The process of addiction treatment in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous

This thesis concerns an alternative approach to the alcohol-addiction treatment within the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and highlights the importance of self-help groups in the contemporary society. This worldwide biggest self-help group uses sociologically important processes to achieve a new way of life connected with sobriety. I have studied these processes through the participant observation. Alcoholics Anonymous influences its members through its specific culture which reflects in group rituals, high level of group affiliation, spirituality and co-constructed community story, which bears the member's knowledge. This thesis looks on the transition to identity of the sober alcoholic and the new way of living according to Twelve-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous through the perspective of drift model of conversion, transition rituals or principles used in the narrative therapy. Within these processes there occurs radical reconstruction of perceptual, cognitive and behavioral schemes which influence the meanings in the interpretation of everyday life and consecutively change the identity of the individual and his social action. These changes of the individual are strengthened by the group members and then gradually spread out of the group boundaries too