Alcoholics Anonymous
Nickname | AA |
---|---|
Formation | 1935 |
Founders | Bill Wilson Bob Smith |
Founded at | Akron, Ohio |
Type | Mutual aid addiction recovery twelve-step program |
Headquarters | New York, New York |
Membership (2020) | 2,100,000 |
Website | aa |
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a global peer-led
AA dates its founding to
The Big Book debuted AA's suggested twelve steps as a continuing sobriety program of prayer, reflection, admission, better conduct and atonement, all to produce a "spiritual awakening" followed by taking others—usually sponsees—through the steps. Divining and following the will of an undefined God—"as we understood Him" or as “a higher power"—is integral to the steps, but differing practices and beliefs, including those of
To keep sobriety as its primary purpose, AA instituted its twelve traditions in 1950 to ensure membership to all wishing to stop drinking without any dues or fees required. They urge all memberships to be kept anonymous, especially in public media, but when anonymity is broken, no consequences are prescribed. The traditions also have AA avoiding hierarchies, dogma, public controversies and other outside entanglements as well as not acquiring property and for no members to use AA for material gain or public prestige. To stay independent and self-supporting, the traditions say no AA entity should accept outside financial aid.[14][15]
For all demographics, a 2020 scientific review found clinical interventions increasing AA participation via AA twelve step facilitation (AA/TSF) had sustained remission rates 20-60% above other well-established treatments. Additionally, 4 of the 5 economic studies in the review found that AA/TSF lowered healthcare costs considerably.[a][17][18][19] Regarding the disease model of alcoholism, an otherwise receptive AA has not endorsed it though many AA members have promoted it towards wider acceptance.[20]
With AA’s permission other recovery fellowships such as
History
AA was founded on 10 June 1935 but AA's origins are said to have begun when the renowned psychotherapist
Following his hospital discharge, Wilson joined the Oxford Group and tried to recruit other alcoholics to the group. These early efforts to help others kept him sober, but were ineffective in getting anyone else to join the group and get sober. Dr. Silkworth suggested that Wilson place less stress on religion (as required by The Oxford Group) and more on the science of treating alcoholism.
Wilson's first success came during a business trip to Akron, Ohio, where he was introduced to Robert Smith, a surgeon and Oxford Group member who was unable to stay sober. After thirty days of working with Wilson, Smith drank his last drink on 10 June 1935, the date marked by AA for its anniversaries.[28]
The first female member, Florence Rankin, joined AA in March 1937,
While writing the Big Book in the several years after 1935, Wilson developed the Twelve Steps, which were influenced by the Oxford Group's 6 steps and various readings, including William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience.[34][35]
The Big Book, the Twelve Steps, and the Twelve Traditions
To share their method, Wilson and other members wrote the initially-titled book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism,[36] from which AA drew its name. Informally known as "The Big Book" (with its first 164 pages virtually unchanged since the 1939 edition), it suggests a twelve-step program in which members admit that they are powerless over alcohol and need help from a "higher power". They seek guidance and strength through prayer and meditation from God or a higher power of their own understanding; take a moral inventory with care to include resentments; list and become ready to remove character defects; list and make amends to those harmed; continue to take a moral inventory, pray, meditate, and try to help other alcoholics recover. The second half of the book, "Personal Stories" (subject to additions, removal, and retitling in subsequent editions), is made of AA members' redemptive autobiographical sketches.[37]
In 1941, interviews on American radio and favorable articles in US magazines, including a piece by Jack Alexander in The Saturday Evening Post, led to increased book sales and membership.[38] By 1946, as the growing fellowship quarreled over structure, purpose, authority, finances and publicity, Wilson began to form and promote what became known as AA's "Twelve Traditions", which are guidelines for an altruistic, unaffiliated, non-coercive, and non-hierarchical structure that limited AA's purpose to only helping alcoholics on a non-professional level while shunning publicity. Eventually, he gained formal adoption and inclusion of the Twelve Traditions in all future editions of the Big Book.[14] At the 1955 conference in St. Louis, Missouri, Wilson relinquished stewardship of AA to the General Service Conference,[39] as AA had grown to millions of members internationally.[40]
