Posted to http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/without_aa/

Used on this web page with the permission of author.

Yahoo Answers

A new question on Yahoo Answers got me going tonight:

Here’s my answer:

What you consider bashing is probably just people like me telling the truth about AA.

Only 5% of newcomers stay in AA for one year, the other 95% leave; that from AA’s own Triennial Survey. Out of that 95%, at least some found the program harmful, I know I certain did.

I bounced in and out of the rooms for almost twenty years, never putting together more than a few months of sobriety. AA programmed me to fail. I’m an atheist and found it impossible to do the steps. People told me that even an atheist could manage it, but that’s plain bs. I went through all sorts of mental gymnastics in those years and it just cannot be done. AA members don’t want you to anyway, they want you to convert. Just read “We Agnostics” or the “12 & 12”...religious tripe. They can claim “spiritual, not religious” as much as they want, ever higher court that has heard the arguments have ultimately decided that AA is at least “religious in nature”.

During my brief stints in the rooms, I picked up all sorts of damaging beliefs, powerlessness, that I had a disease, and that I couldn’t make it without AA. Over 5 years ago, I took responsibility for my addiction and my recovery, and I’m still sober today.

And I’m not the only one. There are at least a dozen AA “bashing” groups on Yahoo alone, helping people heal from the abuses they found in the rooms.

I’ve been working with people who have substance abuse and mental health issues, almost every one of them has their own “twelve step horror stories”. (BTW, did you know there’s a book with that title? It can be read online at:
http://www.morerevealed.com/library.jsp )

Many of these people fell victim to the anti-medication, anti-therapy faction of AA who, despite literature to the contrary, tell people they must give up all medication or else they aren’t truly sober.

Have you ever looked at the studies done? How about the Brandsma study that showed that people who were exposed to AA were 4-5 times as likely to engage in binge drinking than those who attempted quitting on their own. Or the various studies that show AA’s 5% success rate is the same as the 5% success rate achieved by people quitting on the own? Or the Harvard study that showed that most people more people get sober with no treatment that through AA?

But my all time favorite study was run by George Valliant, Harvard researcher and member of the AA Board of Trustees, in attempting to prove that AA worked, he came up with this conclusion:
”Not only had we failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism, but our death rate of three percent a year was appalling.”

But he didn’t let a little thing like facts stand in his way, he still promotes AA.

For those who want to read more about these studies and AA’s efficiency, go to:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html

Some people do credit AA for their sobriety, mainly because that’s were they were when they made to decision to stop, but that’s like something always being in the last place you look....you stop looking.

A comparison was done of 48 different methods of recovery, AA placed 38^th in effectiveness:
http://www.behaviortherapy.com/whatworks.htm

Why should AA be immune to valid criticism? Where are the studies, the facts and figures that prove AA works? All you have are the testimonials of people who claim AA worked for them, what about the testimonials of those who say it didn’t and those who say it harmed them?