The key to these programs is to keep going - like with my eternal life support group. The people who keep showing up are doing great. People who’ve stopped coming…not as well.
[Dan Akroyd]…“Leonard Plinth-Garnell here, for another installment of Bad Analogy Theater…” [/DA]
About 20 years ago, a friend of mine who was caught drinking underage (by about a year), and then failed a subsequent urine test, was ordered by the court to attend AA sessions. Don’t remember how many— perhaps only one or two. Slightly odd, we both thought, as he’d tested positive for marijuana.
(Anecdote, no guarantees of resale value.)
Well, let’s do a scientific test that avoids those problems. How’s this: we take a large number (say, 300) of people who have been conviced of public drunkenness crimes, we divide them **randomly **into three groups. The first group we send to AA. The second group we send to some other form of treatment. The third group gets nothing. Then, we count the number of times people from each group is convicted of alcohol-related crimes over the next year.
Does that methodology seem reasonable to you? Would you expect the AA group to do better than one of the other two groups?
Only if they *really *try it.
Because I have a favorable view of the effectiveness of AA based purely on personal experience, I would expect AA to do better. I wouldn’t be shocked or devastated if it didn’t.
And I think that what you describe is a reasonable test scenario, but one that still has at least one problem. AA is based on, in fact the program’s 12 steps begin with, an admission of powerlessness over alcohol. People can arrive at this admission after being “sent” to AA, in fact I have seen it happen, but I think that a fairer test of AA, as it was designed or codified, would limit the AA tests cases to people who were not sent. Willingness is at the heart of the whole thing. And bup has jokingly or seriously revealed the weasel room left in what I think is AA’s strongest statement about its effectiveness.
Note the “thoroughly” and “completely”. I have not heard people in AA use those potential weasel words to dismiss a failure, but I have called them to mind when I have felt any wavering in my commitment to sobriety.
Does it really matter? Presumably those it does work for keep going to AA, those who do not find the program useful do not continue. When I was in rehab in the stone age (80s) they wanted us to try 12 step meetings, they also held educational sessions, group and individual therapy, medications and to my horror tai chi, jane fonda aerobics and yoga as well as general life skills like cooking etc… We were encouraged to continue with whatever we found helpful.
I was in voluntarily with people sentenced to be there, those who self referred had pretty good outcomes, those sentenced or there under duress from family or employers generally just switched to other forms of self medication whilst in, the drunks became junkies, the junkies became drunks and their outcomes were poor upon release. I was being tested daily for all substances so my only choice was to leave or stay clean. I stayed clean and have done so for 25 years by my standards but I found after a long break an occasional drink did not mean a spiral out of control. I am not particularly interested but do occasionally have a glass of something when in good company. I know many who don’t feel they can so agree they shouldn’t.
I personally saw little sense in sitting around talking about the stuff I wasn’t doing anymore and without a personal concept of a higher power or finding the concept of helplessness over substances useful AA/NA wasn’t for me. I am glad it is an option though. I don’t do tai chi, jane fonda aerobics and the last time I did yoga I hurt and swore for a week. I don’t slag them off all over either just because they didn’t do much for me.
Ever since I started carrying a particular keychain, I haven’t turned into an alcoholic. Perhaps I should go post to the thread to suggest that the OP purchase a similar keychain! After all, it worked for me, and that’s what’s important.
Breathalyzer keychain?
Sigh. I’ve stayed out of this discussion because I really have no desire to give a full course in Research Methods for the Social Sciences, but I’d like to point out the following:
1.) Pretty much all the research cited was not designed to test the efficacy of AA and cannot be effectively used for that purpose. Most frequently, this problem involves either misinterpretation of longitudinal data (the 5% success rate is plainly a misinterpretation of findings) or non-random assignment to experimental conditions.
2.) According to one study cited above, AA is wonderfully effective:
This study suffers from non-random assignment and, seeing no difference between AA and other “treatments,” the authors combine AA-goers and people who sought other treatment and compare both to a non-treatment seeking control. Non-ideal for AA evaluation purposes, but a meaningful data point. There are quite a few other studies with similar findings, and similar flaws.
3.) The author of the site at http://www.green-papers.org/ seems to have a good handle on the problems of assessing AA effectiveness. If you haven’t taken a look at it, I’d encourage you to. Frankly, the nature of the group is almost ideally designed to make effectiveness evaluations a nightmare. It’s Alcoholics Anonymous after all.
4.) There is no justification for saying that science has proven AA to be ineffective. There is also no perfect study showing AA to be effective, as best I can see, though I think the weight of the evidence suggests that it provides some benefit.
I’d say, let’s do it! But twickster locked the thread.
Coke bullet.
No, it’s a Carrot on a Stick.
Speaking of which, I went back and read the original thread, and then posted about it in ATMB. I think moderators taking action in threads where they clearly have a deep personal investment is perhaps a habit that we would like to break.
Interior Crocodile Alligator.
From a new thread in GD:
Shodan makes the same incorrect point he made in the earlier thread, even though I explained his error, and also manages to insult a woman whose feet he’s not worthy to lick. Hell – he’s not worthy enough to lick her dog’s feet.
I don’t “keep score” on Dopers, so often forget which ones of you are liberals, which ones are right-wingers, etc., and even end up whoooshed a lot. 
But my subconscious has tuned in to the Doper named Shodan: He thinks he’s intelligent, but almost everything he says is incorrect. Not just incorrect in the sense of an uneducated imbecile, but incorrect like a guy who’s had 1 or 2 years of college, so thinks he’s erudite but is actually even more of a racist prick than the proverbial village fool. The really sad thing is this: I’d not be surprised if Shodan actually has an above-average I.Q.! Instead some bitterness or sexual frustration has left him so closed-minded that he appears to have a severe cognitive deficit.
I see him corrected frequently. He then goes silent (one imagines a dog slinking off tail between legs), and reappears in a new thread spouting the exact same vomitous tripe that was refuted ! His posts are so devoid of useful content, and have such twisted thinking, that for a while I thought he was just a “facetious” guy “whoooshing.” But I’ve never seen evidence of humor, or any likeable emotion, and am starting to feel sorry for the asshole. I hope he doesn’t read this message – I’ll guess he already hates himself enough.
There may be a few Dopers even stupider and more insolent than Shodan (though none come to mind), but they mostly have redeeming amusement value. Shodan is just a real drag.
My, aren’t those crickets noisy this evenin’? And is that a lone dog I heah barkin’ in the distance? I declare.
Oh, and by the way, Evil Economist will be in any minute to call you a douchebag or a moron or something else insulting.
To paraphrase Bokonon, it is entirely likely that you will, to one degree or another, believe a bunch of lies. What really matters is if you decide to believe the lies that help you to be strong, kind and good.
That study has already been posted earlier, which you would know if you’d bothered to read the thread. And I praised the person who posted it, in my very first post to this thread, which you would know if you’d bothered to read the thread.
I thanked the poster for not resorting to the douchebag, moronic tendency of AA proponents to use meaningless anecdotes as evidence.
Fuck, if the science shows that AA works, that’s fucking wonderful, and the world is a better place. The study doesn’t show that, but at least it’s a starting point for a fact-based discussion.
Aaaaand there he is.