Dr. Keith Humphreys

So I started my career, I didn't really know anything about addiction in my first job.

I took it because I was literally flipping burgers and there was a job that paid.

another dollar an hour in the medical school where I didn't have to wear a costume, a Wendy's outfit.

So that's why I got into the addiction field and that's the truth.

So I didn't know anything about it and I met, while I was on this job, I met some people who said they were in AA and I thought they were like the people who get your car battery for you on a cold, you know, that's what I think of when I think of AA and I didn't know what AA was.

And they explained it to me and I talked to my mentors about it and my mentors were professors in medicine and they were very dismissive, you know, they're like, well, if they don't have doctors, they don't have medications, it's kind of folk medicine, you know, a bit of professional snobbery there.

But I wasn't so far along in my education that I was incapable of learning.

So I thought, well, will you take me?

Can I go?

And they're like, well, you can't go to a closed meeting, but there are these openings.

Okay, because I want to see this.

And I was so impressed with just the authenticity and the caring and the warmth and the wisdom.

Really, you know...

made me think maybe there is something here.

And so I started doing research on it as a number of other people were at that time.

And it just keeps coming out really, really good in studies.

And so finally, a few years ago, me, John Kelly and Marika Ferry did what's called a Cochrane collaboration review.

This is the creme de la creme, most rigorous review of evidence in medicine as a method.

and looked at all these studies of Alcoholics Anonymous done by different people with different viewpoints in different cities and different countries even.

And it came out extremely well relative to very good therapies, like the one I was trained to do, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Enhancement Therapy.