The Alcoholics Anonymous subreddit tends to get the same questions asked over and over again, so, since it’s considered rude to refer people to a FAQ (frequently asked questions with answers) here in the 2020s, here are the answers I frequently post (summary in bold)
(Last update: 2022-08-21)
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- Welcome packet
- Rationalization
- Self-harm threat
- For atheists
- Friend/Loved one is drinking
- I keep relapsing
- 12 steps in reverse
- Taking legitimate meds
- When to suggest 90 in 90
- How common is the 13th step?
- More on the 13th step
- How about moderate drinking?
- AA is not a cult
- Sex addiction
- Am I an alcoholic?
- Marijuana and other intoxicants
- Online meetings
- Confrontational drug users
- Rebuttal of Filtermag criticism of Cochrane 2020
- I need someone to talk to
- Why do you beat the drum for AA so much?
- AA solves worrying about drug tests
- Do we need to contact someone who has abused us when making amends?
- We should rewrite the Big Book because it is so old
- AA has a 5% success rate
Welcome packet for someone who wants to stop drinking
We find that regular meeting makers are less likely to drink again; [multiple](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/) studies [have shown](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous&oldid=978717977#Fiorentine_1999) that regular AA meeting attenders are twice as likely to get and stay sober.
Here is a starter pack for becoming part of Alcoholics Anonymous:
* Find your local A.A. website(s) - see https://www.aa.org/find-aa (Or possibly just use a web search, "aa near me" but the results might show for-profit rehabs also.)
* If your regional A.A. website lists a help line phone number or chat widget, consider calling/chatting.
* Also try the "Meeting Guide" app for Apple and Android gadgets — see https://www.aa.org/meeting-guide-app
* Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been many online meetings. A great resource for finding online meetings is https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings/. (Many also recommend https://www.intherooms.com - I've not used it myself, so I've no opinion.)
* Listen, listen, listen and do your best to be open minded. Try different meetings and different types of meeting to sort out which ones are the most helpful. When you're comfortable with it, introduce yourself, letting people know you're new and looking for help. For the most part, if you're a woman, look for help from the other women, men stick with the men.
* We usually suggest finding one person who has recovered to help someone new in A.A. on a one-to-one basis, a "sponsor". There's a little pamphlet that talks about this: "Questions & Answers on Sponsorship" - https://www.aa.org/questions-and-answers-sponsorship. Sponsors can often be found by showing up early at meetings (10-30 minutes early) and asking, "How can I find a sponsor?"
* If you're so inclined, start reading the 'big book' - "Alcoholics Anonymous" - https://www.aa.org/the-big-book (scroll down for access to free PDF versions of the various chapters.)
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The alcoholic rationalization machine
This is what I call the alcoholic rationalization machine. This rationalization machine will come up with any excuse to not go to meetings. Some I have seen multiple times here in Reddit:
* AA has a low success rate, based on questionable science. There was once a guy named “Agent Orange” who had an entire website about how AA doesn’t work. [It would appear he drank again](https://www.reddit.com/r/alcoholicsanonymous/comments/qwb88e/orange_papers/hl6su5j/) and [ended up homeless](https://archive.ph/vHPoq). For the record, current science says AA works and is helpful: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html
* AA is a cult. Never mind very low cost (free, really) and no worship of its leaders, and easy to leave.
* People in AA are either hateful or “spiritually sick”. I had a friend who used the “everyone at the local AA Alano Club is spiritually sick” excuse to not go to meetings. He died of an overdose. Those supposedly “spiritually sick” at that Alano Club then, after he died, put his name on the wall to honor his memory.
* Men hit on women in AA. Never mind that AA has always had women-only meetings, and there are now online meetings.
* We don’t need a program to stay sober. We just need “willpower”. Never mind that the people who say this kind of nonsense usually aren’t sober themselves.
