An introduction to these "Backlash" email questions here.
Dear Mr. SponsorPants,
I heard an interview on NPR not long ago claiming that AA only has a 5 to 10% success rate, and in another interview I heard that as many people with drinking problems are able to eventually, spontaneously stop on their own as claim that AA is how they stopped. Is this true? Why should I, or why do you, do AA if it doesn't work?
Want to Know
Dear WtK,
I'm going to address the NPR interview which caused such a fuss (and was, surprisingly I thought, heavily featured on the NPR Website for a while) in another essay.
I'm not marshaling arguments to attack either it or the person who was interviewed. It's the intermingling of AA and the recovery industry, two very different things -- even if the latter makes some use of things in the former -- put forth in that interview that I'd like to look at a little more closely in another post.
If you don't mind, WtK, I'm going to walk through your questions in reverse order.
Why should you do AA if it doesn't work? My experience is that it does work, but if you have a drinking problem and you want to try to deal with it via some method that is NOT AA, you should absolutely do so. Give that a full court press. Alcoholics Anonymous does not now say, nor has it ever said, that it is the ONLY way to treat alcoholism. Some zealous AA members can come across that way, I know that's true, but I chalk their zeal up to a combination of giddy relief for having found a solution to their addiction coupled with the deep (and real) fear that their addiction will twist their thinking yet again and pull them out. And down. But the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," AA's blueprint, in a number of places is quite humble about what AA offers. "We realize we know only a little..." it says. "We do not have a monopoly..." it says. "If you are not convinced you are an alcoholic, try some controlled drinking..." it says. AA does not represent itself as the sole course, nor is it against trying to manage your drinking. The point it (mostly) makes is that if you've tried everything else and nothing has worked then maybe what AA has to offer can help you, if you are able to be honest and if you do the whole deal.
(In the interest of full disclosure the Big Book also suggests people "raise the bottom," in other words, look to see if there is an inevitability to the way they drink, and if so, what does that mean in terms of whether they should try to get sober via Alcoholics Anonymous. But I find the spirit of this discussion to be as even handed and open minded as the rest of the book.)
There may well be lots of effective treatments for alcoholism. For years I actually treated my alcoholism with the liberal application of alcohol. I found that to be strong medicine and I was pretty happy with the results of that program for a good long while. When that eventually stopped working, I had to find a different solution. For me, it was AA. But if you want to do something else, including "controlled" drinking (sometimes called "drinking in moderation" -- not a concept I've ever really understood the point of, actually, but then, I'm a pretty far gone case) by all means, have at it.
If you can stop on your own (assuming that you do, actually want to stop) then do so. If you need help, then maybe AA is for you. If you want to try something else, try something else. There's a fair amount of "something else" out there now. In fact, there's a TV commercial in heavy rotation where I live which touts a kind of spa recovery thing, and the big catch line in the ad is that it has NO 12 Step program affiliation in any way. Personally, I think that's great! Who doesn't want to go to a spa? And who doesn't want to go to a spa if you've got a hangover, and want to maybe take a break from partying? Especially if you've had a hangover since roughly 2009 or something. If you can deal with whatever your drinking situation looks like with a cucumber wrap, a little acupuncture, some light yoga and those hot stone things laid out across six or seven chakras then go for it. I assure you that will be a lot more fun and sexy and chic than even the nicest church basement and the finest in folding metal chairs we can find. I guarantee you the coffee will be better, too.
Not trying something because you heard it doesn't work actually sounds fairly logical. AA has an expression -- a quote, actually -- which it uses to describe what this might really be though: Contempt prior to investigation.
But if you have a problem with alcohol and you think other things will help you then I seriously, sincerely, urge you to try them, and having had a bellyfull of the pain and misery that drinking problems cause I also seriously, sincerely hope those other things work for you. If they don't, the doors of AA are always open. For free. For anyone who wants to even just visit. No dues, no fees, no insurance coverage required.
As for the spontaneous ability to stop drinking... well, it's of course tempting to wonder if those people were real alcoholics, or in fact just heavy drinkers who developed a habit which, while it may have required a little effort to break, were not true addicts. But as much as I think there's room for real consideration there, I also think that's a pretty self serving thing for a man like me to give a lot of air time to. Because, sure, maybe some weren't addicts and just had a kind of heavy habit, but surely some of these spontaneously manifested abstainers were addicts. Or might have been, anyway. So what about them? What about them just spontaneously stopping on their own, as the NPR interview and some other sources like to cite?
What about them? I don't know what about them. I do know that some people's cancer spontaneously goes into remission, but that fact isn't used to suggest that people shouldn't seek treatment for their cancer. There may be a vast and passionate difference of opinion as to what that treatment should be, but I'm not familiar with too many people who hold the spontaneous remission examples forth as an argument against treatment altogether.
But I have heard this chain of reasoning used when discussing addiction, recovery and AA more than once over the years.
If I had just decided to wait and hope to be struck sober spontaneously, I suspect my story would have had a much more grim and cliche ending. Critics might say there's no way to be sure, but I hope they will forgive me for feeling that I know myself a little better than they do -- and that I'm pretty reluctant to go with that plan now.
