• 57:46
  You know, your your context can change. Yeah, you're not a bad
• 57:51
  person. This is not like you don't have to be this way. There
• 57:54
  are ways that you can take back the reins and choose alternatives that are different
• 58:00
  to where you're at and like get on a path that makes more sense for
• 58:04
  what you'd like your life to be. And I think that the sentiments there,
• 58:07
  I think that's the sentiment of what they're trying to say there. But
• 58:09
  I think the way they're saying it might be a problem. You know,
• 58:13
  yes, yeah exactly, yeah, because you're right that, Like I think
• 58:16
  they probably were meaning that, like you, this wasn't on you that you
• 58:22
  developed this problem. But the phrasing is like you don't have control again,
• 58:25
  is like it's counterproductive to the notion of having people gain control, right,
• 58:30
  And actually, you know, it's kind of ironic that like Bill Wilson even
• 58:35
  sort of mention or talked about like part of his inspiration was that he had
• 58:39
  lost control and then like his solution is I don't have control, And I'm
• 58:44
  like connect those dots for me, please, I'm like, right right where
• 58:49
  anyway, point being, You're right that there is probably a more productive way
• 58:52
  that we could probably phrase that, And I get that that's probably the sentiment
• 58:57
  that that we're going for, but it just seems like this is not the
• 59:00
  direction I would recommend that they take on, right, Agreed, Agreed,
• 59:02
  We've been at this so long. We do have a bit more. We'll
• 59:07
  have to do that after the ads. We love busting myths here on this
• 59:20
  show, and there are some sort of myths about AA and around AA that
• 59:24
  I think are worth unpacking. Some of them are completely wrong, some of
• 59:29
  them are a little misguided, but there's just three primary ones that I thought
• 59:32
  were kind of interesting for us to unpack. Yes, the first myth that
• 59:37
  we would like to bust is that there is no alternative to AA. There
• 59:39
  are actually several secular addiction support groups for a wide range of specific or general
• 59:45
  addiction problems, including the Secular Organizations for Sobriety, the SOS. You can
• 59:51
  find that at SOS Sobriety dot org. There's also Smart Recovery, and there's
• 59:54
  also Life Ring. There is Women for Sobriety, Rational Recovery, and and
• 1:00:00
  Moderation Management. I think that's just a small handful of what's out there.
• 1:00:04
  Those are just the ones that came up the most frequently when I was looking
• 1:00:07
  at what alternatives exist. Yeah, and they all seem to contain similar elements
• 1:00:12
  or the same elements around kind of what A has got, the same ones
• 1:00:15
  that are effective for achieving and maintaining sobriety, but they also go forward without
• 1:00:19
  having that religious orientation. So if you're somebody who is worried about that and
• 1:00:22
  you're seeking that help, then just know there are options that do not have
• 1:00:25
  that religious kind of bent to it. Yeah, and there are also other
• 1:00:30
  religious based groups that just are not AA, that are designed to help support
• 1:00:35
  achieving and maintaining sobriety. So, like if you did want to go to
• 1:00:37
  the religious route, but didn't like what they were doing to AA. You
• 1:00:39
  could try some of those other religious organizations that support that. Like, there
• 1:00:44
  are tons of options this specific myth was. I mean, there are plenty
• 1:00:49
  of people who have propagated this, but one in particular, Jordan Peterson,
• 1:00:52
  was asked why AA was successful, and he said, well, there's nothing
• 1:00:55
  else out there. I'm like, wow, I don't hard to imagine wrapping
• 1:00:59
  my head around just saying something so blatantly wrong without even taking a second to
• 1:01:02
  think about it. But I mean that's kind of his whole thing. So
• 1:01:06
  yeah, that's why he's the mortal enemy of the show. Yeah, real
• 1:01:08
  on brand for him anyway. So there are alternatives to AA, both religious
• 1:01:14
  and secular. There's actually many of them, all of them free, all
• 1:01:17
  of them open to people who need to attend, So like, look into
• 1:01:21
  some options. We mentioned some, but there's plenty out there. You do
• 1:01:24
  not have to go with AA if that's not your particular orientation, and for
• 1:01:29
  some people it will be, and for some people it won't. Well,
• 1:01:30
  and on top of that, we'll talk about this in the next episode.
• 1:01:34
  For sure, there are some healthcare programs in the United States that have opened
• 1:01:38
  up accessibility to treatment programs that might be more specific to facilities and not necessarily
• 1:01:45
  AA or like an outsourced nonprofit program. There might be some inpatient programs that
• 1:01:50
  might work pretty well too, so that include like things like detox pharmaceuticals and
• 1:01:53
  stuff like that. But we'll talk more about kind of how that showed up
• 1:01:57
  in the next episode. Another myth is that total abstinence is critical for success,
• 1:02:01
  and that's that's just not the case. Yeah, I mean, and
• 1:02:06
  that's a pretty tall order. Alcohol is ubiquitous in our world, much to
• 1:02:08
  my personal chagrin. Like we've talked about how I feel about alcohol on the
• 1:02:15
  show plenty enough, and the thing is, like I acknowledge that it's really
• 1:02:20
  difficult to say you need to go all the way the opposite direction and completely
• 1:02:24
  cut this out of your life. Most people navigate life managing their consumption of
• 1:02:30
  alcohol at totally reasonable levels, right tye. Trading this down to complete zero
• 1:02:36
  maybe a lot harder than just moderating their intake instead, right to be fairs.
• 1:02:40
  For some people, they suck at moderation. I'm actually one of those,
• 1:02:44
  Like I tend to be, like, if I'm going to do something,
• 1:02:45
  I go all in on it. If I'm like, yeah, I'm
• 1:02:49
  going to if I'm going to try dieting, I'm like, I'm not going
• 1:02:51
  to eat for a whole week, you know, Like that's like no exceptions
• 1:02:55
  type person. And I struggle with moderation, so I'm actually a little a
• 1:02:59
  lot better at all nothing type deals. But for a lot of people,
• 1:03:01
  I think moderation is a more effective strategy to use. I think about this
• 1:03:07
  a lot. My brother has never had alcohol, and he avoids it because
• 1:03:12
  he's worried about addiction and he's worried about family history and stuff. So he's
• 1:03:15
  like, for him, abstinence, total abstinence is very easy for him.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah, that makes sense. He's like, no, thanks, don't want
• 1:03:22
  it, right. We have different views on that. I think growing up
• 1:03:24
  in the straight edge and a straight edge hardcore scene made it very easy to
• 1:03:28
  abstain. But you also see people who, like the people who are no
• 1:03:30
  longer straight edge from the scene that I grew up in, had a harder
• 1:03:35
  time with moderation once they decided not to be straight edge. Unfortunate exactly right.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, there's like a lack of opportunity to practice, and it might
• 1:03:42
  be more effective to actually just help reshape people's relationship to alcohol rather than trying
• 1:03:46
  to eliminate it altogether. Right, And I think that a lot of programs
• 1:03:51
  are specifically oriented to instead moderation and like a slowly tight trading down to a
• 1:03:55
  lower level than they are to going you know, complete culture or just even
• 1:04:00
  gearing toward abstinence. Total abstinence does not always have to be the goal.
• 1:04:04
  Like I said, for some people it is. I would be one of
• 1:04:06
  them. It sounds like your brother is one of them, and that's totally
• 1:04:10
  fine. But I think that is not always the most appropriate route to try
• 1:04:14
  and go, as you said with the example like straight edge kids, like
• 1:04:15
  people who do go totally abstinent, if they fall off the wagon, they
• 1:04:19
  fall hard, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it is not like oh
• 1:04:24
  I had the one drink. It's like, well I had the drink,
• 1:04:26
  may as well do the whole keg while I'm here. Great, I got
• 1:04:29
  to make up for lost time. Yeah, So it's it can be.
• 1:04:31
  It can be difficult. So I think sometimes working on moderation is a much
• 1:04:34
  better strategy. Yeah. Absolutely. And the final mith that we're going to
• 1:04:39
  bust is that it's about the serenity prayer. So the serendity prayer can actually
• 1:04:42
  be traced back to the wisdom of ancient philosophers. It's not just a uniquely
• 1:04:45
  AA thing. The serrending your prayer is actually very common in AA. It's
• 1:04:49
  so common you might actually think that they wrote it. So A actually have
• 1:04:54
  assumed that it was written by any number of ancient philosophers because this sounds so
• 1:04:57
  wise and you'll actually recognize it. Quote, God grant me the serenity to
• 1:05:01
  accept the things that I cannot change, courage to change the things that I
• 1:05:04
  can, and wisdom to know the difference. End quote. So you've probably
• 1:05:08
  heard some some you've either heard that or you've heard some version of that somewhere.
• 1:05:13
  Yeah. Now they have sort of talked about and written about the like,
• 1:05:15
  oh, these were these you know, these ancient famous philosophers back in
• 1:05:20
  the day. Actually these words were written by German American and Christian ethicist and
• 1:05:26
  theologian Reinhald Nieber. That's my tempt at that. That was good, Thank
• 1:05:31
  you, who lived eighteen ninety two to nineteen seventy one. His original nineteen
• 1:05:35
  thirty two prayer, just three years before AA was founded, was slightly different
• 1:05:41
  but pretty close. So as you said, the prayer that most people hear
• 1:05:44
  is quote, God grant me the surrenderedy to accept the things I cannot change,
• 1:05:46
  the courage the change the things that I can, and the wisdom to
• 1:05:49
  know the difference. What Nieber actually wrote O Nieber was quote God give us
• 1:05:55
  grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change
• 1:05:59
  the things that be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the
• 1:06:02
  other. End quote. Yeah, it's a little bit different. But he
• 1:06:04
  also wrote hundreds or even thousands of such prayers and did not seem to think
• 1:06:09
  that this was a particularly special prayer. So could you imagine that where it's
• 1:06:13
  like this thing is getting used as like a hallmark for a program, and
• 1:06:16
  this guy's like, yeah, I don't even remember writing that. Yeah,
• 1:06:18
  that was basically what happens too. I've done that, I've written stuff,
• 1:06:23
  and I'm like, I don't even remember saying that or writing that, So
• 1:06:26
  I see how it's happen. The YMCA also borrowed his prayer in nineteen thirty
• 1:06:30
  six, but they put their own spin on it. So their version goes,
• 1:06:32
  quote, oh God give us courage to change what must be altered surrounding
• 1:06:36
  to you, to accept what cannot be helped and insight to know the one
• 1:06:40
  from the other end quote, so you can see that. Like his sentiment,
• 1:06:44
  I think really registered with a lot of people, and they really like
• 1:06:46
  the sort of I think the cadence of it and the expression of the theme.
• 1:06:51
  There's like a little bit of like a almost comedic quippiness to it,
• 1:06:56
  sure, and I think resonates with people, but it's so couched in like
• 1:07:00
  religious orientation that I think anybody who is of that faith is going to hear
• 1:07:03
  it and be like, awesome, love this so much anyway, just a
• 1:07:08
  fun thing to know is like that was actually written in nineteen thirty two,
• 1:07:11
  just barely preceding the founding of AA itself. I actually really like the sentiment,
• 1:07:15
  like the idea of like like thinking about like okay, like something's got
• 1:07:19
  to change and I've got to be brave enough to change it. Some things
• 1:07:23
  I can't change, and I've got to be able to accept that, and
• 1:07:26
  I got to be able to know the difference between the two. Like that
• 1:07:28
  is actually like a pretty decent outlook on life, you know, I think
• 1:07:31
  it's actually pretty great. But yeah, it doesn't work for me as like
• 1:07:34
  a driving motivator, like I'm not going to go, Okay, here we
• 1:07:38
  go, but like it's it's a nice thought kind of I put that on
• 1:07:41
  the same pedestal as like something like where Kurt Vonnegat would say, you know,
• 1:07:45
  and we are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell
• 1:07:48
  you any different, you know, Like to me, it's like just kind
• 1:07:51
  of like a nice a nice like orientation to kind of like a philosophy or
• 1:07:56
  a thought that you can kind of get behind, you know. Yeah,
• 1:07:59
  totally. Well, this one has gone quite long, which is no surprise.
• 1:08:01
  We're unpacking the behemoth that is AA, so we kind of knew it
• 1:08:05
  was going to be a bigger one. But I think that's what we more
• 1:08:09
  or less have to say about AA. There's obviously a lot more unpacking that
• 1:08:13
  could happen, but you know, I think that for more we've covered essentially
• 1:08:16
  what we wanted to cover to be able to talk about how this affects people
• 1:08:20
  psychologically, what the alternatives are, what we think is going on in some
• 1:08:25
  of these and what the research says. And I hope that we have accomplished
• 1:08:28
  that sufficiently today. I think the only thing I would say to end that
• 1:08:31
  would be that if you find a helpful or have found a helpful we'd love
• 1:08:35
  to hear from you and love to hear your experience or thoughts on that.
• 1:08:39
  I don't think there's anything wrong with finding something useful if it improves your quality
• 1:08:43
  of life and moves you in a direction that is away from the things that
• 1:08:45
  were harmful for you or other people. So, like you know, while
• 1:08:49
  this is not one hundred percent effective, if you have found it effective,
• 1:08:53
  then that's really truly what matters. Absolutely, if your quality of life has
• 1:08:57
  improved because of this, then by all means, do this. Yeah,
• 1:09:00
  do the thing that works for you. If it's a great if it's something
• 1:09:02
  else, we'd love to hear that too. You should reach out to us
• 1:09:04
  directly. You can email us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can
• 1:09:10
  also reach us on the other social media platforms and share your stories. We're
• 1:09:14
  happy to hear those. We would like to acknowledge you and others for the
• 1:09:16
  victories that they've had and help point you towards you know, the resources that
• 1:09:20
  we mentioned earlier for those of you who are looking for those. So this
• 1:09:24
  is a thing that people want to help people with this particular issue, both
• 1:09:28
  around alcohol and other substance abuse addictions. And we'll talk even further about some
• 1:09:32
  of these down the road as we go, because there's so much to unpack
• 1:09:35
  with addiction and we're barely we're sort of just barely into our journey so far,
• 1:09:40
  but you know, we've taken a step or two. We're moving.
• 1:09:42
  It's coming along right. Absolutely. We do want to recommend some things,
• 1:09:46
  but first I'd like to acknowledge that if you would like to support us on
• 1:09:49
  this show, as I said, you can join us on Patreon. If
• 1:09:51
  you do that, you get all kinds of bonus content such as I'm about
• 1:09:55
  to read a list of people who have done this. So our group of
• 1:09:57
  awesome people includes Mike, m Megan, Laila, Mike t, Justin,
• 1:10:00
  Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
• 1:10:05
  Christy, and Michelle. Thank you all so much. You are just
• 1:10:09
  we really appreciate you so like, so much, like so much more than
• 1:10:12
  you know so much. Also, i'd like to thank my team, the
• 1:10:15
  people who help make this show happen. Writing and fact checking from Shane and
• 1:10:18
  myself audio production and engineering from Justin and our social media coordinator is em O
• 1:10:25
  Wilson. Think there's anything else I said, reach out to us, join
• 1:10:28
  us, support us. Oh, otherwise, you can support us as you
• 1:10:30
  can pick up merch from our merch store. You can leave us a rating
• 1:10:32
  and a review, give us those nice five stars. It gives you the
• 1:10:35
  warm fuzzies when you do that. You can tell a friend and be like,
• 1:10:38
  hey, check out this awesome podcast. You will be so happy that
• 1:10:41
  I told you and we'll be even better friends. And that is universally the
• 1:10:44
  effect that that has. Yeah, exactly, So if you want better friendships,
• 1:10:47
  tell everybody about us anyway. Is there anything that I forgot or anything
• 1:10:51
  that you'd like to add before? We talk about recommending some things? No,
• 1:10:55
  I think that covers it recommendations. I'm recommending a movie that came out
• 1:11:08
  I want to say twenty twenty three. This is called The Creator starring John
• 1:11:12
  David Washington, Jimmy chan Ken, watonnab Be. I'm sorry if I'm butchering
• 1:11:15
  that. Sergil Simpson, Madeline Unit of Oils, and Alison Janney. This
• 1:11:20
  one was nominated for but I don't think won an Academy Award for Best Visual
• 1:11:26
  Effects. They did some. It is an incredible looking movie. How would
• 1:11:30
  I describe this? Did you see this one? I didn't, but I
• 1:11:32
  saw some of the marketing stuff, which was pretty cool. Yeah, this
• 1:11:35
  is a movie about the future of Ai where AI is trying to live in
• 1:11:42
  harmony alongside humans and many humans want to basically declare war on AI. And
• 1:11:48
  so it's kind of about some humans stories at the center of that war,
• 1:11:54
  but it plays out in the context of the war of humans versus AI and
• 1:11:59
  the humans allied with the AI. It's kind of an interesting wrinkle in there
• 1:12:02
  too. So it's a pretty interesting movie and I just visually very incredible.
• 1:12:09
  I was really impressed with the effects. The performances were all really good.
• 1:12:12
  I enjoyed it. So I'm recommending checking out the creator. But at the
• 1:12:15
  time, I believe this is currently streaming on Hulu that we're recording this,
• 1:12:20
  it's possible that this is available on other platforms. It's a twentieth century Fox
• 1:12:25
  thing, so maybe it'll be on Disney Plus or maybe it already is.
• 1:12:28
  But yeah, so that's the creator. Yeah, it's on my list to
• 1:12:30
  watch. I heard it was actually pretty decent, So yeah, it was
• 1:12:33
  good. My recommendation is a movie that just came out in theaters and I
• 1:12:36
  think it is a blast. As a child of the eighties, I cannot
• 1:12:40
  help but love so much this franchise, and that is the new Ghostbusters movie,
• 1:12:45
  and it's called Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. So this is a direct sequel to
• 1:12:49
  Afterlife. If you've seen Afterlife, that one takes place in Oklahoma, which
• 1:12:54
  is very different for a Ghostbusters movie because all of them take place in New
• 1:12:57
  York. Frozen Empire it's all back in New York. And I think this
• 1:13:01
  one introduces some really cool concepts that are a little bit different than what we've
• 1:13:05
  seen so far. So this one introduces the concept of like what if the
• 1:13:09
  Ghostbusters had financial backing. Oh, for those of you who hadn't seen Afterlife,
• 1:13:15
  Winston is a multi billionaire. Now he started a company and like has
• 1:13:18
  a global kind of like business, and now he is bankrolling the Ghostbusters,
• 1:13:24
  including research initiatives. So this movie introduces things like the Engineers. So they
• 1:13:30
  are Ghostbusters that are not outgoing and busting ghosts. They're in a research lab,
• 1:13:34
  studying ghosts, studying technology, developing new things for the Ghostbusters, and
• 1:13:40
  I think that's one of the coolest things because it gives them an opportunity to
• 1:13:44
  do some really creative things that you couldn't do in the originals because you only
• 1:13:46
  had four guys who were fired from college busting ghosts. Right, So really
• 1:13:51
  cool Concepts does a really good job of tying it back to the old movies.
• 1:13:56
  The main cast from the original movies play a huge role in this,
• 1:13:59
  Winston being bank rolling financier and Ray Stance Dan Aykroyd's character being like a really
• 1:14:04
  great consultant for the new Ghostbusters. And man, it was a lot of
• 1:14:09
  fun. It was just so fun and just such a funny movie. And
• 1:14:13
  Paul Rudd is a great Ghostbuster and just the kids in it are really good.
• 1:14:16
  Slimer's back, it's it's everything you want a Ghostbusters movie to be.
• 1:14:19
  You know. Wow, that's lovely. Yeah, awesome. All right,
• 1:14:23
  Well we went very long on this one, but that was great. I'm
• 1:14:27
  looking forward to seeing that movie. I'm glad that you're giving it your thumbs
• 1:14:30
  up because that makes me want to see it even more. Yay, I
• 1:14:32
  think we should say, oh goodbye. Is anything else we need to add
• 1:14:34
  or anything I forgot before we wrap up today. Nope, that's it for
• 1:14:38
  today, all right, thank you all for listening. This is Abraham and
• 1:14:41
  this is Shane. We're out. So yeah, you've been listening to Why
• 1:14:45
  We Do What We Do. You can learn more about this and other episodes
• 1:14:48
  by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we
• 1:14:54
  hope you have an awesome day