Addiction in America

[Not Afraid]

Originally Posted by Alex

No, honestly it isn't. I'm not at all saying that people who go to AA don't get sober, I'm saying there is little evidence that people who go to AA get sober at a significantly different success rate than people who don't go to AA.

You know what's odd.....I can name only ONE person - of all of the thousands of people I know - that got sober without AA. I know lots of sober people who went to AA and i know lots of drunks. But, only one who did it another way.

[Alex]

And I know quite a few people who just reached a point in their life and stopped drinking despite years of near daily excessive consumption. My dad drank about two six packs a day and several bottles of Kahlua a week (gross) until he was 40 woke up one day and said "I'm sick of feeling like **** every morning" and that was that.

But that is anecdotal too and has no more value than the people you know.

The experts, when they study these things find similar results regardless of method. And, regardless of method, the results over the short term are poor and requires years upon years before you even get a majority of successes.

There is a huge perception bias. At any given time the core of an AA meeting are going to be the success cases. If you have a group and every week a group of ten people gathers. If there are two new people who show up, make it two meetings, then disappear and are replaced by two new people who do the same, but also a core group of 8 people who stay sober for the full year, attending every week, you are going to say "wow, everybody I know has found great success with AA" but tend to forget about the 52 people who completely failed to find any help.



I am still curious, would you be ok with a high school teacher saying this to his class:

I want every student in this room to pray to a god, any god you want because I think this will help you do better on tests; if you really find that objectionable I suppose you don't have to but I find it really helps.

If you're fine with that, then we definitely just have to disagree. If not, what is different about AA that is ok for a judge to require me to go listen to someone say it to me?

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Alex

I am still curious, would you be ok with a high school teacher saying this to his class:

I guess I agree with this ax your grinding, but honestly I kind of put it up there with the whole "God" in the pledge of allegiance thing, and the "In God We Trust" motto emblazoned on our money - that stuff shouldn't be there either, but as a pragmatic atheist I just chalk it up for living in predominantly Christian culture