In May 2017, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York seeking the return of the original manuscript of the Big Book from its then-owner. AAWS claimed that the manuscript had been given to them as a gift in 1979.[41] This action was criticized by many members of Alcoholics Anonymous since they didn't want their parent organization engaged in lawsuits.[42] Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. asked the court to voluntarily discontinue the action in November 2017.[43]
Organization and finances
AA says it is "not organized in the formal or political sense",[40] and Wilson, borrowing the phrase from anarchy theorist Peter Kropotkin, called it a "benign anarchy".[13] In Ireland, Shane Butler said that AA "looks like it couldn't survive as there's no leadership or top-level telling local cumanns what to do, but it has worked and proved itself extremely robust". Butler explained that "AA's 'inverted pyramid' style of governance has helped it to avoid many of the pitfalls that political and religious institutions have encountered since it was established here in 1946."[44]
In 2018, AA had 2,087,840 members and 120,300 AA groups worldwide.[40] The Twelve Traditions informally guide how individual AA groups function, and the Twelve Concepts for World Service guide how the organization is structured globally.[45]
A member who accepts a service position or an organizing role is a "trusted servant" with terms rotating and limited, typically lasting three months to two years and determined by group vote and the nature of the position. Each group is a self-governing entity, with AA World Services acting only in an advisory capacity. AA is served entirely by alcoholics, except for seven "nonalcoholic friends of the fellowship" of the 21-member AA Board of Trustees.[40]
AA groups are self-supporting, relying on voluntary contributions from members to cover expenses.[40] The AA General Service Office (GSO) limits contributions to US$5,000 a year.[46] "Below" the group level, AA may hire outside professionals for services that require specialized expertise or full-time responsibilities.[14]
Like individual groups, the GSO is self-supporting. AA receives proceeds from books and literature that constitute more than 50% of the income for its GSO.[47] In keeping with AA's Seventh Tradition, the Central Office is fully self-supporting through the sale of literature and related products, and the voluntary contributions of AA members and groups. It does not accept donations from people or organizations outside of AA.
In keeping with AA's Eighth Tradition, the Central Office employs special workers who are compensated financially for their services, but their services do not include working with alcoholics in need (the "12th Step").[48] (AA's 12th step is: "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.")[49] All 12th Step calls that come to the Central Office are handed to sober AA members who have volunteered to handle these calls. It also maintains service centers, which coordinate activities such as printing literature, responding to public inquiries, and organizing conferences. Other International General Service Offices (Australia, Costa Rica, Russia, etc.) are independent of AA World Services in New York.[50]
Program
AA's program extends beyond abstaining from alcohol.
AA shares the view that acceptance of one's inherent limitations is critical to finding one's proper place among other humans and God. Such ideas are described as "
Meetings
AA meetings are gatherings where recovery from alcoholism is discussed. One perspective sees them as "quasi-ritualized therapeutic sessions run by and for, alcoholics".[59] There are a variety of meeting types some of which are listed below. At some point during the meeting a basket is passed around for voluntary donations. AA's 7th tradition requires that groups be self-supporting, "declining outside contributions".[14] Weekly meetings are listed in local AA directories in print, online and in apps.
Open vs Closed meetings
"Open" meetings welcome anyone—nonalcoholics can attend as observers.[60] Meetings listed as "closed" welcome those with a self-professed "desire to stop drinking," which cannot be challenged by another member on any grounds.[14]
Speaker meetings
At speaker meetings one or more members come to tell their stories.[61]
Big Book meetings
At Big Book meetings, attendees read from the AA Big Book and discuss it.[61]
Discussion meetings
There are also meetings with or without a topic that allow participants to speak up or "share".[62]
Online vs. offline meetings
Online meetings are digital meetings held on platforms such as Zoom. Offline meetings, also called "face to face", "brick and mortar", or "in-person" meetings, are held in a shared physical real-world location. Some meetings are hybrid meetings, where people can meet in a specified physical location, but people can also join the meeting virtually.
