The Jude Thaddeus Program | JTP Continuing Education | Success Rate | Testimonials

There are many lifestyle challenges that have little to do with the activity of ingesting substances that are covered; such as, educating our readers about methods they can implement to help them discover self sufficiency, self confidence, self awareness, compassion, and personal joy. Rebuilding careers and marriages, building resiliency in those who live in troubled communities, helping people overcome guilt and shame; all of these are the goals the Jude Thaddeus Program. As researchers we have always tried to build a program that addresses all of these fronts, and through the years we have become quite effective at teaching people how to overcome these challenges and move past them. With such a wide variance between our many objectives, the program’s development remains on the fast track. We are always learning and reflect that knowledge back to you, the reader. It is quite rare in science to be as open minded towards an evolutionary process as we have been and continue to be, and you the guest reap the benefits of this process with each passing year.

The Research Roots

Many people ask what the basis for our research has been, and where the retreat house idea came from. For this, we need to go back twenty years.

The process of updating the JTP was especially difficult in BRI’s early years between the late eighties to the mid-nineties. These years were dominated by our efforts to change the methods in the self help organization Alcoholics Anonymous. We attempted to morph this paradigm into a more positive program defined with themes such as the pursuit of happiness and personal empowerment rather than the fear of relapse tactics traditionally used in AA and other related 12-step programs. The goal to update AA’s methods was born in 1989 as Mr. Gerald Brown (the other co-founder of BRI) and I made the decision to try to help those with substance abuse problems. We both had AA membership backgrounds, and a love for those who suffered with substance abuse, so AA became the forum to begin our research into the science of improving the lives of others. AA was, and continues to be, the most common “treatment program” in the US, and with such a large membership, we felt the greatest impact we could make would be made by improving that which was already publicly accepted and what we were the most familiar with. Little did we know how difficult this would be, and the effect it would have on our lives.

Conventional treatment and AA’s program of “recovery” is built upon its adherence to a policy of not changing its dogma and avoiding outside independent scientific scrutiny and also not allowing their members to outgrow the dogma. With such an adherence to avoiding the prying eyes of credible science, AA and conventional treatment has managed to keep the reality of the failings of the model from being public knowledge for over 60 years. Our attempts to buck this tradition, and introduce new ideas and methods into a religious organization like AA was tantamount to heresy, complete with both Gerald and I being excommunicated and chastised for our efforts.

The reality of AA is this; if you came to AA for help, you soon learned just how helpless you were, and that was that. You became stuck, and then you learned that membership in AA (defined as daily attendance at AA meetings1) is the only solution to become unstuck. Unfortunately, this becomes a viscous cycle, in that, the 12-steps dissolves personal responsibility for one’s actions and builds excuses for poor behavior and decisions, thus making you more hopeless and less capable than when you entered your first AA meeting. It then labels you as sick, rather than providing for a path back to more productive behavior. Once your personal abilities and beliefs are broken down, AA then touts itself as the solution to your depressed condition. With this newly created deep sense of hopelessness, AA becomes the cure, but unfortunately that cure is defined as a perpetual membership at AA meetings! To be cured means to be forever in need of treatment, this of course is the definition of a self perpetuating cult.

In short, you go for help, and the help that is given is to remain a member of AA for life. This also holds true for the vast majority of substance abuse treatment across this nation, over 90% of which are still based on the archaic 12-step method developed in the thirties. Go to treatment where you pay to be labeled hopeless and diseased, then you get referred to outpatient therapy and then to self help 12-step meetings, hence you’re back in AA! All roads lead to Rome as they say.

Between our personal experiences of watching the high recidivism rates for AA members (some of which were our close friends and family members) and studying independent research about AA’s abysmal success rates, the story of AA’s ineffectiveness and negative impact on substance abusers’ lives began to be told. Quite frankly this was a bit of a shock to both Jerry and I. Please try to remember, we were skeptical, critical members of AA, but members nonetheless, and the credible research we studied was not sympathetic to the commonly held positive image of AA as a successful program (success being measured by the effectiveness of AA keeping people sober). With this new perspective, AA looked that much more as the organization that needed our attention. In our naiveté, we thought that AA would be open to this change, especially if it meant greater success for the newcomer who was in great need of relief. We decided that the best way to start was to help AA members grow away from those aspects of the organization that kept the membership rooted in fear of the next relapse. Our fiery enthusiasm would soon be tamed by the reality that AAer’s don’t like outside ideas, especially any that are counter to the dogma that keeps its members locked in their fear based lifestyles. Nonetheless, we forged on.

