Other Culture Treatments
Traditional and Non-Traditional
There are other culture treatments used besides sweat lodges and the NAC to help recover from alcoholism. There are both traditional and non-traditional ceremonies to guide and support a person who’s on the road to recovery.
Traditional 
Sun Dance:
The Sun Dance is a traditional ceremony held by many
Native American tribes across the United States and Canada. The ceremony is
usually held in late spring and into the summer. The rite represents life and rebirth. When the ceremony is held for
the entire tribe, it is usually a prayer for life, for world renewal, and for
thanksgiving. However, there is a more personal level to the Sun Dance. A
person may dance to pray for a relative, friends, or to find guidance in their
own life. Individuals who participant in the ceremony have specific reasons for
choosing to dance. For example, a person may decide to dance to help his/her
friend or relative to recover and overcome alcoholism. The Sun Dance is the
renewal or spiritual rebirth of participants and their relatives, as well as
the regeneration of Mother Earth with all her components. The Sun Dance is one
of many sacred rituals to help overcome illness.
Black Elk’s Explanation of the Sun
Dance
“I should explain to you here that in setting up the Sun
Dance lodge, we are really making the universe in a likeness; for you see, each
of the posts around the lodge represents some particular object of creation, so
that the whole circle is the entire creation, and the one tree at the center,
upon which the twenty-eight poles rest, is WakanTanka, who is the center of and
sooner or later everything returns to Him”
-Black Elk (Lakota Medicine Man)
Traditional Healing:
Traditional healing can have many meanings depending what
tribe you’re from. For example, the Dine’ use their traditional ceremonies to
help restore harmony. The unbalance of harmony can be from many things, one of
which is alcoholism. The medicine man helps to restore the balance of harmony
by listening, praying and singing for the individual. Again traditional healing
depends on what tribe you come from and what type of ceremony your tribe uses.
http://www.navajo-coop.org/sandpaintings.htm
Importance Of Harmony, by Navajo Elder 
“…the Navajo creation story
gives individual Navajos … an important ethnic identity. It defines meaningful
relationships among members of the community and between the community and the
entire cosmos. Such relationships are still very real among traditional Navajos
and very, very, important. Origin stores provide a powerfully effective social
vehicle that facilitates and structures this process of integration… Origin
stories provide accounts of the complex webs of relationships that must be
established and maintained in order to insure harmony (ho’zho’).” Source: Quintero, Social Science &
Medicine
Non-Traditional 
Christianity:
Christianity is another way to help you recover from
alcoholism. Christians follow the teaching
of and about Jesus Christ.
“Christianity is not a religion; it is a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ.” Anonymous posting to a Christian mailing list.
Alcoholics Anonymous:
Alcoholic’s Anonymous is group of peers who support those who are recovering from alcoholism or to help end chemical addiction. AA plays a major role in most treatments centers as well as those who are not in treatment centers. AA uses a 12-step program to help the individuals to recover from their addiction, alcohol or other substance abuse. AA was founded in the early 1930’s and now exists over the United States and Canada. The estimated membership is 1.5 million and 800,000 members live in the U.S. and Canada.
AA 12-Steps 
1.
We admitted we were
powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.
Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3.
Made a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
4.
Made a searching and
fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5.
Admitted to God, to
ourselves, and to another human being that exact nature of our wrongs.
6.
Were entirely ready to have
God remove all these defects of character.
7.
Humbly asked him to remove
our shortcomings.
8.
Made a list of persons we
had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9.
Made direct amends to such
people wherever possible, expect when to do so would injure them or others.
10.
Continued to take person
inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11.
Sought through prayer and
meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12.
Having had a spiritual
awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to
alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Serenity Prayer 
Creator, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
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