Specialized meetings
AA meetings do not exclude other alcoholics, though some meetings cater to specific demographics such as gender, profession, age,[63] sexual orientation,[64][65] or culture.[66][67] Meetings in the United States are held in a variety of languages including Armenian, English, Farsi, Finnish, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.[68][65]
Meeting formats
While AA has pamphlets that suggest meeting formats,[69][70] groups have the autonomy to hold and conduct meetings as they wish "except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole".[14] Different cultures affect ritual aspects of meetings, but around the world "many particularities of the AA meeting format can be observed at almost any AA gathering".[71]
Confidentiality
In the Fifth Step, AA members typically reveal their own past misconduct to their sponsors. US courts have not extended the status of
Spirituality
Some critics have criticized 12-step programs as "a cult that relies on God as the mechanism of action"[74] and as "overly theistic and outdated".[75] Others have cited the necessity of a "higher power" in formal AA as creating dependence on outside factors rather than internal efficacy.[75] A 2010 study found increased attendance at AA meetings was associated with increased spirituality and decreased frequency and intensity of alcohol use.[76][77] Since the mid-1970s, several 'agnostic' or 'no-prayer' AA groups have begun across the US, Canada, and other parts of the world, which hold meetings that adhere to a tradition allowing alcoholics to freely express their doubts or disbelief that spirituality will help their recovery, and these meetings forgo the use of opening or closing prayers.[78][79]
Disease concept of alcoholism
More informally than not, AA's membership has helped popularize the disease concept of alcoholism[citation needed] which had appeared in the eighteenth century.[80] Though AA usually avoids the term disease, 1973 conference-approved literature said "we had the disease of alcoholism."[81] Regardless of official positions, since AA's inception, most members have believed alcoholism to be a disease.[82]
AA's Big Book calls alcoholism "an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer." Ernest Kurtz says this is "The closest the book Alcoholics Anonymous comes to a definition of alcoholism."[82] Somewhat divergently in his introduction to The Big Book, non-member and early benefactor William Silkworth said those unable to moderate their drinking suffer from an allergy. In presenting the doctor's postulate, AA said "The doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion as to its soundness may, of course, mean little. But as ex-problem drinkers, we can say that his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account."[83] AA later acknowledged that "alcoholism is not a true allergy, the experts now inform us."[84] Wilson explained in 1960 why AA had refrained from using the term disease:
We AAs have never called alcoholism a disease because, technically speaking, it is not a disease entity. For example, there is no such thing as heart disease. Instead, there are many separate heart ailments or combinations of them. It is something like that with alcoholism. Therefore, we did not wish to get in wrong with the medical profession by pronouncing alcoholism a disease entity. Hence, we have always called it an illness or a malady—a far safer term for us to use.[85]
Since then medical and scientific communities have defined alcoholism as an "addictive disease" (aka
Canadian and United States demographics
AA's New York General Service Office regularly surveys AA members in North America. Its 2014 survey of over 6,000 members in Canada and the United States concluded that, in North America, AA members who responded to the survey were 62% male and 38% female. The survey found that 89% of AA members were white.[88]
Average member sobriety is slightly under 10 years with 36% sober more than ten years, 13% sober from five to ten years, 24% sober from one to five years, and 27% sober less than one year.[88] Before coming to AA, 63% of members received some type of treatment or counseling, such as medical, psychological, or spiritual. After coming to AA, 59% received outside treatment or counseling. Of those members, 84% said that outside help played an important part in their recovery.[88]
The same survey showed that AA received 32% of its membership from other members, another 32% from treatment facilities, 30% were self-motivated to attend AA, 12% of its membership from court-ordered attendance, and only 1% of AA members decided to join based on information obtained from the Internet. People taking the survey were allowed to select multiple answers for what motivated them to join AA.[88]
Relationship with institutions
Hospitals
Many AA meetings take place in treatment facilities. Carrying the message of AA into hospitals was how the co-founders of AA first remained sober. They discovered great value in working with alcoholics who are still suffering, and that even if the alcoholic they were working with did not stay sober, they did.
