Oranges Dis Apples

“Addictions” Industry Success rate “Flim Flam”ing

Face it – AA does NOT have a five percent success rate!

AA doesn’t HAVE ANY measurable success or failure rate. It cannot because AA does not impose rules on its fellowshippers other than members must be alcoholic. In order to have a measurable sample - participants would all have to qualify as a controlled sampling through RULES! AA cannot, by merit of it’s own Traditions impose any such rules – therefor no sampling can EVER be taken.

Most AA Groups welcome both alcoholics and non-alcoholics to attend their open meetings so to measure success or failure based upon an observation of ‘who still drinks’ out of “all who enter” is asinine.

To attempt to sample AAs ‘successful” or “failed” members would be like measuring the cure rate of a cancer ward among all those who get an MRI there. It should be obvious that not everyone who shows up for a diagnosis is going to recover from a disease they haven’t actually got.

When it talks about AA’s nonexistent “success rate” * the Treatment Industry tries to force “statistics” out of a fellowship that hasn’t got any – or at least not statistics which are comparable to theirs. *

Now, somewhere in the realm of ‘all that is’ AA does have a success rate – even if it is humanly immeasurable – because it’s objective is not to make a success of anything more than trying to carry it’s message. That’s all it wants to do.

It doesn’t want to cause all of its members or meeting attendees to stop drinking. It doesn’t want to cure alcoholism. It doesn’t want to do anything more than present the option of adopting a spiritual way of life to alcoholics – to tell them that their way of life has solved their own alcohol problem and propose that it may also solve the problems of many of those who HAVE alcoholism. The removal of the desire to drink is consequential to the spiritual awakening – not the objective of AA.

This is clearly articulated in AA’s Twelfth Step:

“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.” (60:0)

There is no Step in AA’s Program which calls for “not drinking”. Not drinking is not even a requirement for membership.

AA’s only yardstick to measure its own “success” if you will — is it’s own conscience – where they ask, “Did we try to carry the ‘this’ message?”

It is not “How many people accepted and benefited from it’s message.”

Folks who talk about five percent success rates and compare them to treatment centers that DO measure their successes by how many people have stopped drinking is ludicrous. It’s the orange trying to judge the apple by how much orange juice the apple yields. “Hey you can’t enjoy that delicious apple juice. It has no orange juice in it” – is illogical, nay moronic.

To assuming that AA’s goal must be the same as the treatment industry’s goal is presumptuous – and to not even bother to learn what AA’s purpose is, and to misrepresent it to their own target markets as identical to their own is downright dishonest.

When there is money involved – a “for profit” industry will tend to compete in just such a fashion – by advertising the “We are better than they are” idea, treatment centers tip their hand. That’s fine for Avis and Hertz – but it is abominable for folks who represent their purpose as helping others.

So if we want to look at success and failure rates then let’s keep the focus on those who keep them -not those who do not, cannot keep and have no need to keep them. Only money making enterprises like Treatment Centers and any employer of “Addictions” specialists require such data. They are businesses and businesses need to compete. AA is in competition with no one.

Do you think that a twenty percent “success rate” for a service which costs thirty thousand dollars is a good deal? Would you plunk down twenty or thirty grand for a car with the understanding that there is an eighty percent chance that you will not actually GET the car? – and when you don’t get your car the dealer blames it on you? “You didn’t really WANT it”.

What gall!

It is the Treatment Industry that are the losers in their own race and inventing competitive statistics which do not exist in the attempt to find someone worse than they are is nothing more than unconscionable sales trickery – marketing flim-flam – that ought to be illegal. But they are “Board Certified”, right?

Let’s get real.

Peace,

Danny S

* Back when AA was a tiny fellowship they were able to track their successes a bit. They had a seventy five percent success rate doing what they did. This observation is noted and published in the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.” In Cleveland, a ninety five percent success rate was observed. There is no reason to believe that that same success rate would not be also correct today – doing what they did — emphasis on ‘doing what they did’

Alcohol hasn’t become any stronger. Men and women haven’t become weaker and human physiques haven’t mutated.

I myself have observed a 100% success rate among those who do what they did and what I do. I have NEVER seen anyone fail who has followed the path of the co-founders – including myself. Tracking my own Group experiences and protegees, I see BETTER results today than the co-founders ever claimed back then.

But I don’t have to worry about being called on the carpet by the medical profession – because frankly Scarlet . . I don’t give a shit. The co-authors may have – but I do not. DJS

Oranges Dis Apples

“Addictions” Industry Success rate “Flim Flam”ing

Face it – AA does NOT have a five percent success rate!

AA doesn’t HAVE ANY measurable success or failure rate. It cannot because AA does not impose rules on its fellowshippers other than members must be alcoholic. In order to have a measurable sample - participants would all have to qualify as a controlled sampling through RULES! AA cannot, by merit of it’s own Traditions impose any such rules – therefor no sampling can EVER be taken.

Most AA Groups welcome both alcoholics and non-alcoholics to attend their open meetings so to measure success or failure based upon an observation of ‘who still drinks’ out of “all who enter” is asinine.

To attempt to sample AAs ‘successful” or “failed” members would be like measuring the cure rate of a cancer ward among all those who get an MRI there. It should be obvious that not everyone who shows up for a diagnosis is going to recover from a disease they haven’t actually got.

When it talks about AA’s nonexistent “success rate” * the Treatment Industry tries to force “statistics” out of a fellowship that hasn’t got any – or at least not statistics which are comparable to theirs. *

Now, somewhere in the realm of ‘all that is’ AA does have a success rate – even if it is humanly immeasurable – because it’s objective is not to make a success of anything more than trying to carry it’s message. That’s all it wants to do.

