Pills Anonymous (PA) is a twelve-step program founded in 1972 for people who seek recovery from prescription drug addiction. PA is patterned very closely after Alcoholics Anonymous, although the two groups are not affiliated.
PA uses the book There Is A Solution: The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Pills Anonymous ( ISBN 978-0989325905), created as a combined text and study guide for pill addicts to use in their recovery, and to further their understanding of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and apply them in their daily lives. The PA book was published in August 2013.
As of 2013, there are several thousand PA members in the United States, Canada and other countries attending over 60 meetings per week. On-line meetings exist as well. [1]
The only requirement for membership is "a desire to stop using pills", and members "meet regularly to help each other stay clean", where "clean" is defined as complete abstinence from all mood- and mind-altering substances (including alcohol). Membership in P.A. is free, and there are no dues or fees. The foundation of the Pills Anonymous program is the twelve steps and twelve traditions.
Pills Anonymous "has no opinion on outside issues", including those of politics, science, or medicine, and does not endorse any outside organization or institution. The fellowship does not promote itself, but rather attracts new members through public information and outreach. P.A. groups and P.A. World Service supply outside organizations with factual information regarding the P.A. program, and individual members may carry the P.A. message to hospitals and institutions, such as treatment centers.
P.A. provides a program of recovery which can not only bring freedom from pill addiction. It can lead to a new way of life which is healthier, happier, more productive, and more satisfying than the life the pill addict had previously been living.
P.A. describes addiction as a progressive disease with no known cure, which affects every area of a pill addict's life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. P.A. suggests that the disease of addiction can be arrested, and recovery is possible through working the P.A. twelve-step program. The steps never mention drugs or drug use; rather, they refer to addiction to pills and all other mind-altering substances, to indicate that pill addicts have a disease of which pill use is one symptom. Other symptoms include obsession, compulsion, denial, and self-centered fear.
Many pill addicts first come to P.A. after reaching a "bottom" in their life, a point at which life feels completely unmanageable, sometimes characterized by "unemployability, dereliction and destruction" and centered around the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more pills. Every P.A. member reaches a different bottom, which can be wherever the pill addict chooses to stop using. In practice, it is pill use and the extreme consequences associated with its abuse that bring most pill addicts to their bottom, many of them sliding along 'this bottom' for many years and often never finding a way out.
Regular meetings, hosted by P.A. groups, are the basic unit of the P.A. Fellowship. Meetings are held in a variety of places such as church or synagogue meeting rooms, libraries, hospitals, community centers, parks, or any other place that can accommodate a meeting.
Members who attend the same meeting on a regular basis to establish a recovery network and reliable routine understand this to be their "Home Group". Group members are able to participate in the group's business, and play an important role in deciding how the group's meetings should be conducted.
There are two basic types of meetings, "open" and "closed". Anyone is welcome to attend an open meeting, while closed meetings are limited to pill addicts and to people who think they may have a problem with drugs.
Meeting formats vary, but often include time devoted to the reading aloud of P.A. literature regarding the issues involved in living life clean and sober which is written by and for members of P.A. Many meetings also include an "open sharing" component, where anyone attending has the opportunity to share. There is usually no direct feedback during the 'share', thus only one person ever speaks at any given time during this portion of the meeting. Some groups choose to host a single speaker (such meetings are usually denoted "speaker meetings") to share for the majority of the meeting time.
Other meeting formats include round-robin (in which sharing goes around in a circle or each speaker picks the next person to share). Some meetings focus on reading, writing, and/or sharing about one of the Twelve Steps or some other portion of P.A. literature. Some meetings are "common needs" (a.k.a. special interest) meetings, supporting a particular group of people based on gender, sexual identity, age, language or other characteristic. These meetings are not exclusionary, as anyone with a desire to stop using pills is welcome at any P.A. meeting. [2] PA Communities will often make an effort to have an open meeting run at the same time for members who don't identify with the common needs meeting.