Prisons
In the United States and Canada, AA meetings are held in hundreds of correctional facilities. The AA General Service Office has published a workbook with detailed recommendations for methods of approaching correctional-facility officials with the intent of developing an in-prison AA program.[94] In addition, AA publishes a variety of pamphlets specifically for the incarcerated alcoholic.[95] Additionally, the AA General Service Office provides a pamphlet with guidelines for members working with incarcerated alcoholics.[96]
United States court rulings
United States courts have ruled that inmates, parolees, and probationers cannot be ordered to attend AA. Though AA itself was not deemed a religion, it was ruled that it contained enough religious components (variously described in Griffin v. Coughlin below as, inter alia, "religion", "religious activity", "religious exercise") to make coerced attendance at AA meetings a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the constitution.[97][98] In 2007, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals stated that a parolee who was ordered to attend AA had standing to sue his parole office.[99][100]
United States treatment industry
In 1939, High Watch Recovery Center in Kent, Connecticut, was founded by Bill Wilson and Marty Mann. Sister Francis who owned the farm tried to gift the spiritual retreat for alcoholics to Alcoholics Anonymous, however citing the sixth tradition Bill W. turned down the gift but agreed to have a separate non-profit board run the facility composed of AA members. Bill Wilson and Marty Mann served on the High Watch board of directors for many years. High Watch was the first and therefore the oldest 12-step-based treatment center in the world still operating today.
In 1949, the
Effectiveness
There are several ways one can determine whether AA works and numerous ways of measuring if AA is successful, such as looking at abstinence, reduced drinking intensity, reduced alcohol-related consequences, alcohol addiction severity, and healthcare cost.[17]
The effectiveness of AA (compared to other methods and treatments) has been challenged throughout the years,[102] but recent high quality clinical meta-studies using quasi-experiment studies show that AA costs less than other treatments and results in increased abstinence.[17][103] In longitudinal studies, AA appears to be about as effective as other abstinence-based support groups.[104]
Because of the anonymous and voluntary nature of AA meetings, it has been difficult to perform random trials with them. Environmental and quasi-experiment studies suggest that AA can help alcoholics make positive changes.[105][106][107]
In the past, some critics have criticized 12-step programs as pseudoscientific
Cochrane 2020 review
A 2020 Cochrane review concluded that "compared to other well-established treatments, clinical linkage using well-articulated Twelve-Step Facilitation (TSF) manualized interventions intended to increase Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) participation" are more effective than other established treatments, such as motivational enhancement therapy (MET) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), as measured by abstinence rates.[111][112] Manualized TSF probably achieves additional desirable outcomes—such as fewer drinks per drinking day and less severe alcohol-related problems—at equivalent rates as other treatments, although evidence for such a conclusion comes from low to moderate certainty evidence "so should be regarded with caution".[111]
In the same year, Nick Heather, an addiction researcher, expressed concerns about the review. He argued that as it did not measure outcomes such as quality of life or reduction in alcohol dependence it could not replace the findings of an earlier review, which were largely inconclusive.[113][114] He also claimed that only measuring abstinence as an outcome may not reflect the reality of recovery for many people, and noted a possible sample bias in the review: much of the data considered high-quality included participants receiving individualized treatment. Heather claimed this biased the sample towards individuals who were more socially stable and likely to receive such treatment, and stated that these conditions would not be replicated in "typical AA groups".[114]
