Addiction makes you crave something in an irrational way.
Logic and thinking are not the proper tools to make you stop the craving.
Look at the 12 steps program of AA, there are no "thinking" or "logic" steps.
Recovering from addiction, as well as getting addicted, are mostly social and biological processes.
You might want to read about the Rat Park experiment, here's a quick link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/substance-use-disorder/what...
12 step programs work for about 40% of the people who participate, and a large portion of that success is attributed to the availability of such programs. [2]
I believe logic has it’s place. Like a 12 step program, it won’t work for everyone, but there is a place for rational approaches to treatment of addictions.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_...
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-livin...
My knowledge of them is very limited to pop culture (like its depiction in TV shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Grey's Anatomy), but their depictions always seemed annoying to me because they are all about god, submission to a "higher power", and "the original sin"/"flawed humans" in one way or the other. If you are actively atheist, you will find this approach off-putting and it won't help you.
Reading their brochure, however, it seems they are effectively not a 12-step program, since they ditch or ignore most of the steps (a must if they want to remain religion-neutral, since about half the steps mention god, a higher power or prayer in one way or the other).
From their brochure:
> "What about the 12 Steps? How can you be A.A. without following them? A.A. co-founder Bill W.’s thinking evolved on many issues [...] he wrote that, “so long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most antisocial, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholic Aonymous group has been formed [...] these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so!”"
That's a very lax definition. It's very hard to measure effectiveness with this...
I'm not sure how standard AA can help an atheist, since about half their 12-steps mention god, submitting to a higher power or praying. If atheists say it helps them, I believe them -- who am I to doubt it? But I don't understand the principle at work.
Being willing to alter your deepest held beliefs predisposes you to altering other things about your life, from big things like moving across town to small things like taking a lunch break at a different time.
There's also a social element that I think is hard to reproduce in a secular context. Convincing a bunch of adults to coordinate their schedules is much easier if they believe that they will go to heaven if they do so. Furthermore, you already have a public building as a location to hold meetings. Hell, even the architecture of a lot of churches is awe-inspiring. They're physically designed to be these places where you come to terms with your faults (sins) and begin to deal with them. Of course, that also means that their design is religious, with religious iconography in the stained windows and on the walls.
Yes, it is. Believe it or not, I described it. I wasn't describing the logic of being addicted, or of how to overcome addiction, but of conditions that affect the decision to try to quit.
> Look at the 12 steps program of AA, there are no "thinking" or "logic" steps.
You're either deliberately or ignorantly misrepresenting the 12 step program. They are nearly entirely about reasoning (even if you don't particularly subscribe to the suggested reasoning).