During the meeting, some groups allot time for P.A.-related announcements, and many meetings set aside time to recognize "anniversaries" or "birthdays" of clean time. Individuals are sometimes given an opportunity to announce their clean and sober time to the group. In some meetings, and for certain anniversaries, medallions, which denote various amounts of clean time, are distributed to those who have achieved those milestones. In some areas, the pill addict who is celebrating an "anniversary" will be able to conduct the readings for the meeting, and s/he will be the speaker to carry the P.A. message. Then s/he will have his or her sponsor, a friend, or a family member present a medallion, at which time the presenter will share some of the celebrating pill addict's achievements from the last year, or from during the entire course of his or her recovery. Then the pill addict celebrating his or her anniversary can share his or her experience, strength, and hope with the group on how they achieved their recovery.
"Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry the message to the addict who still suffers" (Pills Anonymous' Fifth Tradition). Therefore, the newcomer is considered to be the most important person in any meeting. The message of Pills Anonymous is hope: that there is another way to live and we can recover one day at a time from our addiction.
P.A. literature suggests that service work is an essential part of a program of recovery. Service is "doing the next right thing" and is the best example of "good will", which is the basis for the freedom promised by the P.A. program. Service work usually consists of chairing a meeting, but may be as simple as cleaning up after the meeting, putting away chairs, or answering a phone. Additionally, there are basic, formalized service positions at the group level to help the group perform its function—for example, treasurer, secretary, and World Service Delegate (who represents the group in the larger service structure).
Pills Anonymous calls itself a spiritual program of recovery from the disease of pill addiction, but does not require membership in any religion. The P.A. program places importance on developing a working relationship with a "higher power". The literature suggests that members formulate their own personal understanding of a higher power. The only suggested guidelines are that this power be "loving, caring, and greater than one's self." Members are given freedom in coming to an understanding of a higher power that works for them. Individuals from various spiritual and religious backgrounds, as well as many atheists and agnostics, have developed a relationship with their own higher power. P.A. also makes frequent use of the word "God"; some members who have difficulty with this term substitute "higher power" or read it as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction."
The twelve steps of the P.A. program are based upon spiritual principles, three of which are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, embodied in the first three steps. According to PA members, these principles, when followed to the best of one's ability, allow for a new way of life.
P.A. meetings often close with the Third Step Prayer ("Take my will and my life. Guide me in my recovery. Show me how to live.") or the Serenity Prayer.
One pill addict helping another is an essential part of the P.A. program. It is therefore highly recommended that members of Pills Anonymous find a sponsor. A sponsor is a P.A. member who helps another member by sharing his or her experience, strength, and hope in recovery, and who serves as guide through the Twelve Steps. P.A. members often choose a sponsor with experience in applying the Twelve Steps of Pills Anonymous. For stronger identification, many P.A. members have sponsors of the same sex, although members are free to choose any other member as a sponsor. It is also suggested that one should find a sponsor who has not only worked the 12 steps of Pills Anonymous, but who also has an understanding of the 12 traditions of Pills Anonymous. Sponsors also maintain the continuity of the fundamental message that Pills Anonymous works, has worked for others for many years, and continues to work.
The Twelfth Tradition of Pills Anonymous states that "anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."
Many P.A. members identify themselves in meetings by their first name only. The spirit of anonymity is about placing "principles before personalities"; affirming that no individual pill addict is superior to another; and recognizing that individual pill addicts do not recover without the fellowship or its spiritual principles.
The Eleventh Tradition states that P.A. members "need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films."
PA's beginnings are not fully known. The longest-running known group, which is located in New York City, dates back to 1972. Dr. Paul O., a well known AA speaker, has also talked about starting a meeting in the 1970s. There are several references to Pills Anonymous in books such as The Recovery Book [3] and Young, sober & free: experience, strength, and hope for young adults. [4]
On October 1, 2008, Pills Anonymous World Service was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization in the state of Arizona, as a result of two conferences held earlier that year. One of the conferences was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in March, the other in Tempe, Arizona in September. During the Tempe Conference, the Delegates voted to Incorporate Pills Anonymous World Service. They also voted to accept, as the organization's guide moving forward, the Pills Anonymous World Service Manual, [5] which contains the Twelve Steps of Pills Anonymous; [6] the Twelve Traditions of Pills Anonymous; [7] and many suggestions as how the group should be run.
In June 2009, in Ontario, California, the Pills Anonymous Local Service Manual [5] was introduced and voted to be conference-approved. The Manual is intended as a guide to help individual Groups form meetings, an important part of the PA program.
