How to avoid the “Support groups gone wrong” effect.
A friend of mine told me something interesting that he observed while attending 12-steps to support his wife. The interesting observation? His wife’s drinking seemed to get worse as a result of attending AA.
Apparently, she was taking tips from other AA attendees. Not tips on how to quit drinking, but tips on how to hide her booze from others and make sure she had a constant supply.
Of course, no one in AA was explicitly telling my friend’s wife to stuff a bottle in the tank behind the toilet. Yet there were plenty of tricks and tips to be learned from the testimonies of others. Although unintentional, some AA speakers’ testimonies might have been entitled, “10 tips for hiding your alcohol use from loved ones” or “Life Hacks for the Dedicated Alcoholic: How to Do it Right!”.
My friend’s anecdote is eerily similar to something that researchers have found when investigating the effects of drug treatments. [One example] [Example] [Example with adults] The findings suggest that friendships can be a double-edged sword for those with addictions.
On one side of the sword, you have all the things we typically associate with a good support group such as caring, support, identification, and reduction in shame. On the other edge of the sword, you have things like, “deviancy training,” and “glorification of substance use.”
It’s easy to see why attending a support group might backfire. We all know about negative peer pressure. And everyone has heard about a mixed-up kid who goes to jail for a mistake and comes out as a hardened criminal. As a Mexican proverb suggests
Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres. [Tell me who you are with, and I will tell you who you are!]
So how can you avoid the “support group gone wrong” effect?
I have a couple of pieces of advice:
1) Carefully select who you make friends with. The effects of spending time with others are subtle. You may never have a CBS After School Special moment where someone offers you drugs and alcohol and you give in because of the pressure to fit in. Instead, most of these effects seem to happen below our ability to consciously recognize them. The influence of others happens in the subtle substrate of conversations like the laughter to drinking jokes, the swapping of war stories, or a moment of shared nostalgia for previous use.
2) Be a model for others. If your words and actions project a preference for sobriety and a rejection of relapse, you can help set the tone for the group. With enough people on the side of abstinence, the group contagion effect starts to work FOR sobriety, not against it.
3) Leave and find another location if your current meeting is working against your sobriety. You probably fought an uphill battle with yourself to make it your first meeting. You had reasons you needed to make a change. Don’t lose your progress by staying put in a situation that might erode your motivation.
