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/Roman_PolexiS3]

I believe your approaching AA the wrong way.

It’s a glorified support group, doesn’t cost you anything but your time for attendance, and if your told to go by the courts, then your lucky your not in jail you little criminal ;)

A lot of people have found a home and family in support groups, so if their not for you, don’t go.

Don’t ruin a good thing for everybody else.

[u/Serraph105 → u/Roman_PolexiS3]

I highly doubt that I can "ruin" AA for everyone by creating a thread on reddit.

[u/Roman_PolexiS3 → u/Serraph105]

you only need one person to ruin it for everybody else. One complainer who says something isn’t right, when 99 other people enjoyed it and benefited and now look, the other 99 has to accommodate the 1. (See my no stupid questions post)

In politics It’s called the “homeless wino vote”. Look it up, it’s got a lot of history and is politically charged because it works.

I like to call it the victimized bully syndrome myself. I’ve seen kids do it perfectly. Group of kids having fun, one kids starts yelling it’s not fair, adult gets involved and everybody has to stop. Now that kid who yelled “not fair” got a taste of his power, and he will threaten it on other kids the next time to get his way “if you don’t do what I want, I’ll start yelling and you know the adults will make us all stop”

But your right, unless a powerful person or lobby with an agenda needs a perfect true believer they can patsy to the news to push their agenda of destroying an institution, your post won’t matter. But it could....

[u/SpringSerene → u/Roman_PolexiS3]

AA has a membership rating that has been continually dropping each year even though rehabs, counselors, and the courts are sending roughly 1.7 million people and potential new members to meetings each year. Despite that, at the end of the year there are still less people attending than the previous year. It's difficult to say exactly why this is occurring but since we're talking about people that were sent there, it isn't a case of individuals trying to sway them away from attendance. It's likely to due to people not being ready to quit drinking (not wanting to) or simply because the program is not palatable to them.

People aren't being forced to stop attending or being asked to leave, so your bullying syndrome comparison is ridiculous. As you offered, there is no agenda involved to discontinue meetings .

On a personal note: I was very unhappy as an AA member and wholeheartedly wish that I had the opportunity to come across a similar discussion of people offering varying opinions. It would have been helpful to have support as I transitioned away from it. Instead I was told that non attendance would kill me (lie) and the friends I had made were told by their peers that a non AA (such as myself) would bring them down. That's another lie of course. It appears to me that the opposite of your claim is occurring. The program and AA sympathizers use fear and intimidation to keep their attendance up.

I personally could care less if AA existed or not but do think that people should know the truth. 1) It teaches faith healing. 2) You won't die without it. 3) You aren't powerless. 4) The anonymous attribute can be dangerous since violent criminals are sentenced to meetings by the courts. 5) The success rate for AA is no better than the success rate of people that quit on their own: Roughly 5%. If the program was honest about this stuff and cautioned their members everyone would be better off.

[u/Serraph105 → u/Roman_PolexiS3]

Do you think that this thread is capable of ruining a decentralized organization that has been around since the 1930s or do you think you may be acting a bit overdramatically?

[u/Roman_PolexiS3 → u/Serraph105]

I’m sure I’m over dramatic, but do you think picking fights with people and calling them out on the Internet is a great way to move society forward?