In October 2010, in Mesa, Arizona, the Pills Anonymous World Service Public Information Guide [5] was introduced. The 2010 Conference quickly approved this guide, which provides guidance to P.A. groups and the World Service in attracting newcomers to the program. The 2010 conference also approved the use of "press releases" to send the message of recovery to the media. [8]
In October 2011, in Mesa, Arizona, the conference approved the formation of the Pills Anonymous World Service Office Board of Directors to incorporate the WSO and shepherd production of the PA Book and key tags.
In July 2012, the official PA logo received its trademark registration number.
In August 2013, the PA Book, There is a Solution: The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Pills Anonymous, was published.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a global peer-led mutual aid fellowship dedicated to abstinence-based recovery from alcoholism; which AA believes is incurable but a path of recovery is available through its spiritually-inclined twelve-step program. AA's twelve traditions, besides stressing anonymity and offering membership to anyone wishing to stop drinking, establishes AA as free to all, non-professional, non-denominational, apolitical and unaffiliated. In 2020 AA estimated its worldwide membership to be over two million with 75% of those in the U.S.—its country of origin—and Canada.
Twelve-step programs are international mutual aid programs supporting recovery from substance addictions, behavioral addictions and compulsions. Developed in the 1930s, the first twelve-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), founded by Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, aided its membership to overcome alcoholism. Since that time dozens of other organizations have been derived from AA's approach to address problems as varied as drug addiction, compulsive gambling, sex, and overeating. All twelve-step programs utilize a version of AA's suggested twelve steps first published in the 1939 book Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism.
Narcotics Anonymous (NA), founded in 1953, describes itself as a "nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem." Narcotics Anonymous uses a 12-step model developed for people with varied substance use disorders and is the second-largest 12-step organization.
The Twelve Traditions of twelve-step programs provide guidelines for relationships between the twelve-step groups, members, other groups, the global fellowship, and society at large. Questions of finance, public relations, donations, and purpose are addressed in the traditions. They were originally written by Bill Wilson after the founding of the first twelve-step group, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) founded in 1979 is one of several twelve-step programs for compulsive sexual behavior based on the original twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. SA takes its place among various twelve-step groups that seek recovery from sexual addiction: Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous and Sexual Recovery Anonymous. Collectively these groups are referred to as "S" groups since all their acronyms begin with that letter: SA, SAA, SLAA, SCA, SRA.
Jimmy Kinnon, commonly known as Jimmy Kinnon or "Jimmy K.", was one of the primary founders of Narcotics Anonymous (NA), a worldwide fellowship of recovering addicts. During his lifetime, he was usually referred to as "Jimmy K." due to NA's principle of personal anonymity on the public level. He never referred to himself as a founder of NA, although the record clearly shows that he played a founding role.
Pagans in recovery is a phrase, which is frequently used within the recovery community, to describe the collective efforts of Neopagans as well as Indigenous, Hindu, Buddhist, and other like-minded groups, to achieve abstinence or the remission of compulsive/addictive behaviors through twelve-step programs and other programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Al-Anon/Alateen, etc. These efforts generally focus on modifying or adapting the twelve steps to accommodate the Pagan world-view as well as creating Pagan-friendly twelve step meetings either as part of a preexisting twelve-step program or as independent entities.
Marijuana Anonymous (MA) founded in 1989 is an organization and twelve-step program for people with common desire to maintain abstinence from marijuana.
Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a twelve-step program founded in 1960 for people with problems related to food including, but not limited to, compulsive overeaters, those with binge eating disorder, bulimics and anorexics. Anyone with a problematic relationship with food is welcomed; OA's Third Tradition states that the only requirement for memberships is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA) is a California-based non-profit, public-benefit corporation founded in 1994. The members of the fellowship of Crystal Meth Anonymous work a twelve-step program of recovery with recovering crystal meth addicts. Participants in local groups meet in order to help others recover from methamphetamine addiction. CMA advocates complete abstinence from methamphetamine, alcohol, inhalants, and all other psychoactive drugs not taken as prescribed.
Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) is a twelve-step program founded in 1977 for people who want to stop their addictive sexual behavior. There also exists a group known as COSA, for those who have been impacted by others' sexual addiction.