The authors of the review responded to this critique, reiterating the findings of their review, that AA "proved at least as effective and in some cases more effective than comparison conditions on all reported outcomes and was also substantially more cost-effective".[115][111] They stated that the lack of quality-of-life measures was due to the studies they reviewed lacking such measures and was not a choice on their part, but clarified that their study did take into account more outcomes than just abstinence. In response to the concern expressed by Heather that "those more strongly committed to total abstinence after receiving AA/TSF were likely to experience more protracted 'slips' if they did for any reason drink",[114] the Cochrane review authors stated that subjects who did not achieve abstinence did not have worse drinking outcomes overall.[116] Finally, they stated that their study was clearly an advance compared to the 2006 review[113] as it considered data from "more than triple the number of research participants and trials". They also noted that their review considered high-quality data than the 2006 one.[115]
Older studies
A 2006 study by Rudolf H. Moos and Bernice S. Moos saw a 67% success rate 16 years later for the 24.9% of alcoholics who ended up, on their own, undergoing a lot of AA treatment.[117][118] The study's results may be skewed by self-selection bias.[119][120]
Project MATCH was a 1990s 8-year, multi-site, $27-million investigation that studied which types of alcoholics respond best to which forms of treatment.[121]
Membership retention
In 2001–2002, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) conducted the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcoholism and Related Conditions (NESARC). Similarly structured to the NLAES, the survey conducted in-person interviews with 43,093 individuals. Respondents were asked if they had ever attended a twelve-step meeting for an alcohol problem in their lifetime (the question was not AA-specific). 1441 (3.4%) of respondents answered the question affirmatively. Answers were further broken down into three categories: disengaged, those who started attending at some point in the past but had ceased attending at some point in the past year (988); continued engagement, those who started attending at some point in the past and continued to attend during the past year (348); and newcomers, those who started attending during the past year (105).[123] In their discussion of the findings, Kaskautas et al. (2008) state that to study disengagement, only the disengaged and continued engagement should be utilized (pg. 270).[123]
The popular press
The Sober Truth
American psychiatrist Lance Dodes, in The Sober Truth, says that research indicates that only five to eight percent of the people who go to one or more AA meetings achieve sobriety.[124]
The 5–8% figure put forward by Dodes is controversial;[125] other doctors say that the book uses "three separate, questionable, calculations that arrive at the 5–8% figure."[126][127] Addiction specialists state that the book's conclusion that "[12-step] approaches are almost completely ineffective and even harmful in treating substance use disorders" is wrong.[128][129] One review by Dr. Jeffrey Roth Khantzian called Dodes' reasoning against AA success a "pseudostatistical polemic"; he further noted that two of Dodes' colleagues, Dr. John F Kelly and Dr. Gene Beresin, wrote in their own review for NPR Boston's website, that the book was "so far off the track of scientific research that he doesn’t realize that for the past several years, the addiction research field has moved beyond asking whether AA and 12-step treatment works, to investigating how and why they work.” [130]
Dodes has not, as of March 2020, read the 2020 Cochrane review showing AA efficacy, but opposes the idea that a social network is needed to overcome substance abuse.[131]
The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous
In a 2015 article for The Atlantic, Gabrielle Glaser criticized the dominance of AA in the treatment of addiction in the United States.[132] Her article uses Lance Dodes's figures and a 2006 Cochrane report to state AA had a low success rate, but those figures were subsequently criticized by experts as outdated.[125][126][127] The Glaser article incorrectly conflates the efficacy of treatment centers with the efficacy of Alcoholics Anonymous.[133] The Glaser article says that "nothing about the 12-step approach draws on modern science", but a large amount of scientific research has been done with AA, showing that AA increases abstinence rates.[127] The Glaser article criticizes 12-step programs for being "faith-based", but 12-step programs allow for a very wide diversity of spiritual beliefs, and there are a growing number of secular 12-step meetings.[134][135]
