The 1990 triennial survey: 26%, not 5% one year retention rate

There is an old myth that a 1990 AA Triennial survey shows a 5% one-year retention rate for Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a false belief: That graph, frequently brought up by anti-steppers with little interest in objective truth, actually shows a 26% retention rate, as pointed out in the article "Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Recovery Outcome Rates".

The graph is not a membership retention graph; it is a simple count of, among the members in their first year, how many were around a given number of months.  If AA had a 100% retention rate, the graph would have shown 8.3% (i.e. 100% divided by 12) of members (instead of the 5% it shows) in their 12th month of sobriety.

The wording in the survey itself says it is a graph of "the number of members that have been around a given number of months"; it was not a graph of per-month membership retention.

This graph does not show an 80% first month drop out rate and it does not show a 5% one-year retention rate.  It shows a 70% first-month retention rate and a 26% one-year retention rate.

Here are a number of books and papers which claimed the 1990 Triennial survey showed a 5% retention rate before "Alcoholic Anonymous Recovery Outcome Rates" was published:

• McIntire, Don (2000). "How Well Does A.A. Work?". Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly. 18 (4): 1. doi:10.1300/J020v18n04_01. "at 12 months the figures are 5% remaining and 95% departed."
• Carl G. Lukefield, "Behavioral Therapy for Rural Substance Abusers", 2000 has this quote: "By 12 months, 90 percent have dropped out (McCrady & Miller, 1993)"
• Charles Bufe, AA: Cult or Cure 1997 has this quote Quote: "AA produced a large monograph, “Comments on A.A.’s Triennial Surveys,” that analyzed the results of all five surveys done to that point. [...] AA has a 95% new-member dropout rate during the first year of attendance."

However, after "Alcoholic Anonymous Recovery Outcome Rates" was published, a number of sources all of a sudden decided that the 1990 Membership retention survey showed a 26% one-year retention rate, which just happens to be the number in that paper. Even anti-AA polemics like Dodes' (poorly-argued) The Sober Truth now use the 26% figure. For example:

• Lance Dodes, M.D.; Zachary Dodes (2014). The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry. ISBN 978-0807033159. "AA itself has published a comparable figure in a set of comments on its own thirteen-year internal survey, stating that only 26 percent of people who attend AA stay for longer than one year"
• Adrian, Manuella (2012). "Can Failure Carefully Observed Become a Springboard to Success?". Substance Use & Misuse. 47 (13–14): 1384. doi:10.3109/10826084.2012.706178. "the Alcoholics Anonymous triennial surveys from 1977 through 1989 found that one quarter (26%) of those who first attend an AA meeting are still attending after 1 year"

Point being, the conclusion in "Alcoholic Anonymous Recovery Outcome Rates" that those old surveys showed a 26% one-year retention rate are considered reliable among treatment experts.

As Slate Star Codex puts it: "Almost everyone’s belief about AA’s retention rate is off by a factor of five because one person long ago misread a really confusing graph and everyone else copied them without double-checking."