Best Hope for Recovering Alcoholics Is Self-Help Groups, Visiting Soviet Finds

A touring Soviet expert on alcoholism, in San Diego on Friday to learn how recovery centers here keep former abusers off the bottle, said he is convinced that the most effective rehabilitation involves the use of “self-help” groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Artak Meyroyan, who lectures on alcohol and drug rehabilitation at the Kirov Institute in Leningrad, was the guest Friday of the Volunteers of America’s Alcohol Services Center in San Diego.

Meyroyan and his companion, Peter Schikchirev, a researcher at the Soviet Academy of Science in Moscow, are visiting as part of a monthlong U. S. trip to investigate ways to battle alcoholism in the Soviet Union, where, according to Meyroyan, there are more than 5 million alcoholics. They have been in the United States for three weeks.

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Garnering as many new techniques as possible, the Soviets will return home to share their discoveries with fellow researchers and operators of a growning number of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers.

Cliff, a 35-year-old alcoholic and unemployed tile setter, watched as one of the visiting Soviets toured the Volunteers of America detoxification facility, where he has been since early Thursday.

Dressed in pajamas and shaking so badly that he couldn’t hold a glass of water, Cliff said he could sympathize with the Soviet citizens who suffer from alcoholism. Like many of them, he is addicted to vodka.

Cliff’s kidneys are beginning to fail and a doctor has told him he won’t live for more than five years if he continues to abuse alcohol. His main concern is getting back to work--the same concern Meyroyan said Soviet officials have for their own citizens.

After touring many U. S. rehabilitation centers, Meyroyan said he believes that self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous are extremely effective in helping abusers continue to stay sober years after treatment.

Most of the Soviet Union’s rehabilitation centers treat alcoholics with medicine, said Meyroyan, a practice that often is ineffective in keeping them sober for prolonged periods.

12-Step Program

Alcoholics Anonymous, which uses a 12-step recovery program that is based on spiritual belief and a willingness to turn one’s life over to a higher being, began in the United States in 1935 and in the Soviet Union--with Meyroyan’s help--in 1986. As opposed to about 31,000 AA groups in the United States, there are only 12 in the Soviet Union, Meyroyan said.

“It’s a very new way in my country,” he said. “Many of the big cities are just in the beginning of this self-help process.”

Meyroyan said that, although many Soviet citizens “like the principle of AA but don’t understand the spiritual references,” Soviet officials will adopt AA’s recovery method “to our own Soviet ways.”

Meyroyan also said he will suggest to Soviet colleagues that there be an attempt to have more recovered alcoholics help run alcohol rehabilitation centers--a common practice in the United States.