Criticism
Sexual advances ("thirteenth-stepping")
"Thirteenth-stepping" is a pejorative term for AA members approaching new members for dates. In 2003, a study in the Journal of Addiction Nursing sampled 55 women in AA and found that 35% of these women had experienced a "pass" and 29% had felt seduced at least once in AA settings. This has also happened with new male members who received guidance from older female AA members pursuing sexual company. The authors suggest that both men and women must be prepared for this behavior or find male or female-only groups.[136] As of 2010, women-only meetings are a very prevalent part of AA culture, and AA has become more welcoming for women.[137] AA's pamphlet on sponsorship suggests that men be sponsored by men and women be sponsored by women.[138] AA also has a safety flier which states that "Unwanted sexual advances and predatory behaviors are in conflict with carrying the A.A. message of recovery."[139]
The family of Karla Mendez, who was murdered in 2011 by a man she met at an AA meeting, filed a civil lawsuit in 2012 against AA asserting AA had a "reckless disregard for, and deliberate indifference…to the safety and security of victims attending AA meetings who are repeatedly preyed upon at those meetings by financial, violent, and sexual predators...".[140][141] The lawsuit against AA was dismissed in 2016.[142][143]
Criticism of culture
Stanton Peele argued that some AA groups apply the disease model to all problem drinkers, whether or not they are "full-blown" alcoholics.[144] Along with Nancy Shute, Peele has advocated that besides AA, other options should be readily available to those problem drinkers who can manage their drinking with the right treatment.[145] The Big Book says "moderate drinkers" and "a certain type of hard drinker" can stop or moderate their drinking. The Big Book suggests no program for these drinkers, but instead seeks to help drinkers without "power of choice in drink."[146]
In 1983, a review stated that the AA program's focus on admission of having a problem increases deviant
Literature
Alcoholics Anonymous publishes several books, reports, pamphlets, and other media, including a periodical known as the AA Grapevine.[151] Two books are used primarily: Alcoholics Anonymous (the "Big Book") and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the latter explaining AA's fundamental principles in depth. The full text of each of these two books is available on the AA website at no charge.
- Anonymous (2011). Alcoholics Anonymous: the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism (multiple PDFs) (4th ed.). OCLC 49743393. 575 pages.
- Anonymous (2002). Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (multiple PDFs). Hazelden. OCLC 13572433. 192 pages.
- "Home Page". AA Grapevine. Alcoholics Anonymous. OCLC 319167052.
AA in media
Film and television
- My Name Is Bill W. – dramatized biography of co-founder Bill Wilson.[152][153]
- Bill W. – a 2011 biographical documentary film that tells the story of Bill Wilson using interviews, recreations, and rare archival material.[156][157]
- A Walk Among the Tombstones (2015), a mystery/suspense film based on Lawrence Block's books featuring Matthew Scudder, a recovering alcoholic detective whose AA membership is a central element of the plot.[158]
- When a Man Loves a Woman – a school counselor attends AA meetings in a residential treatment facility.[159]
- Clean and Sober – an addict (alcohol, cocaine) visits an AA meeting to get a sponsor.[160]
- Days of Wine and Roses – a 1962 film about a married couple struggling with alcoholism. Jack Lemmon's character attends an AA meeting in the film.[161]
- Drunks – a 1995 film starring Richard Lewis as an alcoholic who leaves an AA meeting and relapses. The film cuts back and forth between his eventual relapse and the other meeting attendees.[162]
- Come Back, Little Sheba – A 1952 film based on a play of the same title about a loveless marriage where the husband played by Burt Lancaster is an alcoholic who gets help from two members of the local AA chapter.[163] A 1977 TV drama was also based on the play.
