A tale of two papers

I look at two papers in this blog entry, one of which will be questionable, the other of which is well written.

The Alcohol industry is funding a “Moderate Drinking” study

The New York Times has published an exposé last month showing how the NIH solicited contributions from the alcohol insustry for a “Moderate drinking” study.  It would seem that, in order to fund an expensive study on drinking called the “Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health Trial (M.A.C.H.)” trial, the alcohol industry has spent millions of dollars to make this study a reality.

Whatever finding this study has about moderate drinking are at best suspect, especially for anyone who is a potential alcoholic; the NY Times piece reports that “many people whose health might be compromised by light drinking — anyone with a history of addiction, psychiatric, liver or kidney problems, certain cancers or a family history of breast cancer — will not be allowed to participate. People who have never drunk alcohol also are excluded.”

Knowing how studies are quoted out of context by the kinds of people with an agenda against Alcoholics Anonymous, and knowing how often those kinds of people try to justify moderate drinking for alcoholics, even though that is, as I pointed out before and will point out again, is a fool’s errand, I would not be surprised if those kinds of people, years down the road, use this study to “prove” that Alcoholics Anonymous’ model of abstinence is “harmful.”

A realistic look at Alcoholics Anonymous

Marc Galanter, who helped write a paper showing how prayer helps AA members stay sober, has another excellent paper out there.

Entitled “Combining medically assisted treatment and Twelve-Step programming: a perspective and review”, this paper goes over, among many other things, why Cochrane 2006 had methodological issues in concluding that AA does not work any better than other methods.

A very good paper well worth reading. Nicely enough, this paper is not paywalled.

Prayer helps keep alcoholics sober

For a long time we have known that people who choose to go to meetings are much more likely to stay sober. Recently, PMC4285560 gave evidence that AA has a “specific effect”; in other words, there is something about the AA program itself that is keeping people sober. And now, we have a new study (mirror) which tells us one aspect of AA’s specific effect: Prayer.

The actual study can be read online (mirror). To summarize, they got some people with long term sobriety, put them in MRI machines, then saw if prayers from the Big Book would affect their reactions to seeing people drinking alcohol. It did. Their level of craving of alcohol was diminished by saying 12-step prayers.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the AA program and the prayers in the Big Book can really help keep people sober.