We began the project by helping newcomers in AA gain knowledge about the negative historical cult like aspects of the membership, and to deliver an education on more effective life skills and reversing the archaic disease of addiction propaganda that was so much a part of the 12-step paradigm. We honed in on these specific areas only to be black listed at certain AA meetings, and then began receiving hate mail and threats to our safety. To say that the AAer’s who had spent years as active members were not open to change would be an understatement. This was disconcerting and draining work. After a decade’s worth of time and resources were spent making this effort, the goal was seen for what it was – futile.

AA’s methods of teaching learned helplessness through the 12 steps is damaging and counterintuitive to those who attend AA, but the fear tactics AA uses on its vulnerable membership keeps everyone on the party line. By spending the time making the newcomer aware that there were other methods that were proven to be more effective than the 12-steps, Jerry and I were inadvertently shaking up the control model that held the newcomer in fear and in compliance to the AA methods. Consequently we were quickly shoved out the door and onto the proverbial tundra because we no longer were blind lemmings that were willing to follow AA’s path to systematic indoctrination. Further more, we were a small movement in the organization that was growing and beginning to shed light on what was going on, and there was no way AA World Services, Inc. or the old-timer membership was going to be willing to have a band of researchers blow down their multi-million dollar house of cards. Some folks desire a subculture of failure, to them it seems easier than making the personal changes that consistent happiness demands. AA is such a grouping, and we learned that you cannot change people who don’t want to be changed. It was a hard lesson.

In the midst of this era we founded BRI (1992). As a means to understand more fully what portions of our hybrid AA program were effective and which were not, both Jerry and I lived at BRI’s first retreat house for those initial ten years with our guests (1989 – 1999) teaching and evolving the process. In retrospect, the evolution was a slow process of distancing ourselves further from AA methods to the now modern JTP method (which, after ten years ended with the JTP being the exact opposite process than AA’s learned helplessness paradigm. The JTP became a model based in the massive power that lies in every human being). The research knowledge we gained attempting to help these newer AA members find better ways to deal with their problems, while systematically debating with the old-timer AA membership, produced a personal education in the substance abuse field that was second to none. As difficult as it was, we became expert AA historians, experts in most all aspects of substance abuse treatment research, found the benefits of positive psychiatry and psychology, made contacts with other experts in the field that had completed credible substance abuse research, and our retreats became the standard in the industry. People all around the world began to know the group in Upstate New York whose international web campaign shouted, “Treatment Doesn’t Work!” We created the “non 12-step” term that formed a whole new classification in substance abuse field which is now all over the world. We were known by our insistence that success rates for treatment facilities needed to be tracked by independent research companies. We became the only facility in the world to practice what we preached, as we hired independent research firms to perform our independently verified post program success rate analysis, and have done so with yearly regularity since. Our era with AA came to a slow end between 1997 and 1999 as we extricated our facilities and our staff from the paradigm that was unwilling to be changed, and also unwilling to work with us. We had arrived, the split was complete and the Jude Thaddeus Program began its road to independence and greater success. We were no longer being held back by the 12-step ideas of imposed human limitation, and we shook off the shackles of trying to change people who had little desire to do so.

1999 - Today

Human beings are not designed to be perpetually mired in conflict, confusion and misery, or to live their lives in support meetings or therapy. The substance abuse industry creates a sub-culture of lost individuals, many of whom initially find it very hard to buy into the idea of powerlessness, but fall victim to this assertion because of the belief that AA and treatment professionals supposedly know what they are doing. As was said earlier, BRI staff spent nearly a decade trying to reverse this destructive force within AA, and ultimately found that AA member’s dedication to the negative dogma was simply too strong to sway. For those who come to AA for help and stick around long enough to become active members, BRI’s message of a more effective way to personal freedom was seen as heretical rather than seen as beneficial. Putting all our resources into developing what is now known as the Jude Thaddeus Program, rather than attempting to change AA was the single greatest advancement in our 20 year research history. Leaving AA behind gave me a sense of personal relief, but was a deeply sad surrender as well. I have since thought many times about the newcomer who goes to AA in search of peace and a clear mind, only to be handed a deeper sense of self doubt, failure and self hatred.

AA’s (and the vast majority of substance abuse treatment worldwide) roots are steeped in being a closed organization that opposes being studied or challenged. But those hard years of attempting to move the unmovable gave many insights into the substance abuse treatment industry and further yet; the power of people to keep themselves from growing as individuals. As an organization of people who are unwilling to adapt to more effective ways to overcome substance abuse, AA became the model that BRI stamped as “what not to do.” Studying AA and its adherence to the control model philosophy and methods demonstrated in a very clear fashion how people’s beliefs can mold them into self created helpless victims. This phenomenon of learned helplessness became a focal point for our research, and in the process of dedicating our time and effort into the study of this topic, we began to find many groups of people, not just in the AA membership, who had fallen into the trap of believing in personal powerlessness. The following decade of building and evolving the Jude Thaddeus Program brought a new focus into our research; if a program can teach people how to be helpless and powerless over their actions, then can people’s beliefs work in the opposite manner? Can people teach themselves how to crawl out of the common holes they dig themselves into, and what is the science behind that process of renewed self confidence, self control and self taught resiliency? Not only would the future of BRI prove out just how resilient humans really are, but all the efforts we invested in fighting the AA paradigm would prove to be invaluable to the future JTP development. AA provided the clear, concise, living, breathing example of what happens to people when they live in fear of themselves and reinforce daily their personal fear of change. Our hard earned knowledge of AA and its stifling qualities was the perfect backdrop to compare our new freedom model philosophy. The Jude Thaddeus Program’s positive message of personal empowerment and positive motivation and personal change immediately became a hit. A new era of research within BRI began.

