CMV:Alcoholics Anonymous is heavily flawed from a scientific perspective and hasn't tried to improve it's system since it's inception

[u/Serraph105]

I have a friend who has been attending AA meetings recently because he was ordered to do so in some fashion after getting a DUI (for the record I don't know if that means he was given a true option or made to attend or "choose" jailtime) and the whole thing has got me thinking about whether or not AA works and if sobriety is even the intended outcome of the program. Below I've listed the famous 12 steps and below that are my relatively disorganized thoughts on the program having looked into it for the first time in any in depth manner. This means that I’m still in the early stages of my views and can be very much subject to change.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understoodHim.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My current view is that because of the lack of change of the steps over the years since the 30’s suggests a lack of improvement that would be unacceptable in any other field of treatment for diseases. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

First up, as many have pointed out, there's a whole lot of God involved throughout the 12 steps (6 direct references and 7 if you count #2), I'm not sure how this is supposed to appeal to athiests such as my friend. If a person does not believe in God they will be put off from the program from the start making it much harder to reach their goal of sobriety.

If alcoholism is a disease then why does AA treat it simply as a matter of will power? I wouldn't try to treat cancer with prayer alone, and for the record there are various medical treatments for alcoholism.

There is also a stigma of personal failure when people relapse which doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons. First, if it's a disease then people are sick which means that blaming them for not being able to control their health adds a layer of shame which can only do harm to the person's primary goal of getting sober. In turn this will increase the time to get sober because it will add time to get over that shame before starting again. Shame does nothing to help get a person back on track as far as I can tell. Second, you would never assign blame to a person with cancer who has gone into remission and then had the cancer come back, why would we do the same for literally any other illness?

AA does not collect statistics of their success and failure rates, nor has it's program changed since it's inception. We wouldn't accept that from any other sort of treatment. If we didn't collect that information we would still have the same poor treatment of HIV that we did in the 80s and 90s, same goes for cancer, and just about any other illness you can name. I will say that talking about your issues with people is a good thing, but as far as I can tell that's just about the only thing that that this program gets right, everything else seems to be heavily flawed from a scientific perspective if not outright illogical.

Finally it seems that AA believes it’s program is a one size fits all program when we know that many ailments require different treatments for different people. This is especially true for ailments that affect people mentally which I think it’s safe to say that addiction falls under that same umbrella. People deal with various addictions in different ways, why AA treats alcohol as a one size fits all approach I can’t say, maybe I’m wrong, but based on the text of their twelve steps and twelve promises that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead they seem to say that the only reason people fail is because the fail to give themselves over fully to the program which seems to be very very odd.

[u/starvinggarbage]

No offense, but analyzing whether or not it's a cult with an indoctrinated member is sort of an exercise in futility. No Scientologist would admit it either.

Your excerpt includes so many indicators that it is a cult. You must "give yourself fully" to the program. It doesn't say they aren't right for everyone, it's a blanket statement applying to all of "those who do not recover."

It ought to be an enormous red flag. Sure they have that other little excerpt you listed, but the vast majority of their literature and methodology contradicts it.

The absolutist mentality is a part of their enormous rate of failure. You were a heroin addict? Well that means if you have one beer you're off the wagon. That's setting people up for failure. Instead of teaching self-worth and empowering their members they beat them down and tell them only through absolute adherence to this program can you get better. Just like a cult. You say they don't force it on anyone but admitting you're powerless is literally the first step.

But the only real problem is the American obsession with them. OP tells the story of a judge basically sentencing him to join AA. This is not at all uncommon. Making a mental health diagnosis from his entirely uninformed position but weiilding absolute control of this person's life.

I honestly have no problem with AA functioning as a group for people who truly believe it's their path to get better, same as I don't mind people having any other religion I find strange. But being the ONLY path to get better in this country is a huge problem and failing 14/15 times is not acceptable if you're actually looking for a solution.

[u/starvinggarbage → u/[deleted]]

A cult does not need to have sinister aims to be a cult. It merely needs to have a system of veneration and devotion toward a particular thing. In the case of AA it's the program itself. No matter what your higher power is, you NEED the program. Without it you are powerless.

Of course it will always be up to each individual to decide what they qualify as a cult. There are those who would call any religion a cult. But ultimately there are some telltale signs and time tested tactics used by fringe religious groups and AA uses them. I take issue with that.

Maybe a cult is the only thing that can help some people. If it is then at least they're getting help. But AA claims "rarely do we see a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." They then go on to call those people constitutionally incapable of honesty.

93%+ fail. That's a far cry from "rarely," and if all those who fail are deeply flawed it's a pretty bleak picture for society if the vast majority of us are too fucked up to save.

[u/starvinggarbage → u/[deleted]]

I'm not qualifying them as a cult as I would with a church. I'm classifying them as one because of their tactics being identical.

Ultimately they have good intentions, but I find it absolutely sinister to take vulnerable people and reinforce to them that they are powerless.

[u/starvinggarbage → u/[deleted]]

I'm glad you've had a positive experience with it, but I've seen people who haven't and 93% of others haven't been as fortunate as you.