AA: Who It Helps, Who It Harms, Who It Kills, & Why

By Edward W. Wilson

This Guide offers a research based description of the various personality types which respond well to AA, are harmed by AA, and/or destroyed by AA. It is based on over 30 years of research and the practical experience of over 500 clients and 300 of their spouses, family, partners and/or friends. It offers a research based approach to helping clients at whatever level of self-medication with alcohol they are experiencing. It also resolves the "disease' vs "choice" debate with a far more accurate "symptom" model which allows clinicians to effectively individualize treatment with such proven measures as CBT, assertiveness training, Naltrexone support, motivational interviewing and other effective measures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward W. Wilson
• Release date: Jun 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463348581

Edward W. Wilson

Edward W. Wilson, Ph.D., has worked with both Dr. Loevinger’s Model and Measure of Ego Development and clients who are self-medicating with drugs and alcohol since 1982. An award winning writer, he is also the co-founder – with Dr. Mary Ellen Barnes – of Your Empowering Solutions, a research and outcome based program for individuals and couples who are self-medicating with alcohol.

Book preview

AA

AA

Who it Helps, Who it Harms, Who it Kills, and Why

Edward W. Wilson, Ph.D

Your Empowering Solutions Press

AA

Who It Helps, Who It Harms, Who It Kills

& Why

Written by Edward W. Wilson, Ph.D.

ISBN: 978-0-578-52229-6

Your Empowering Solutions Press

Calabasas, California

Copyright ©2019 by Edward W. Wilson

Printed in the U.S.A.

By PCM Printing

Las Vegas, Nevada

---

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. Names, characters and places are fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the millions of people who think that there is something wrong with them because AA doesn’t work, and who have struggled in vain to find help which, in large part, doesn’t exist.

---

Please, it’s not you – it’s the 12-Step culture that has kidnapped what would otherwise be an appropriately addressed problem with platitudes, misinformation, humiliation, and degradation.

---

Rest assured, you are correct – it isn’t you, it is them.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

COMMENTARY

PREFACE

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

ADDENDUM 1

ADDENDUM II

SCT Resources for

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My work with Dr. Jane Loevinger’s measure and model of ego development began with psychologist Sue Hasting in Minneapolis with whom I rated and interpreted over 4,000 protocols between 1982 and 1990.

Researching the connections between AA and degrees of maturity initially occurred during my graduate work at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota with the encouragement of Human Development Program Directors Marilyn Frost, Ph.D., and Priscilla Herbison, J.D., Ph.D.

Further refinement of this model included my 15 years of work with Mary Ellen Barnes, Ph.D. with additional encouragement from author Gabrielle Glaser and past S.M.A.R.T. Recovery President, and Practical Recovery founder Tom Horvath, Ph.D.

Thanks too to Judy Soled who has provided office space, encouragement, proof-reading and printing expertise.

Many other individuals and clients have also contributed their comments, concerns, and questions and their confidentiality is, of course, respected here.

COMMENTARY

For more than 80 years, Americans have been led to believe that the only solution to excess drinking is the faith-and-abstinence based program of Alcoholics Anonymous. There is no evidence for this. Its one-size-fits-all approach helps only a slim percentage of the people who try it. Dr. Ed Wilson has helped treat clients with alcohol-use disorder with evidence-based methods for decades. In AA: Who it Helps, Who it Harms, Who it Kills, & Why, he offers clear guidance for problem drinkers who seek scientific tools to change their unhealthy habits.

– Gabrielle Glaser, Her Best-Kept Secret

PREFACE

The psychological development of children is well studied. We know what children at different developmental levels can accomplish, and just as importantly, what they cannot accomplish.

The psychological development of adults has been studied much less, and the emerging knowledge that psychologists have on this subject has not become widely known. It doesn’t take a psychologist to know, for instance, that a situation that might lead to a temper tantrum in a two year old, should not