- I'll Cry Tomorrow – A 1955 film about singer Lillian Roth played by Susan Hayward who goes to AA to help her stop drinking. The film was based on Roth's autobiography of the same name detailing her alcoholism and sobriety through AA.[164][165]
- You Kill Me – a 2007 crime-comedy film starring Ben Kingsley as a mob hit man with a drinking problem who is forced to accept a job at a mortuary and go to AA meetings.[166][167]
- Smashed – a 2012 drama film starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead. An elementary school teacher's drinking begins to interfere with her job, so she attempts to get sober in AA.[168]
- Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot – a 2018 biography/comedy/drama by Gus Van Sant, based on the life of cartoonist John Callahan.[169]
- Flight — a 2012 film starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic airline pilot. The movie includes a dramatic representation of a prison AA meeting.[170]
- In CBS' Elementary, Jonny Lee Miller plays an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes who is a recovering drug addict. Several episodes are centered around AA meetings and the process of recovery.[171]
- Doctor Sleep – Released in 2019, Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining, directed by Mike Flanagan and based on Stephen King's work. Ewan McGregor stars as a man who, after overcoming his own demons through AA, helps others do the same.[172]
See also
- Adult Children of Alcoholics
- Al-Anon/Alateen
- Calix Society
- Community reinforcement approach and family training (CRAFT)
- Drug addiction recovery groups
- Drug rehabilitation
- Group psychotherapy
- List of twelve-step groups
- Long-term effects of alcohol
- Recovery approach
- Short-term effects of alcohol consumption
- Stepping Stones (house), home of Bill W.
- Washingtonian movement
Notes
References
- S2CID 143316323.
- ^ a b AA Grapevine (15 May 2013), A.A. Preamble (PDF), AA General Service Office, archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022, retrieved 13 May 2017
- ^ PMID 21068418.
- ^ Mäkelä 1996, p. 3.
- ^ "Benign Anarchy: Voluntary Association, Mutual Aid and Alcoholics Anonymous | PDF | Alcoholics Anonymous | Twelve Step Program". Scribd. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
- ^ "New Cochrane Review finds Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step Facilitation programs help people to recover from alcohol problems". www.cochrane.org. Retrieved 13 February 2023.
- ^ Miller, Hannah (30 March 2020). "AA meetings, addiction counseling move online as social-distancing guidelines limit group gatherings". CNBC.
- ^ a b "Information on AA". aa.org. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
- (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ Alcoholics Anonymous (April 2016). "Estimates of A.A. Groups and Members As of December 31, 2020" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2016. cf. Alcoholics Anonymous (2001). Alcoholics Anonymous (PDF) (4th ed.). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. p. xxiii. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
- ^ "A Brief History of the Big Book | Alcoholics Anonymous". www.aa.org. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
- ^ "The Beginnings of The Twelve Traditions | Alcoholics Anonymous". www.aa.org. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
- ^ a b Bill W. (1957). "benign+anarchy" Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A.A. Harper, and Brothers. p. 224.
- ^ OCLC 50379271.
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{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Pass It On, 1984, p 117.
- ^ Kurtz 1991, p. 17.
- ^ Pittman, Bill "AA the Way it Began" 1988, Glenn Abbey Books
- ^ Kurtz 1991, p. 19–20.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ Kurtz 1991, p. 33.
- ^ Anonymous (1939). Alcoholics Anonymous. New York: Works Publishing Company. p. Original Manuscript p. 217.
- ISBN 978-1-44010-137-3.
- ^ Kurtz 1991, p. 47.
- ^ Alcoholics Anonymous (3rd ed.). New York: AA World Services. 1976. p. 483.
- ^ Mustikhan, Ahmar (13 April 2015). "First black AA group to celebrate 70th anniversary today in Washington DC". CNN. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
- ^ This first sentence has been revised to reflect conclusions drawn by William Schaberg's exhaustive research into 1930s AA documents. The results published in Writing the Big Book (2019) clarify many details, rewriting history. Many statements made online, and in earlier books, including Susan Cheever's book referenced next, need to be reconsidered.
- ISBN 978-0-7432-0154-4.
- ^ "Copyright of AA Book". gsowatch.aamo.info. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 26 June 2010.
