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.
The program 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.
The nature of addiction 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.
Meetings 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.
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