General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Alcoholics Anonymous has a terrible success rate, addiction expert finds [View all]ismnotwasm
(41,976 posts)When these studies pop up I just shake my head. What most people don't understand is AA is much like an Anarchy-- no leaders, no rules, anybody can start a meeting. They are not all registered nor are required to be. The percentage of people involved "Service work" is estimated to be about 10 percent of total membership. Every five years or so AA will send out an informal survey about membership. It's impossible to follow, so I fail to see how the author managed to estimate success given the information he's working with.
Treatment centers use Prochaska's model of change, and given many people are sent to treatment before AA in general, people are made aware of alternative methods of addiction recovery.
The thing about AA, is that it's cheap.
There are everything from atheist meetings to nudists meetings to on-line meeting, to various meetings in many places around the world, including countries like India and Cuba. I doubt the author took this into consideration.
As far as "The Program" it works for some, it's never, as noted in the article from the beginning worked for everyone. Some would say the reason is those persons didn't work "The Program" and in some cases that's probably very true. In others, AA simply for whatever reasons, is not a good fit.
I am a transplant nurse, specifically livers, kidneys and pancreas, although I do other things as well. I've seen candidates not be able to make the 6 months sobriety it takes to be listed-- and it wasn't because they were going to AA. Addiction is insidious, and the ultimate outcome is at best a dysfunctional family with very poor coping skills in at least one or more members all the way to individual death.