The twelve step programme — when you don't like the colour of the lifeboat
When Philippe Jacquet works with someone who has an addiction, his recommendation is consistent: therapy, and the twelve step programme. Both. Together.
The twelve step programme is a peer support and self-improvement framework that has helped millions of people worldwide achieve and maintain recovery from addiction. Philippe Jacquet consistently recommends it alongside individual therapy — not as a perfect solution, but as an irreplaceable community structure that individual work alone cannot replace.
The lifeboat
When Philippe Jacquet works with someone who has an addiction, his recommendation is consistent: therapy, and the twelve step programme. Both. Together.
The response, just as consistently, is often resistance.
I don’t want to do that. That’s not for me. I don’t believe in that approach.
There is an image Philippe uses with these patients. You are on the Titanic. The ship has already hit the iceberg. You know it has. And you look at the lifeboat being lowered into the water, and you say: I don’t like the colour.
The lifeboat does not need to be your favourite colour. It needs to float.
What the twelve step programme is
The twelve step programme began with Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 and has since extended to cover virtually every form of addiction — Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, and many others.
At its core, it combines two things: a peer support group, and a structured self-improvement framework. The twelve steps move a person through honesty about their addiction, acknowledgement of its impact, accountability for harm caused, making amends where possible, and a commitment to ongoing self-examination. It is not a quick fix. It is a way of living.
The programme is not perfect. Its spiritual language does not resonate with everyone. Its group format is not comfortable for everyone. These are legitimate observations. They are also, in the context of an active addiction, the colour of the lifeboat.
The community dimension
What individual therapy cannot provide — no matter how skilled the therapist — is the experience of sitting in a room with people who have been exactly where you are and come through it.
The twelve step programme offers this. It is a community — structured, consistent, available every day of the week in most cities in the world, free of charge. For a person with addiction, who has typically burned through relationships and isolated themselves, that community is often the difference between recovery and relapse.
Millions of people worldwide are clean through the twelve step programme. That cannot be intellectualised away or dismissed on the grounds of imperfection. The question is not whether something is perfect. The question is whether it works for enough people to be taken seriously. It does.
“I work with people who are on a sinking ship — they’ve already hit the iceberg — and they look at the lifeboat and tell me they don’t like the colour. The twelve step programme is not perfect. But millions of people are clean because of it. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.” — Philippe Jacquet
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.