The next decade (1999 to 2009) was spent rewriting several editions of both the Jude Thaddeus Program andthe Jude Thaddeus Home Program, while continuing to study the current research and help thousands of substance abusers overcome their troubles at our retreats. This consistent drive for the truth about substance abuse solutions drove the evolutionary process forward. In time, BRI’s model of substance abuse education cemented three disciplines directly together; psychology, neuroscience and quantum mechanics. As a substance abuse program, no other group had ever put these components together in one effective package.

In the losing struggle to “change AA” we became experts in the common debates that are part of the ineffective conventional substance abuse industry and the pseudo-research/science that is the foundation of the misinformation found throughout this field. We have spent the better part of 2 decades exposing the lies that keep people believing they cannot gain control over their lives. It was important to have gained this knowledge. In becoming aware of methods such as learned helplessness that have historically proven to be so utterly damaging, we were given a window into the psyche of humanity’s ability to hamper his own progress and stifle his conscious awareness. With this deep first hand understanding, BRI created counter methods to untie people’s shackled spirits and natural abilities. We have unearthed common sense in an industry of myth and emotionalism. We have bound groundbreaking science (such as neuroplasticity) that proves man’s abilities are much greater than the treatment industry gives them credit for, with the knowledge that people are powerful, not powerless. In a sense BRI started our mission for the truth about substance abuse in our early efforts within Alcoholics Anonymous only to be chastised and thrust out, forcing us to look elsewhere for answers. It was and continues be the best thing that could have happened, as the answers we were looking for were found far from AA’s roots and much closer to common sense and credible science. Sometimes the path to truth is convoluted as ours has been, but the winding trail can be educational and enlightening nonetheless.

A New Era for the Substance Abuser

Today we know with certainty that industry labeled “hopeless cases” are anything but that. We have seen it; the vast sea of people who quit or moderate their drinking or drugging behavior on their own, with no treatment whatsoever. These people became the living embodiment of the counter argument to the treatment community’s assertions that no substance abuser can ever “recover” on their own. We also know from twenty years of experience that with proper education and certain mental and physical exercises people who were once lost have the absolute ability to overcome their self defeating choices and patterns. 

In the substance abuse community we hear the misinformation all the time, “He cannot control himself; the drugs have hijacked the pleasure center of the brain. It’s not their fault,” “They are forever altered; the drugs have changed the brain. Treatment is the only answer,” and so on. These permanent addiction theories are based on misinformation that goes back centuries. They are not based in science but rather, the temperance movement of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries as well as an American cultural push to make the path easier for substance abusers to be taken off the streets, out of prisons and instead, placed into hospitals where health insurance dollars could fund an industry of interested do-gooders. These actions were never motivated by science, but rather an industry that grew past its competence, abilities and common decency.  

 If “addictive” changes are so irreparably permanent, then why the thousands of substance abusers who simply stop with no treatment? If brain matter is permanently etched by substance abuse, why do so many heavy users demonstrate the natural ability to stop completely or moderate and control their usage? Why are so many problem drinkers able to stop after college age (the most common age of substance abuse) and mature out of the problem? Is it possible that the human body has the ability to take in substances, and then return back to normalcy (as has been proven in the science of neuroplasticity)? Is it possible for a drinker or heroin user of twenty years to simply stop their use, based on a simple decision to do so? Can not the brain return to state of normal functioning after twenty years of abuse? The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Humans are incredibly resilient and magnificent creatures of adaptability and Jude Thaddeus Program © spells out, in detailed laymen’s terms, why we have these astounding abilities and how we can use them to overcome any problem that we encounter.

1 The organization Alcoholics Anonymous defines AA membership by the participant having “a desire to stop drinking.” Although this is stated throughout AA literature, it is not reality. The criterion for membership is actually the peer structure pressuring the newcomer and old timer alike to have consistent meeting attendance.

If you would like more information on the Jude Thaddeus Program™ or the JTP Continuing Education™ please give us a call toll free at 1-888-424-2626. We are here to answer your questions and help you in any way we can.  

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