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) is a twelve-step program for people recovering from sex addiction and love addiction. SLAA was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1976, by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Though he had been a member of AA for many years, he repeatedly acted out and was serially unfaithful to his wife. He founded SLAA as an attempt to stop his compulsive sexual and "romantic" behavior. SLAA is also sometimes known as the Augustine Fellowship, because early members saw many of their shared symptoms described by St. Augustine of Hippo in his work Confessions. COSLAA is another twelve-step fellowship created to support the family members and friends of sex and love addicts.
Nicotine Anonymous (NicA) is a twelve-step program founded in 1982 for people desiring to quit smoking and live free of nicotine. As of July 2017, there are over 700 face-to-face meetings in 32 countries worldwide with the majority of these meetings occurring in the United States, Iran, India, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia and in various online community and social media platforms.. NicA maintains that total abstinence from nicotine is necessary for recovery. NicA defines abstinence as “a state that begins when all use of nicotine ceases.
Drug addiction recovery groups are voluntary associations of people who share a common desire to overcome their drug addiction. Different groups use different methods, ranging from completely secular to explicitly spiritual. Some programs may advocate a reduction in the use of drugs rather than outright abstention. One survey of members who found active involvement in any addiction recovery group correlates with higher chances of maintaining sobriety. Although there is not a difference in whether group or individual therapy is better for the patient, studies show that any therapy increases positive outcomes for patients with substance use disorder. The survey found group participation increased when the individual members' beliefs matched those of their primary support group. Analysis of the survey results found a significant positive correlation between the religiosity of members and their participation in twelve-step programs and to a lesser level in non-religious SMART Recovery groups, the correlation factor being three times smaller for SMART Recovery than for the twelve-step addiction recovery groups. Religiosity was inversely related to participation in Secular Organizations for Sobriety.
Workaholics Anonymous (WA) is a twelve-step program founded circa 1983 for people identifying themselves as "powerless over compulsive work, worry, or activity" including, but not limited to, workaholics–including overworkers and those who suffer from unmanageable procrastination or work aversion. Anybody with a desire to stop working compulsively is welcome at a WA meeting. Unmanageability can include compulsive work in housework, hobbies, fitness, or volunteering as well as in paid work. Anyone with a problematic relationship with work is welcomed. Workaholics Anonymous is considered an effective program for those who need its help.
LifeRing Secular Recovery is a secular, non-profit organization providing peer-run addiction recovery groups. The organization provides support and assistance to people seeking to recover from alcohol and drug addiction, and also assists partners, family members and friends of addicts or alcoholics. It is an abstinence-based recovery program with three fundamental principles: sobriety, secularity and self-empowerment. The motto of LifeRing is "empower your sober self."
Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), also known as Save Our Selves, is a non-profit network of autonomous addiction recovery groups. The program stresses the need to place the highest priority on sobriety and uses mutual support to assist members in achieving this goal. The Suggested Guidelines for Sobriety emphasize rational decision-making and are not religious or spiritual in nature. SOS represents an alternative to the spiritually based addiction recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). SOS members may also attend AA meetings, but SOS does not view spirituality or surrendering to a Higher Power as being necessary to maintain abstinence.
Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) founded in 1998 is a program of recovery based on the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. FA members are men and women of all ages. Some have been obese; others have been severely underweight, bulimic, or so obsessed with food or weight that normal life was difficult or impossible. The common denominator uniting members of FA is addiction and a relationship with food that parallels an alcoholic's relationship with alcohol. The program offers the hope of long-term recovery, evidenced by members who have continuously maintained a normal weight and healthy eating for periods of twenty-five or even thirty years.
Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism is a 1939 basic text, describing how to seek recovery from alcoholism. Written by William G. "Bill W." Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, and many of the first 100 members of the group, the composition process was collaborative, with drafts of the book being sent back and forth between Bill W.'s group in New York and Robert Holbrook Smith, the other AA founder, in Akron, Ohio. It is the predecessor of the seminal "twelve-step method" widely used to treat many addictions, from alcoholism, heroin addiction and marijuana addiction to overeating, sex addiction and gambling addiction, with a strong spiritual and social emphasis. It is one of the best-selling books of all time, having sold 30 million copies. In 2011, Time magazine placed the book on its list of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923, the year in which the magazine was first published. In 2012, the Library of Congress designated it as one of 88 "Books that Shaped America."