6 ms·

> The reason this is so important is that should this woman have a "slip" - which LOTS of alcoholics do - now the world, and needy alcoholics, have one more rea

> The reason this is so important is that should this woman have a "slip" - which LOTS of alcoholics do - now the world, and needy alcoholics, have one more reason to dismiss AA. > Try it before you judge it. An organization that tries to inflate its own public success rate, and then asks people to keep an open mind towards it rather than dismiss it. Ok.

vernie 11y ago
Yea, better to do nothing, I'm sure it'll sort itself out.
- throwaway999777 11y ago
  Yes. You can either do AA or do nothing with your problem. That's the only two options in the world. Jeez these AA PR snippets are just stellar.
- eulo_ 11y ago
  From all studies I've seen it does. As a vague rule addiction lasts at most around 10 years
jredwards 11y ago
I haven't dug up the stats in the while, but last I checked, their success rate was exactly the same as cold-turkey going it alone.
- Devthrowaway80 11y ago
  We've had this discussion ad nauseam on other addiction threads here. The TL;DR of the literature is that in the short term, most methods have the same "success rate", where success here is defined as successfully achieving abstinence from the problem substance. Participation in AA or other support groups (eg. SMART/Rational Recovery) is associated with substantially increased rates of continuous abstinence at the 1, 3 and 5 year marks after quitting, although there may be some self-selection bias going on there (participation rates being higher among the more motivated and so on).
  - thedufer 11y ago
    > Participation in AA is associated with substantially increased rates of continuous abstinence at the 1, 3 and 5 year marks after quitting It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias. People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings. AA's rules around anonymity and consent make it conveniently impossible to run good studies, so they are able to (rightly, for the most part) write off any study that runs against them, but are also unable to show any positive findings that don't fall prey to very obvious problems.
    - Devthrowaway80 11y ago
      Your "quote" is not what I wrote, I include other support groups in my statement. I have no interest in arguing with obvious axe-grinding. > People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings. I have a significant number of acquaintances who did exactly that, myself included, but I am not going to make the claim that my personal experience means anything statistically. > It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias. If that is the case, feel free to provide some sort of citation to back up your claim.
      - thedufer 11y ago
        I have no axe to grind, other than a disdain for supporting emotional ties with poor statistics. I've never brushed with AA or alcoholism in any capacity. That said: In Project MATCH [1] we learn that "twelve-step" (AA), cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational enhancement therapy all have very similar results across a large number of measures. We also find that CBT performs equivalently to "brief opportunistic intervention" (which goes under a variety of names, but takes a single 5-minute meeting), which is the minimum amount of treatment that we're ethically allowed to give alcoholics. So it may work better than nothing (can't really study that), but there are much lower-touch methods that give equivalent results. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MATCH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MATCH [2] http://robinsteed.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52176344/TreatmentAndPreventionOfAlcoholProblems.pdf http://robinsteed.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52176344/Treatmen..., study by "Chick et al. (1988)"
Devthrowaway80 11y ago
His understanding of the reasoning behind Tradition 11 is flawed. It has nothing to do with protecting the image AA from member relapses. It has to do with encouraging humility among its members, who are alcoholics and who generally tend to have issues with being self-centered. This is true of a lot of the traditions - "leaders are trusted servants, they don't govern" and so on. Basically trying to keep addicts from getting an inflated sense of their own importance.

vernie 11y ago

Yea, better to do nothing, I'm sure it'll sort itself out.

throwaway999777 11y ago
Yes. You can either do AA or do nothing with your problem. That's the only two options in the world. Jeez these AA PR snippets are just stellar.
eulo_ 11y ago
From all studies I've seen it does. As a vague rule addiction lasts at most around 10 years

jredwards 11y ago

I haven't dug up the stats in the while, but last I checked, their success rate was exactly the same as cold-turkey going it alone.

Devthrowaway80 11y ago
We've had this discussion ad nauseam on other addiction threads here. The TL;DR of the literature is that in the short term, most methods have the same "success rate", where success here is defined as successfully achieving abstinence from the problem substance. Participation in AA or other support groups (eg. SMART/Rational Recovery) is associated with substantially increased rates of continuous abstinence at the 1, 3 and 5 year marks after quitting, although there may be some self-selection bias going on there (participation rates being higher among the more motivated and so on).
- thedufer 11y ago
  > Participation in AA is associated with substantially increased rates of continuous abstinence at the 1, 3 and 5 year marks after quitting It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias. People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings. AA's rules around anonymity and consent make it conveniently impossible to run good studies, so they are able to (rightly, for the most part) write off any study that runs against them, but are also unable to show any positive findings that don't fall prey to very obvious problems.
  - Devthrowaway80 11y ago
    Your "quote" is not what I wrote, I include other support groups in my statement. I have no interest in arguing with obvious axe-grinding. > People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings. I have a significant number of acquaintances who did exactly that, myself included, but I am not going to make the claim that my personal experience means anything statistically. > It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias. If that is the case, feel free to provide some sort of citation to back up your claim.
    - thedufer 11y ago
      I have no axe to grind, other than a disdain for supporting emotional ties with poor statistics. I've never brushed with AA or alcoholism in any capacity. That said: In Project MATCH [1] we learn that "twelve-step" (AA), cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational enhancement therapy all have very similar results across a large number of measures. We also find that CBT performs equivalently to "brief opportunistic intervention" (which goes under a variety of names, but takes a single 5-minute meeting), which is the minimum amount of treatment that we're ethically allowed to give alcoholics. So it may work better than nothing (can't really study that), but there are much lower-touch methods that give equivalent results. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MATCH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MATCH [2] http://robinsteed.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52176344/TreatmentAndPreventionOfAlcoholProblems.pdf http://robinsteed.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52176344/Treatmen..., study by "Chick et al. (1988)"

Devthrowaway80 11y ago

His understanding of the reasoning behind Tradition 11 is flawed. It has nothing to do with protecting the image AA from member relapses. It has to do with encouraging humility among its members, who are alcoholics and who generally tend to have issues with being self-centered. This is true of a lot of the traditions - "leaders are trusted servants, they don't govern" and so on. Basically trying to keep addicts from getting an inflated sense of their own importance.