About alcoholics annonymous?

Question

is this true?

"AA does not give members a higher statistical chance of quiting alcohol than those with no support group or therapy"

Answer 1

No that is in no way true.  Many people would not make it without AA

Answer 2

It depends what you are rating.  Are you rating those who manage to 'get' sober...or those who manage to 'stay' sober.

The 'fellowship' of aa can be good for those who want to stop as a place to keep focusing on the goal of sobriety; however, IMO, the 12 step program does not deal effectively with the underlying cognitive causes of drinking neither is the general ideas about alcohol helpful for long term sobriety.  Those that stay sober long term really, really, wanted to and the rest are like bottles on the wall waiting to be knocked off.

So aa can be good to get sober, but not to stay sober.

Answer 3

I heard this on "Penn and Teller's Bullsh*t" and it wouldn't surprise me although drinking cessation is very distant from my area of expertise so I don't know.

Answer 4

AA is a great support group, they listen without judging, they know your pain, they know where you've been and how to get to where they are. Go to meetings pay attention, find someone you want to be like and let them sponser you.That's what I did in2001 and haven.t had a drink sence.

Answer 5

Yes.  Interestingly, a guy by the name of George Vaillant conducted a long-term study of the effectiveness of treatment which included AA.  George was (and still is) a member of the AA board of trustees, so he certainly wanted his study to find that AA worked better than nothing at all--but that's not what it found.  It found that AA had about a 5% success rate which is pretty much the same as the rate of spontaneous remission.

George's study can be found in a book called "The Natural History of Alcoholism"...he did a follow up years later which showed essentially the same thing.  That book is called "The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited."

If you read the studies, you will find them very dense and, unless you are a statistician, almost unintelligible; but the bottom line is definitely there.  The interesting thing, though, especially in the second book, is that although the studies do not back up AA's success, George still says all sorts of great things about AA and STILL suggests that it's necessary for people to go to AA to get sober.

I'll tell you, as someone who was in AA for a long time, I saw so many people fail to improve, leave in disgust, etc...I also saw people overtly hurt by other AA members.  

And all I can say is, this is 2008, and as a society, we should be embarassed that the best we can offer to an alcoholic is a useless faith healing group and a lifetime of church basements.