* Some idiots in AA will tell people to not take doctor prescribed medications. This is *not* the AA program; the Big Book says this: “God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons.” and an [AA-approved pamphlet](https://www.aa.org/aa-member-medications-and-other-drugs) says “No A.A. member should “play doctor”; all medical advice and treatment should come from a qualified physician”.
Point being, the alcoholic is a rationalization machine who will come up with any excuse to stop going to meetings and drink again. That rationalization machine is deadly, and it needs to be stopped.
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Suicide threat or similar content in post
Since there are indications you currently do not value your life in this posting, I take that very seriously. I can tell you that someone ready to stop drinking and change is often times in a very dark place in their life. Whether or not this has to do with drinking or drug use, *it doesn’t matter*. Here is [one resource](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513931) for people feeling really bad, and here is [another resource](https://bornthisway.foundation/resources-for-help/) as well as some [self care tips](https://bornthisway.foundation/self-care-tips/).
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Atheist hung up on the “God” word
It’s God *as we understood him*, many many atheists get clean and sober in the rooms of AA, and, really, alcoholism is as deadly as cancer. If it took believing the earth is flat and the moon is made of Swiss cheese for me to stay sober, I would join the Flat Earth Society tomorrow. AA, of course, doesn’t demand anything like that.
Indeed, lots of atheists stay clean and sober in AA! Read this:
* https://www.aa.org/god-word-agnostic-and-atheist-members-aa
As per our Big Book, on page 47:
>When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God.
God can just be a group of drunks: If we do what the fellowship wants us to do, instead of what our alcoholism wants us to do, we’ll get sober.
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Loved one or friend has drinking problem
The general suggestion we give here for people with loved ones and friends suffering from alcoholism is to go to Al-Anon meetings. The subreddit is r/alanon but I think we do a disservice suggesting people stay on Reddit, since the recovery happens at a meeting, not here.
So, that in mind, here’s the Al-Anon website: https://al-anon.org/
To find an Al-Anon meeting: https://al-anon.org/al-anon-meetings/find-an-al-anon-meeting/ Like AA, Al-Anon follows tradition 4, so centralized Al-Anon doesn’t keep track of all meetings. However, regional Al-Anon chapters have their own websites, e.g. https://www.nycalanon.org/ for people in New York City.
Remember the three Cs: We didn’t **cause** it, we can’t **control** it, and we won’t **cure** it.
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I keep relapsing
First of all, I do not consider a relapse a failure. The best thing one can do after relapsing is to call up their sponsor (if they do not have a sponsor, call up their local Alano Club or AA hotline), tell them what happened, and go to a meeting as soon as they have sobered up again.
I believe every alcoholic has an AA dosage threshold below which they will relapse again. If one relapses when going to three meetings a week, go to five meetings a week. If one relapses when going to five meetings a week, go to a meeting every day. While face to face meetings are better at achieving sobriety than a virtual meeting, if it’s not possible to go to a face to face, there’s an online meeting going on right now. Check out https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings?types=24%2F7 I would give https://aahomegroup.org and https://www.319aagroup.org/ a try, both are 24/7/365 AA meetings.
I have heard stories of people who needed years of relapsing before they got clean and sober. Don’t give up before the miracle happens.
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Here is the version I saw of the steps in reverse:
1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.
2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
3. Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
5. Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
7. Demanded others to either "shape up or ship out".
8. Made a list of anyone who had ever harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
9. Got direct revenge on such people whenever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives, or at the very least, a jail sentence.
10. Continued to take inventory of others, and when they were wrong promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
11. Sought through nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn’t understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
12. Having had a complete physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.
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Psychiatric medications are absolutely an outside issue and members of AA should not be playing doctor. From the AA Big Book:
>God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.
From the pamphlet “[The A.A. Member—Medications and Other Drugs](https://www.aa.org/aa-member-medications-and-other-drugs)”
>No A.A. member should “play doctor”; all medical advice and treatment should come from a qualified physician
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I can’t speak for other people, but I myself actually only suggest 90
in 90 to chronic relapsers, or to people who are really worried they
will drink or use again. I remember back when we would read “attend 90
meetings in 90 days” at meetings, in the days when my old Alano Club
still had a cigarette vending machine, but I haven’t heard that at a
meeting for a very long time.
The thing about 90 in 90 is this: The more meetings one goes to, the
less likely a relapse is. Some people can stay clean and sober without
meetings. Others need a meeting a week. Others, two or three meetings a
week. And a few alcoholics really need a meeting a day to stay sober. We
don’t know what the threshold is for a given alcoholic, but if the
threshold looks to be a large number of meetings, I will suggest it.
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It is my personal experience that, here in the 2020s, 13^th stepping is uncommon. My own experience with mixed meetings is this: Men stick with men, women stick with women, and it’s *not* OK to date a newcomer. I’ve been at fellowships where men were called out at group level for trying to pick up newcomer women.
There’s little actual scientific research in to 13^th stepping in AA. [One older survey claimed that 32% of women experience 13^th stepping, i.e. feeling pressure to have sex in AA](https://doi.org/10.1080%2F10884600305373), but that survey used questionable science (the results are from people who self-selected to answer a survey, so that percentage in survey is undoubtedly greater than real world numbers). Also, the survey is from two decades ago, long before AA came out with their [safety flyer](https://www.aa.org/safety-and-aa-flyer) and long before many AA meetings developed a culture of keeping women safe. [AA’s own literature claims that AA is a safe space for women](https://www.aa.org/women-aa). Reddit has a way of amplifying isolated incidents, and my real-world experience with AA meetings is *very* different than the impression I would get from just reading reddit.
It’s possible to avoid 13^the stepping altogether: AA has *always* had women’s meetings, and here in the post COVID-19 era, online meetings are also a viable option. Many mixed meetings do *not* have 13^th stepping issues; it’s probably worthwhile to try them out, and, as always with AA, go to a different meeting if one feels uncomfortable.
I have seen people use 13^th stepping as an excuse to not go to meetings. This can very well be the alcoholic rationalization machine at work: Any excuse to avoid an AA meeting.
The important thing is to get help and to get sober. Alcoholism is as deadly as any cancer, and [science shows](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html) that AA is an effective way to reduce the chance of drinking again.
More on the 13th step
This is a very touchy subject which tends to result in some pretty long drawn out discussions. I have discussed the issues with people who have gone to some of the sex-based 12-step recovery groups (SA/SAA/SCA/SLAA/etc.) and the general consensus is this:
* Getting sexually harassed at an AA meeting is not merely a resentment problem where the woman needs to work the 4^th step over it.
* It’s important to not minimize the experience some women have had with 13^th stepping in the rooms of AA, or to imply it’s a woman’s fault when 13^th stepped.
* Men who try to 13^th step women should be told their behavior is unacceptable, and to go to a sex-based recovery group to deal with stopping that behavior. If a man refuses to stop the behavior, they should be asked to only go to men’s meetings, and to not interact with women in Alano clubs.
* A few fellowships, even here in the 2020s, still try to ignore the 13^th step problem. Since each AA group is autonomous as per the 4^th tradition, centralized AA can not wave a wand and fix those fellowships. The only viable solution in cases like that is to go to other meetings and/or start up a new meeting. I have suggested and continue to suggest to people in dysfunctional fellowships to contact local churches to see who will host a women’s meeting.
* A lot of people with anti-AA agendas and with resentments against the program of AA attempt to amplifly 13^th step concerns as part of a bad faith attack against the AA program. This is not arguing in good faith.
* Naturally, men get 13^th stepped too, but the primary source of most problematic behavior appears to be men trying to date newcomer women.
* Oldtimers suggest not getting in to a relationship in early sobriety, and most oldtimers (including myself) frown on someone with time in the program dating a newcomer.
* I want to let the alcoholic still suffering know that 13^th stepping is uncommon enough here in the 2020s that it’s worthwhile for women to try out local face to face meetings as part of the process of overcoming alcoholism. Please do not use allegations of 13^th stepping on reddit as an excuse to not try out a face to face meeting.
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Moderate drinking doesn’t work
Maybe you can drink moderately. I know I, being the kind of alcoholic I am, *can’t*.
Moderate drinking for an alcoholic of my type is a [fool’s errand](https://elplatt.com/return-moderate-drinking-still-lie), but it’s hard for an alcoholic of my type to admit that. As per the Big Book:
>The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
>We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
Notably, I do not know of one scientific study showing successful long term moderate drinking among alcoholics; the few times we have had long term followups, tries at moderate drinking have been a disaster. For example, there was a study in the 1970s showing alcoholics successfully moderately drinking, but, by the early 1980s, [only possibly one person in that study was still successfully moderately drinking](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7089552) (Non paywalled summaries of Pendery 1982 from that era: https://archive.ph/q6c7b https://archive.ph/84l4z Note that the Sobells were ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, but their research was considered very sloppy)
Alcoholics Anonymous, on the other hand, has been shown to successfully keep alcoholics sober long term. One study shows members of AA successfully sober [16 year later](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/).
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More on moderate drinking
For me to believe anything besides abstinence works for an alcoholic of my type over the long term, I need a study which does the following two things:
* The study shows *long-term* moderate drinking among alcoholics. I want an eight year follow-up, because there *is* a study out there showing AA still works [16 years later](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/)
* The study is *not* based on self reporting data, but uses collaterals (usually, loved ones) and maybe alcohol testing to verify the supposed “moderate” drinker is, in fact, moderately drinking. One example of moderate drinkers lying about their drinking is Graber and Miller 1988, DOI 10.1037/h0080474, where the “moderate” drinkers claimed to be drinking less, but their loved ones/collaterals said they were actually drinking a lot more than they claimed to be drinking. And, of course, [Audrey Kishline’s story](https://old.reddit.com/r/alcoholicsanonymous/comments/uvgw1z/my_neighbor_walked_in_late_to_my_first_meeting/i9ljb21/) is a famous example of an alcoholic trying and failing at long term moderation, killing two innocent people in the process.
I’m old enough to remember [Pendery 1982](https://defendingaa.blogspot.com/2018/12/some-history-behing-pendery-1982.html) all too well, and I haven’t seen solid science showing alcoholics engaging in long-term moderate drinking since then. Moderate drinking for alcoholics, as far as I can tell, is still a [fool’s errand](https://elplatt.com/return-moderate-drinking-still-lie)—but many alcoholics will go to great amounts of rationalization to believe it can work.
I’ve looked at Henssler 2021 and I’m not impressed:
* There were only *two* studies which looked at results for longer than two years
* The combined N of those two studies was under 100 (Cochrane 2020 had, as a point of comparison, 952 subjects at the three-year follow-up).
* One of the two longer-term studies used the same subjects used in Pendery 1982. Any data about the subjects in Pendery 1982 engaging in long-term moderate drinking is obviously incorrect, but Henssler 2021 includes the very same subjects as seen in Pendery 1982 to argue for long-term moderate drinking.
* The other longer-term study is Graber and Miller 1988. As far as I can tell, it *appears* that the Henssler et al. meta-study took the “moderate” drinkers word for how much they were drinking, even though people who observed the “moderate” drinkers drinking saw a lot more drinking than what the moderate drinkers self-reported.
While I haven’t looked at the short-term moderate drinking data in Henssler 2021, I will concede that they could very well have seen, with a low standard deviation and resulting P value, people trying moderate drinking able to moderately drink for two years—but that’s *not* evidence that moderate drinking is a viable long-term strategy for alcoholics.
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult:
* No membership dues or fees. 7^th tradition is optional; the only literature someone may be suggested to buy is the Big Book, 12x12, *maybe* a study guide for the Big Book. Well under $100 total, and the first 164 pages of the Big Book along with some study guides is not under copyright in the US and is readily available for free online.
* No cult of personality. Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob have been dead for well over half a century, and aren’t discussed very often in meetings nor are a significant part of the AA program.
* Easy to leave. If you want to leave, there door is right there. If the drinking gets bad enough and you want to stop drinking for good, the door of AA will always welcome you.
* Evidence based and effective. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html It works, it really does.
In my experience, people who claim AA is a cult are people who are still actively drinking or using (e.g. using the Marijuana Maintenance Program or what not), and don’t like being told that we suggest abstinence in this program. Every time I go through the posting history of someone claiming AA is a cult, I either find a short posting history, or I find postings where they talk about their pot smoking and/or “controlled” drinking.
See also: [This more in depth discussion about why AA is *not* a cult](https://reddit.com/r/cults/comments/fi511a/is_aa_a_cult/)
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In the spirit of cooperation with other 12-step programs, there are multiple love and/or sex addiction 12-step programs:
* [Sexaholics Anonymous](https://www.sa.org/), for married people with porn and/or infidelity problems
* [Sex Addicts Anonymous](https://saa-recovery.org/), for people with a wide variety of sexual addiction issues (porn, infidelity, emotionally damaging hook-ups, etc.)
* [Sexual Compulsives Anonymous](https://sca-recovery.org/)
* [Sex and Love Addicts](https://slaafws.org/) for people with a wide variety of different sex, love, or romantic/sexual fantasy addiction problems
* [Codependents Anonymous](https://coda.org/) for people with co-dependency issues.
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Alcoholism is a disease which tells us we do not have a disease, that our drinking is normal and alright.
Here is a self-assessment tool: https://www.aa.org/self-assessment
It doesn’t matter how much you drink. If you have a desire to stop drinking, you are welcome to attend any AA meeting. To try out a meeting, there is an online meeting happening right now: https://www.319aagroup.org/ and https://aahomegroup.org/
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Using marijuana or other intoxicants
First of all, you are always welcome in the rooms of AA, since the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
The reason people get all bent out of shape over “California sobriety” is because we alcoholics have an alcoholic rationalization machine, and we have a tendency to become very dishonest with ourselves and dishonest with others when it comes to consuming intoxicants like marijuana.
Many—probably most—alcoholics in the program only take medication as prescribed, are honest with their doctor about their addiction condition, and do not get prescriptions from multiple doctors.
The AA conference approved mini-book “Living Sober” recommends we avoid intoxicating drugs, regardless of whether or not they are legal:
>So we go to great lengths to avoid all street drugs—marijuana, "crank," "downers," "uppers," cocaine, "hash," hallucinogens, "speed" — and even many over-the-counter pills and nostrums, as well as tranquilizers.
The only reason we don’t bring them up in the Big Book is because any drug use was socially unacceptable, and there was a huge stigma associated with drugs that AA understandably wanted to avoid until drugs became acceptable in the mid-1960s (read: *After* the Big Book and *after* the 12x12).
A lot of people, including myself, consider marijuana and other intoxicant abuse a relapse, but, then again, I don’t think a relapse is a failure; I think it can be a step in the right direction. Someone who relapses once every 30 days is doing a lot better than someone who drinks every day.
Sobriety is a process, not a destination. I had a lot of non-drinking issues after I stopped drinking in the rooms of AA, and I discovered—a process which took far too long—that the program as written in the first 164 pages of the Big Book greatly helps me, no matter what it is that is that is making me irritable, restless, and discontented (Drugs/Gambling addiction/overeating/sex addictions/resentments/fear/etc).
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Psychedelics
“There is currently inadequate scientific evidence for endorsing the use of psychedelics to treat any psychiatric disorder”
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There’s an online meeting going on right now. Check out https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings?types=24%2F7 I would give https://aahomegroup.org and https://www.319aagroup.org/ a try, both are 24/7/365 AA meetings.
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It is my general observation and experience that people still using intoxicants are rather irritable, restless, and discontented. One manifestation of this discontent is that they become rather confrontational when called out on their drug use. It’s not possible to reason with such people; they will not stop abusing drugs until they reach bottom or die -- sadly, many drug users would rather die in their addiction then acknowledge their behavior is wrong and get better. Here on Reddit, it is best for me not to waste my time engaging with such people; I instead say a prayer for them, block them, and move on.
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Rebuttal to Filtermag criticism of Cochrane 2020
Stanton Peele’s criticism of AA has not been published in a medical journal, much less underwent the extensive peer review the Cochrane 2020 report on Alcoholics Anonymous has. Indeed, Filtermag is an openly biased non-mainstream source. If Peele found a real issue with Alcoholics Anonymous, why didn’t he write a letter or submit an article to a medical journal?
There are several reasons why these arguments would not pass muster to get published in a mainstream scientific journal.
Peele claimed that AA overall doesn’t help alcoholics, since, while AA does increase abstinence, Peele alleged that it does not decrease overall percentage of drinking days and other measures of alcoholism severity. Nick Heather echoed this claim, attributing it to Peele, when writing a letter criticizing the Cochrane Review. Here is [the response to Heather from one of the Cochrane writers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243271/):
>It should be remembered also, that DDD [Drinks per drinking day] and alcohol-related consequences are averages based solely on those individuals who actually drank at all [...] while more individuals in AA/TSF achieved continuous abstinence, those who were not completely abstinent did not drink more heavily, drink more frequently or experience more alcohol-related consequence
Peele mentions that it’s only at the one year mark we see an increase in abstinence large enough to be very statistically significant (i.e. have a low P value). The reason for this is because the only study with enough subjects to decrease the standard deviation and resulting P value was the 1990s Match study at the one-year followup. Studies, including the Match one, show similar increases in abstinence at other time points, but with fewer subjects. There’s no reason to believe the results would be different if we had as many subjects as we do at the one-year mark, but we cannot get a low enough P with the number of subjects we have to consider the data except at the one-year mark, by Cochrane standards, “high certainty” evidence.
He then claims it was a “self selecting” population, but all of the studies used randomization of subjects. He then continues to build up a straw man about Cochrane 2020: He claims they only used two studies to show manualized AA-based TSF treatment has better abstinent outcomes, but pages 88 and 89 of the actual Cochrane review show six different studies, all showing better results for therapies which get people in the rooms of AA. Then he claims the Cochrane review shows higher drinking intensity, but page 92 shows that it’s only a single study (McCrady 1996, with a P value of 0.07 which is considered low-quality evidence) which saw a higher percentage of days heavy drinking, while two other studies show either the same number of days of heavy drinking, or a slight improvement for AA-based treatments.
One Brandon Bergman who helped with the research for the 2020 Cochrane review of AA also has [posted a rebuttal to Peele’s article](https://twitter.com/brandonbphd/status/1240531277884899328).
Alcoholics Anonymous works for some alcoholics. The fact that there has been, in the last two years, no serious science refuting the Cochrane 2020 review shows just how solid that review is.
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I need a friend in AA
One place to share is at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s required to have a desire to stop drinking: AA can not help and is not for people who want to continue drinking.
There’s a Zoom meeting going on right now. Check out https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings?types=24%2F7 I would give https://aahomegroup.org and https://www.319aagroup.org/ a try, both are 24/7/365 AA meetings.
Some guidelines:
* You need to raise your hand in a Zoom meeting
* Then, there is a wait before you will be able to share
* Once your share starts, it is timed. Only 3-5 minutes of sharing is allowed, so that others may share.
* If multiple shares are desired, just raise your hand multiple times.
* Science shows that regular attenders of AA meetings are much less likely to drink again.
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Why do you beat the drum for AA so much?
I have seen countless people in the rooms decide they don’t need AA anymore, drink again, and then come back to the room with their tail between their legs, telling people they relapsed after no longer going to AA.
That’s not the only story I have of someone who left the rooms of AA. I had a good friend in AA. Smart kid, needing a father figure, good with computers, good looking, popular with all the girls. He had these big handsome eyes which melted countless girls’ hearts; I can still close my eyes and visualize them. He decided to stop going to AA. Decided we were all “spiritually sick” or some such—it was the alcoholic rationalization machine in overdrive. Went out again. Overdosed. Died. Didn’t even live to see his 30^th birthday. Those “spiritually sick” people at the local Alano Club then put his picture on the wall, mentioned he died, and even still have his name on the wall. He’s not the only one I have seen go out and die young.
I hate rigid ideology. I despise “my way or the high way” philosophies of life. The reason why I’m like, hey be careful when seeing someone talk about no longer going to meetings is not because I think we have some kind of monopoly on sobriety or the truth or what not. I get jittery because I have had friends stop going to meetings, go out again, and die. I agree that only happens to *some* people who stop going to meetings, but considering how deadly the consequences can be for someone who can not stay sober outside the meetings, I urge caution with leaving meetings.
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AA solves worrying about drug tests
The nice thing about being clean and sober is that I don’t have to worry about taking drug tests. If you want to try and cheat the system and continue to drink and/or abuse drugs, well, there’s no way to cheat out of the negative consequences of drinking and drugging.
When you’re ready to be clean and sober and find a wonderful new way of living, happy, joyous, and free, we have a way that works for us.
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Do I need to contact someone who abused me when making amends
Childhood abuse (e.g. sexual molestation) and abusive relationships is a very different kettle of fish than the kinds of amends the Big Book has in pages 76-83; the only amend the Big Book mentions with an ex is a situation where money was involved. The Big Book does not deal with victims of child molestation or similar situations *at all*, so there is no requirement in the program to contact abusers.
Page 83 of the 12x12 says that, with amends, sometimes “by the very nature of the situation, we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.” [Professional domestic abuse guides say we should not contact an abuser when making amends.](https://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=38492) *A Program For You*, which is an excellent guide to doing the program as written in the Big Book, says this:
>[The amends list] of course, does not include sexual abuse—any sexual behavior that was forced on you against your will, either as a child or as an adult. As with any abuse you may have suffered, it is important to feel your anger and not fault yourself.
Point being, when we have been abused, *the Big Book does not say we have to make an amend to the person in question*. If no money is owed, and if the person is no longer in our life, the Big Book does not provide hard and fast rules.
My experience is this: No contact, say a prayer for the person. It will harm the abusive person to attempt to contact them again, since enabling their abuse—and even contact for an “amend” can enable abuse—is harmful. Likewise, with a relationship which has gone so bad that we no longer contact the person *at all*, it can very well harm the other person to initiate any kind of contact with them again, and the Big Book does not mention contact with exes (unless we owe them money). My experience is the best amend is no contact whatsoever, and to say a prayer for the person in question.
---
There’s this thing alcoholics have, it’s what I call the alcoholic rationalization machine. This rationalization machine will do anything and everything to move away from meetings, move away from a program of recovery (with, yes, a [proven track record](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html)), and move back to drinking.
Over the years, I have seen alcoholics rationalize taking the next drink, and I have seen some (probably a loudspoken minority of) doctors and scientists enabling the lies an alcoholic tells themselves.
In the 1970s, it was the Sobell study which claimed an alcoholic of my type could drink again. By 1982, [those alcoholics supposedly engaging in “controlled drinking” were either dead, abstinent, or engaging in out of control drinking](https://archive.ph/84l4z)[1]. In the 1990s, one Audrey Kishline started a group called “Moderation Management” and even published a book telling alcoholics how they could control and manage their drinking. Within 10 years of writing that book, Kishline was no longer able to moderate her drinking, and ended up [killing two innocent people in a drunk driving accident](https://people.com/archive/under-the-influence-vol-54-no-3/).
So, here we see two attempts to write a “new” book which contradicts the following passages from pages 30 and 31 of the Big Book:
> The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
[...]
>Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right- about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!
Point being, I don’t think we need a new book. Not when some doctors and scientists still, in vain, keep pursuing the [fool’s errand of trying to make an alcoholic moderately drink again](https://elplatt.com/return-moderate-drinking-still-lie).
[1] For the record, the Sobells were cleared of deliberate fraud. But the investigation concluded their scientific methodology was very sloppy.
--
AA has a [42% success rate, according to science from the 2020s](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/815097806/new-review-finds-alcoholics-anonymous-is-effective-but-not-for-everyone)
>what it found was that **42% of AA participants were completely abstinent one year** compared with 35 who underwent only the professional treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy
(emphasis mine)
The myth of a 5% success rate does not come from any scientific peer reviewed paper. Instead, it comes from three very questionable sources:
* One is a 1990 survey of AA membership. It included a graph which was poorly labeled and confusing to read. People misread it, and thought it showed a 5% “success rate”, when, in fact, [the graph shows a 26% one-year retention rate (PDF file)](http://ieji.org/wiki/_media/doc/recout01.pdf)
* The other big source for the 5% figure comes from a 2014 book by Lance Dodes, The Sober Truth. What Lance Dodes did was look at a then 34-year-old study (and not the 8-year-old [Moos and Moos 2006](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/) study he was aware of—he mentions it elsewhere—but which has better numbers for AA success) and decide only people who both had 2.5 years or more sober and were still regularly attending AA were a “success”. Sober, but not regularly going to AA, not a “success”. Regularly going to AA, but only 2 years sober, also not a “success”. Rather disingenuous on Dodes’s part if you ask me, especially since Dodes ignored the fact that 1980 study showed that, the more people went to AA, the more likely they would be sober (e.g. 42% of regular AA attenders were sober one year or more in the graph Dodes used to calculate his 5% figure, compared to 16% for people who never went to AA). [Other alcoholism treatment experts rejected Dodes’s figures when the book came out](https://www.wbur.org/news/2014/04/07/defense-12-step-addiction)
* Agent orange, who, for the record, appears to have [drank again](https://www.reddit.com/r/alcoholicsanonymous/comments/qwb88e/orange_papers/hl6su5j/) and [ended up homeless](https://archive.ph/vHPoq). The green-papers site from the same era as the “Agent Orange” site refuted it quite nicely: http://web.archive.org/web/20150329052802/http://green-papers.org/ “95% of patients had relapsed at some time during the study, even though many of these eventually attained sobriety. [...] It's well known that most severe alcoholics only get sober after many relapses, to the extent that relapses can be considered part of the recovery process. So don't pretend that's a failure. [...] And anyway, this was a study of a health network, not AA.”
The fact of the matter is this: We find that regular meeting makers are less likely to drink again; [multiple](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2220012/) studies [have shown](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous&oldid=978717977#Fiorentine_1999) that regular AA meeting attenders are twice as likely to get and stay sober.
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12 Things about AA
- A.A. is not for everyone, but it seems to work for those who want it.
- The traditions didn't happen by accident, and they're pretty amazing.
- You're absolutely welcome to attend an open or closed meeting, if you have a desire to stop drinking.
- The first step doesn't need to be qualified or justified. Losing things is not required. If you can't control and enjoy your drinking at the same time, BINGO!
- If you start drinking again, it's not ideal, but it isn't a moral failing.
- A.A. is full of people deeply affected by the disease of alcoholism. "We are not saints" is a profound understatement.
- The preamble, read before every meeting, answers a lot of questions.
- There is no time limit for working the steps, but you probably shouldn't delay.
- Everybody's sponsor in A.A. is in A.A. for a reason. (See #6)
- If you believe this program can help, don't drink, and follow the suggestions to the best of your ability, that's the program in a nutshell.
- Membership in A.A. doesn't bestow one with a medical or social work degree.
- A.A. isn't going to solve all your problems, but it shouldn't make any of them worse.
[Source](https://old.reddit.com/r/alcoholicsanonymous/comments/y48ym5/12_things_about_aa_for_those_interested_or/)
