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Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the world’s largest and most recognisable recovery ‘program’, and central to its philosophy is the 12 Step Program. AA is a global organisation of 2.2 million members worldwide (AAWS, 2001), with a reported 3,600 weekly meetings in the United Kingdom (AAWS, 2011). AA has made many claims in their literature about the program’s effectiveness (AAWS, 2001: 84). Alcoholism is associated with a number of very serious health and social problems, including involvement in crime (Finney 2004; Fitzpatrick, 2010; Alcohol Reduction Strategy 2003). As fiscal pressure mounts, groups such as AA will be of interest to policy makers. Through an analysis of interviews with twenty long-term abstinent members of Alcoholics Anonymous, the thesis seeks to explain the effects of participation in AA’s therapeutic practices. Evidence from the literature on AA, revealed three concepts key to understanding participation in AA: Motivation to Engage (MtE), Structured Social Engagement (SSE), and Personal Agency (PA). A hypothetical model of AA-mediated behavioural change, constituted by these elements, was constructed and the findings supported this putative model. Further analysis revealed the coping strategies members of AA employed that ensured engagement with AA during stressful life events that threatened abstinence. The model was adapted to incorporate the temporal effects of long-term engagement with AA. Elements of Maruna’s (2001: 73) Condemnation Script resonated in the narratives of AA members. Contra Maruna’s analysis, AA members accepted ‘condemnation script’, but these were not negative, limiting beliefs. AA’s therapeutic practices structure, a coherent sense of self, one that supports cessation from negative patterns of drinking. The data exposed the sustained usage of AA’s discourse in the narrative accounts given. This finding extends Borkman’s (1976) Experiential Knowledge thesis, a language of ‘truth’ based on personal experience. The ‘linguistic echoes’ embedded in each narrative, suggests that a person uses AA’s discourse to ‘scaffold’ their recovery. This thesis provides an explanation of AA’s therapeutic practices of how adherence to AA’s principles, cognitively restructures the individual towards mastering self-control. AA’s philosophy and the following empirical evidence asserts abstinence as pre-requisite for recovery from alcohol dependence.

Phenylpropiolyl peroxide and its p-methyl -, p-methoxy-, p-chloro -, and p-bromo-substituted analogues have been synthesised in good yield and high purity by a method involving the reaction of the corresponding carboxylic acid with 98% hydrogen peroxide and dicyclohexylcarbodiimide. The parent compound has been decomposed in a variety of solvents and the mechanism of induced decomposition in these solvents investigated. The decomposition of the peroxides in chloroform at 65.0° in the presence of equimolar (0.05M) quantities of 3,4- dichloroetyrene to inhibit the induced decomposition enabled estimation of the first-order rate constants. Application of the Arrhenius' equation to the data from decompositions carried out in chloroform at different temperatures enabled estimation of the energy of activation for the decomposition of the parent compound and the p- methyl - and p- methoxy- analogues. The p-methoxy compound had a greatly enhanced rate of decomposition and lower activation energy - suggesting a different mechanism and the possibility of a non-homolytic decomposition. The synthesis of systems designed to differentiate between bridged and classical free radical intermediates by identification of the reaction products has been investigated. The production of radicals of this nature from aldehydes and azo compounds was unsuccessful due to the difficulty experienced in synthesis of the starting materials. The synthesis of 4-t-butyl-2-bromocyclohexylformyl peroxide has been achieved from the corresponding acid with 98% hydrogen peroxide and dicyclohexylcarbodiimide. 4-t-butyl-l-cyanocyclohexene was found to undergo stereo-specific addition of hydrogen bromide to give exclusively the trans addition product, namely, trans-4-t-butyl-cis-2-bromo -l-cyanocyclohexane, under both free radical and ionic conditions. The significance of this in relation to bridged radicals is discussed. The decomposition of the bromo peroxide did not give the expected products when investigated under similar conditions to those employed for the parent compound, 4-t-butylcyclohexylformyl peroxide. This limited the amount of information that could be obtained.