As for statistics... 5%? 10%? Whatever percent. AA has, over the years, done its own membership surveys to try to get a mathematical picture of who shows up, who gets sober the first time, who slips but comes back, etc. Due to the anonymous part, and also due to the fact that alcoholics, when it comes to this stuff, are notoriously lazy and/or intractable on the whole "head count" thing, I'm not sure how reliable these statistics are. Now naturally, if you're a critic, you're going to be pretty unhappy with me for calling into question the veracity -- the methodology -- of the statistical sample. But even if we work from the assumption of a sound statistical model, I'm not sure the measurement cuts across all aspects of sobriety.
If you are a chronic relapser, if you keep coming to AA, you find both some relief and some recovery -- even some sober stretches, in between the relapses. That's no small thing, for an addict. How do those people fit into the statistical model? I know -- and love -- some people like that, and I have to tell you, I can't quite see them as evidence that AA "doesn't work." And what about the "slipped around for a while at first" people? If you come and you slip around for several years and then you get and stay sober, what part of the statistic is that?
You know, not to beat the cancer analogy to death (is that phrase in poor taste? possibly, now that I think of it) you can Google "Does Chemotherapy Work?" and before you even finish typing it, you not only get that suggested search phrase but you are also offered "Does Chemotherapy really work?" People have some doubts, I guess. And in the first list of answers is a link which claims that chemo does not work 97% of the time. That's a pretty staggering claim. If you poke around and search just the suggested links to address this question, you'll see a lot of discussion. Some controversy. Phrases like "fallacious cherry picking of data..." and "confusing primary versus adjuvant therapy..." start to show up. And this is for chemo, a fairly "traditional" form of treatment for some common malignancies.
The only point I'm trying to make is that as I've gotten older I've learned to look with some degree of skepticism at ALL statistics, as they are somewhat vulnerable to being used to justify a conclusion maybe a little after the fact.
Some people really hate AA, and think it is a dangerous, old fashioned, somewhat superstitious and very much over-recommended model of treatment from a bygone era. Some people really love AA, and think it's an open minded, open hearted, life-saving program which can do a lot of good in the world, one person at a time.
If you're worried about your drinking, then maybe the best thing for you to do is to just try it for yourself with as open a mind as you can summon.
What they told me when I was new was that I should try it for 30 days, and if I wasn't fully satisfied my misery would be cheerfully refunded.
I don't know if you're miserable, WtK, but if you are, then at least it's something confidential and free to try, with a commitment to helping you if you want help, and as non-judgmental as any group of humans is able to attempt to be.
Getting sober -- if that's what you need to do -- can be a painful, confusing and vulnerable time. I wish you the very best in your journey, and if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to contact me.
Good luck,
Mr. SponsorPants
FTG says: “ Specifically, what I want is for AA to acknowledge that it is not treatment. It is a path to a spiritual awakening, and, as such, it should occupy a different niche than it does.”
Exactly. If AA was honest about its being a program whose main aim is to find God and achieve a spiritual awakening, I don’t think anyone would argue with that – or care much. They could even say that some addicts (albeit a tiny minority) might have incidentally found that finding God has helped them overcome addiction, just as, say, Buddhist meditation or Islam, or a physical exercise regime, might help others.
It is the way that it is presented first and foremost as a program for treating alcoholism that is so scandalously deceitful. People seeking help for an alcohol problem want just that – help in overcoming an alcohol problem. They should not then be subjected to attempts to convert them to a religion and be told that this is the only way they will ever recover (or indeed, that they will never actually ‘recover’). It is hugely immoral that a fringe religious group should recruit vulnerable and often desperate people in this way. And it is much worse, and what my grandmother would have called ‘a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance’, to tell people that they will inevitably fail in what they are desperately and sincerely trying to do if they don’t conform to this very weird religious program which has nothing whatever to do with overcoming addiction.
It is so full of mindfuck, it’s difficult to step back from it and take a cool rational look at what’s really going on. If the 12-step program and the big book were introduced today as any kind of approach to treating addiction, it would be laughed out of court. No-one would take it seriously at all. But because it’s somehow managed to establish itself, undeservedly, as the only answer, it has been allowed to go largely unchallenged. It is appalling.
The worst thing is that people get into AA’s clutches when they’ve already recognized they have a problem and want to do something about it. And then AA exploits that very real desire on the individual’s part to stop drinking or using to literally put the fear of God into them and threaten that if that person doesn’t conform and become a believer, all their genuine efforts to overcome their addiction are doomed to failure. I really can’t think of anything more cruel and self-serving.
But obviously I’m preaching to the converted here. The main challenge is to expose what the real agenda of AA is to society generally so that people can make informed choices about it. 12-step practitioners, especially those in the rehab centres, take great pains to conceal what they are really about – presumably because they know that most people would avoid them like the plague if they knew that the ‘treatment’ they are selling is completely bogus. It’s unlikely that AA will ever voluntarily be publicly honest about what its program really entails, so I guess the rest of us will just have to try and do what we can.
(Despite this rant, MrSponsorPants, I’m glad to have you here on this forum. But I really hope that you don’t tell your ‘sponsees’ that if they don’t become spiritual, don’t follow the 12 steps, etc. they will inevitably fail in their attempts to stop drinking and stay stopped. This is really not very kind.)