I also oppose dogmatism in AA

There is remarkable little I disagree on with the author of https://www.recoveringfromrecovery.com/

The fact of the matter is this: A quarter of a century ago, when a home computer was an investment which cost as much as a good used car, and the internet was only something only occasionally mentioned in magazines, people were a lot more dogmatic in AA meetings. The steps, outlined in the first 164 pages of the Big Book were the only way to save sober, and if you didn't get serious about working the steps right now you would surely relapse again. People enjoyed beating the program over people's head and using the program as an excuse to bully newcomers. 

I found the dogmatism of those people repulsive, and managed to stay sober, even though I had to fire my sponsor just before working my fifth step. According to the AA fundamentalists, I was on the path to relapse since I didn't finish the steps. It took me a decade to finally finish up the steps (where step nine has been by and large living amends), a decade where I never relapsed.

The point being: I was not, for large parts of my recovery, a Big Book thumper. There was a brief period when I started thumping the Big Book pretty heavily at meetings, to the point someone with more time than me told me to stop beating the drum. The program, as written in the first 164 pages of the Big Book, is a very effective program, but I no longer pretend that it is the only, or even necessarily best, way to stay sober.  

And, the AA program has changed. It used to be standard fare to hear people proclaim "The program as written in the first 164 pages is the way to stay sober." Recently, I got in a heated discussion when I pointed out that a person can stay sober with just the 164; telling people they must work the program a certain way is just not how things are done at AA meetings any more.

Atheists, who used to hide in the corners, now openly proclaim their atheism in the rooms. Indeed, the Gravevine is looking for atheists and agnostics who are still sober to publish their stories in official AA literature. They may still be Big Book meetings, but there are also people with years clean and sober who openly admit that they do not like the Big Book in meetings.

That said, the fanaticism of people with an agenda is even worse. https://www.recoveringfromrecovery.com/anti-aa-forums-and-blogs/ describes them well. When they were a loud spoken minority, that was one thing. Once Lance Dodes's book made their viewpoints get printed in mainstream journals, that was when a line was crossed. I knew, from my decades of experience with AA, that claims of AA not being helpful were simply not true. I started reading scientific papers, started to understand what was being discussed; the page http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/26/alcoholics-anonymous-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ is a good, reasonably balanced introduction to what the science has to say about AA effectiveness. 

AA works if you work it. The science shows that. The AA Big Book, in the preface to the second edition, claims a 75% success rate among "alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried." Multiple observational studies support this figure, to name just three: Valliant 1995, Fiorentine 1999, and Moos and Moos 2006. 

No, AA is not for everyone. There are people who may be better off staying sober using SMART Recovery, Life Ring Fellowship, The Sinclair Method, whatever. Or the first 164 pages of the Big Book: I have well over 10,000 days clean and sober working the Big Book program. But making false claims that AA fails the majority of people who really try the program is downright dishonest. Making claims that AA has a 5% success rate is downright dishonest. Using 38-year-old or 50-year-old studies to claim AA doesn't work while ignoring studies from this century showing AA effectiveness is downright dishonest.

Hence, this blog. I correct the record when people with an agenda against AA use outdated or inaccurate information to downplay AA's huge success keeping people sober.

Comparison of 12-step groups to mutual help alternatives

Kaskutas,whose 2009 paper "Alcoholics Anonymous Effectiveness: Faith Meets Science" I frequently cite when pointing out that AA works for people who work it, or why early randomized controlled trials did not show an accurate picture of 12-step effectiveness, recently co-published a paper comparing 12-step groups to other mutual help groups entitled "Comparison of 12-Step Groups to Mutual Help Alternatives for AUD in a Large, National Study: Differences in Membership Characteristics and Group Participation, Cohesion, and Satisfaction."

One of the groups they looked at is a no-drinking, no-God fellowship called "LifeRing Secular Recovery." Like AA, they are very adamant about complete abstinence on their webpage: in one article they talk about the "low success rate of Moderation Management, and of individuals trying to moderate on their own," and one of their fundamental philosophies is sobriety, which they make clear means complete abstinence.

Despite this, Kaskutas' paper mentions that "LifeRing [...] members were less likely to endorse the most stringent abstinence goal," which is interesting because stringent abstinence is a fundamental part of the LifeRing program. My take on it, having not read the paper (I am not about to spend 36 dollars getting a paper which will be free in six months), is that LifeRing, and other non-AA mutual aid fellowships, mainly attract people who are not satisfied with AA. My experience working with newcomers is that the biggest stumbling block is the fact that AA strongly suggests complete abstinence for alcoholics; we frequently read a part of the Big Book describing how an alcoholic can never drink moderately again.

Indeed, the majority of people online who are opposed to AA online are people who claim alcoholics can drink moderately; it is not surprising that even an AA alternative which also advocates for abstinence attracts the kinds of people who still think they can control their drinking again.

In terms of the study itself, while showing promising results, it has the same issue that studies which claim alcoholics can drink moderately again have: It is a short-term study using self reported data.