I just finished reading The 12-Step Buddhist by Darren Littlejohn. I'm not an addict, have never been to an AA or NA meeting, and haven't read the core material of either AA or NA.
So why am I interested in this? I have come into contact, over the last several years, with people in those programs who have also reached out to include Buddhism in their recovery practice. The Chrisitian terminology/religiousity of the AA and NA programs leaves many people cold and out in the cold. Indeed many AAs, though not so much NAs, claim that a belief in a Creator-God is so essential that the program crumbles without it.
The reality is that those programs are not successful for lots of people, whether or not the Creator-God element is included. AA members account for much less than 5% of those people who have addiction problems and hover at about 1 million despite growing population and increasing addiction. The recidivism in AA programs is hgh, but can't be calculated. Most members don't stay sober for a lifetime, though some return after failure. AA and NA are not the unmitigated successes claimed by program champions.
As Darren frames it, AA and NA programs are incomplete solutions for many people. Many addicts need both therapy and a spiritual path outside of AA in addition to the AA program to stay sober. Many AA members are dismissive of therapy, and the opportunity for spiritual growth witin AA is stunted by the limited God myth embedded in its dogma.
Darren found a way to reconcile and even integrate the 12-step program with therapy and his Buddhist practice.
The AA program has some compelling elements, but many are repetitive, and tied to the notion that petitioning a deity somehow magically changes things. For many people, prayer doesn't work at all. And when it fails to work, people's hopes are dashed again, and the failure becomes more data confirming their hopelessness.
I'm going to mull this over during the next few months to see if I can extract the helpful elements without including the ones that are either phrased poorly or have dubious value. The AA purist will flinch. To him, the 12-steps are divinely sacrosanct, and questioning them is undermining the efficacy of the entire framework. As a skeptic, I would argue that the framework is somewhat ineffective anyhow. The AA program is not inerrant. The Bible is not inerrant. Science is not inerrant. Buddhism is not inerrant. No concept is inerrant. We as human beings have always had to find our way in the murk of competing ideas. And many of us have had the courage to accept that, and proceed with exploring what does work, even in the uncertain haze of reality we actually experience.