- ^ Anonymous, Alcoholics. "AA Big Book, preface" (PDF). Alcoholics Anonymous. Anonymous Press. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-89638-199-5. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2 December 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
- ^ Pass It On, 1984, p. 359
- ^ a b c d e "AA Fact File" (PDF). General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous. 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ "Alcoholics Anonymous sues to recover original manuscript". Reuters. 22 May 2017. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ^ Michael Levin “Alcoholics Anonymous goes to court (and its members are livid)” Fox News Opinion, June 7, 2017
- ^ “PLAINTIFF’S MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF ITS MOTION TO VOLUNTARILY DISCONTINUE THIS ACTION PURSUANT TO CPLR 3217(b)” filed November 27, 2017
- ^ Carroll, Steven (26 March 2010). "Group avoids politics of alcohol". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
- ^ Wilson, Bill. "The A.A. Service Manual Combined with Twelve Concepts for World Services" (PDF). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
- ^ "A.A. GSO Guidelines: Finances" (PDF). Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 June 2010. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
- ^ "GSO 2007 Operating Results". Alcoholics Anonymous General Services Office. Archived from the original on 27 November 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
Gross Profit from Literature ≈8,6M (57%), Contributions ~$6.5M (43%)
- ^ "Frequently Asked Financial Questions". Fort Worth central office of Alcoholics Anonymous. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
- ^ "The Twelve Steps | Alcoholics Anonymous". www.aa.org. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
- ^ "Alcoholics Anonymous : International General Service Offices". Alcoholics Anonymous website. Archived from the original on 10 October 2010. Retrieved 8 October 2009.
- ^ .
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by helping another alcoholic, he could save himself
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Bill went back to Towns constantly to work on alcoholics there, simply trying to help others had kept him from even thinking of drinking
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simply trying to help other had kept him from even thinking of drinking
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The titles include: Carrying the Message into Correctional Facilities, Where Do I Go From Here?, A.A. in Prison: Inmate to Inmate, A.A. in Correctional Facilities, It Sure Beats Sitting in a Cell, Memo to an Inmate Who May be an Alcoholic, A Message to Corrections Administrators
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no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or [12-step] approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems
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the free and flexible support provided by mutual help groups can help people make and sustain beneficial changes and thus promote recovery
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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 consequences
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the research that does show AA to be effective is overwhelmingly flawed by what is known as selection bias.
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AA skeptics were confident that by putting AA up against the best professional psychotherapies in a highly rigorous study, Project MATCH would prove beyond doubt that the 12-steps were mumbo jumbo. The skeptics were humbled: Twelve-step facilitation was as effective as the best psychotherapies professionals had developed.
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University of California professor Herbert Fingarette cited two [...] statistics: at eighteen months, 25 percent of people still attended AA, and of those who did attend, 22 percent consistently maintained sobriety. [Reference: H. Fingarette, Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)] Taken together, these numbers show that about 5.5 percent of all those who started with AA became sober members.
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[Lance Dodes] has estimated, as Glaser puts it, that "AA's actual success rate [is] somewhere between 5 and 8 percent," but this is a very controversial figure among addiction researchers.
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[Herbert Fingarette used] two publications from the Rand Corporation [...] At 4-year follow-up the Rand group identified patients with at least one year abstinence who had been regular members of AA 18 months after the start of treatment: 42% of the regular AA members were abstinent, not the "calculated" 5.5% figure.
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12-step patients had higher rates of abstinence at follow-up (45.7% versus 36.2% for patients from CB [cognitive-behavioral] programs, p < 0.001)
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Dodes hadn't yet read the new Cochrane Review, but said in an interview that he is opposed to the fundamental idea of AA -- that fellowship and social connections are needed to deal with substance use disorders
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Bibliography
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- Mäkelä, Klaus; et al. (1996). Alcoholics Anonymous as a mutual-help movement: a study in eight societies. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. OCLC 33242907.
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- Pass It on: The Story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. Message Reached the World. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. December 1984. OCLC 12308065.
- Peele, Stanton (1999). The Diseasing of America: how we allowed recovery zealots and the treatment industry to convince us we are out of control. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. OCLC 39605271.
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External links
- German Lopez (2 January 2018). "Why some people swear by Alcoholics Anonymous — and others despise it".
- Scott Alexander (24 October 2014). "Alcoholics Anonymous: Much More Than You Wanted To Know". Archived from the original on 24 June 2020.
- Official website
- A History of Agnostic Groups in AA
- Reproduction of the 1938 Original Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous