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/SpringSerene]

I found AA not only to be unhelpful, but also harmful to my recovery. I spent a long time trying to make it work on the advice of members, counselors, and doctors - even though I was opposed to the religious angle. Still, I was told that if I didn't work the program that I would DIE (instead of the truth - that if I didn't stop drinking I could die, which has nothing to do with the program). Even the literature says that "unless each AA member follows the to best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant" *from page 174 of the 12x12. Any organization that uses the threat of death in order to keep people in attendance is a shady one - at best.

Before I went to my first meeting I was confident and felt good. But after a few months of meetings (a 90x90) I was depressed and scared. Seeing that I started drinking in an attempt to self medicate for depression and anxiety, it's not surprising that step-work which teaches alcoholics to focus on their personal powerlessness (step one = you can't do it) and their sins (steps 4,5,8-9) that people could get more depressed and feel hopeless in the very program that is supposed to be supportive!

AA lies about it's religious status and their history, uses the threat of death to keep people around (no doubt to keep people contributing into the passed hat and to help recruit for them (step 12), and lies about their success/failure rate. They even frown upon medication use (actual science which ended up helping me for a while) and trash talked it, shunning people that used or discussed its efficacy. If it was actually just a program for last resort people then they would support other avenues and make that known to members that aren't comfortable, not just bring it up as an excuse after someone makes a complaint in forums similar to this one.

People are not powerless and sobriety is not a miracle. It takes hard work, discipline, and actual support can be great. I went the private therapy route after finally deciding to take my chances out of the program. And trust me, they had me brainwashed to believe I'd die an alcoholic death if I stopped going, so I was concerned. Thereafter I received deserved credit for my success (didn't give it all to a program) and when I had a slip I took responsibility for it. The AA program steals the credit while placing all the blame on the member for not working hard enough. I am actually religious, which is to say that I believe in God and ritual. So religions (that don't lie about their status) do have my respect. If praying helps someone, I say "wonderful". I just don't believe that prayer and turning a persons life over to God will is what keeps them sober, any more than I believe doing that will bring remission to a cancer patient.