It doesn’t want to cause all of its members or meeting attendees to stop drinking. It doesn’t want to cure alcoholism. It doesn’t want to do anything more than present the option of adopting a spiritual way of life to alcoholics – to tell them that their way of life has solved their own alcohol problem and propose that it may also solve the problems of many of those who HAVE alcoholism. The removal of the desire to drink is consequential to the spiritual awakening – not the objective of AA.

This is clearly articulated in AA’s Twelfth Step:

“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.” (60:0)

There is no Step in AA’s Program which calls for “not drinking”. Not drinking is not even a requirement for membership.

AA’s only yardstick to measure its own “success” if you will — is it’s own conscience – where they ask, “Did we try to carry the ‘this’ message?”

It is not “How many people accepted and benefited from it’s message.”

Folks who talk about five percent success rates and compare them to treatment centers that DO measure their successes by how many people have stopped drinking is ludicrous. It’s the orange trying to judge the apple by how much orange juice the apple yields. “Hey you can’t enjoy that delicious apple juice. It has no orange juice in it” – is illogical, nay moronic.

To assuming that AA’s goal must be the same as the treatment industry’s goal is presumptuous – and to not even bother to learn what AA’s purpose is, and to misrepresent it to their own target markets as identical to their own is downright dishonest.

When there is money involved – a “for profit” industry will tend to compete in just such a fashion – by advertising the “We are better than they are” idea, treatment centers tip their hand. That’s fine for Avis and Hertz – but it is abominable for folks who represent their purpose as helping others.

So if we want to look at success and failure rates then let’s keep the focus on those who keep them -not those who do not, cannot keep and have no need to keep them. Only money making enterprises like Treatment Centers and any employer of “Addictions” specialists require such data. They are businesses and businesses need to compete. AA is in competition with no one.

Do you think that a twenty percent “success rate” for a service which costs thirty thousand dollars is a good deal? Would you plunk down twenty or thirty grand for a car with the understanding that there is an eighty percent chance that you will not actually GET the car? – and when you don’t get your car the dealer blames it on you? “You didn’t really WANT it”.

What gall!

It is the Treatment Industry that are the losers in their own race and inventing competitive statistics which do not exist in the attempt to find someone worse than they are is nothing more than unconscionable sales trickery – marketing flim-flam – that ought to be illegal. But they are “Board Certified”, right?

Let’s get real.

Peace,

Danny S

* Back when AA was a tiny fellowship they were able to track their successes a bit. They had a seventy five percent success rate doing what they did. This observation is noted and published in the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.” In Cleveland, a ninety five percent success rate was observed. There is no reason to believe that that same success rate would not be also correct today – doing what they did — emphasis on ‘doing what they did’

Alcohol hasn’t become any stronger. Men and women haven’t become weaker and human physiques haven’t mutated.

I myself have observed a 100% success rate among those who do what they did and what I do. I have NEVER seen anyone fail who has followed the path of the co-founders – including myself. Tracking my own Group experiences and protegees, I see BETTER results today than the co-founders ever claimed back then.

But I don’t have to worry about being called on the carpet by the medical profession – because frankly Scarlet . . I don’t give a shit. The co-authors may have – but I do not. DJS

Success and Failure of AA

In the past I have been guilty of using statistics to make my case in favor of the efficacy of AA. Sorry.

The numbers I have used are not the numbers proffered by the co-authors of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Those I do not refute. We did have a seventy-five percent success rate back in the day – before the fellowship became infiltrated with the present population of interlopers and uninformed “meeting makers”.

It is just the currently and often quoted success rate of the Fellowship that I have come to question.

You have to be careful of statistics. I served as a lobbyist in Wash. DC when I was a PR practitioner for a major company back in the 70s – and I can tell you that statistics can and are used to promote ideas that can either be true or not. (Remember the old” 9 out 10 dentists recommend Crest”?) The statistics for AA that are used can be easy to manipulate depending on whether you are Pro or Con AA as a whole. And they are.

Remember that there are thousands of practitioners of alternative “addictions” treatments out there who CHARGE or get paid for their services and are extremely prejudiced AGAINST the fellowship of AA because AA takes business away from them.

AA CAN be seen by these people as having an atrocious failure rate of probably 90% or so. But that is ONLY if they count everyone who walks through the doors. Not everyone who walks through the door (i) is qualified for AAs solution, (ii) actually adopts AAs solution even if they are.

For example: Say I have some physical symptoms that also happen to be those experienced by those afflicted with lung cancer – perhaps “Coughing blood” – well, I can walk into a cancer hospital and say, “I have cancer” but unless I actually receive a real diagnosis of cancer I might walk away, still coughing blood, still suffering from something ELSE.

THAT could be- And often is – counted by those (A competitor) with an axe to grind against my cancer hospital as a failure to successfully treat my cancer.

But the truth is I haven’t GOT cancer, so then I cannot very well recover from it, can I? No one has EVER recovered from ANY malady they didn’t’ actually have! And that includes alcoholism.

Yet by using ME and millions like me in the count, the “success rate” can be falsely made to appear very low. It is immensely dishonest, inaccurate and unfair isn’t it?

Or how about someone who indeed DOES have cancer, comes to the hospital and refuses the treatment? Instead this sufferer just hangs out at the cancer ward for the emotional support and felling of “belonging” that the presence of fellow sufferers offer. He will succumb to his illness for not taking his medicines. If someone doesn’t like my cancer ward – maybe someone who also gets “paid” to treat sufferers –they might be inclined by their prejudice to also count THIS person as a failure – but again – it is not true, because he was “non-compliant” – never embraced and took the complete treatment.

AA is FULL of these types and including them in “rating” the efficacy of AA is highly unscientific and produces a ridiculously skewed and inaccurate statistic.

With the millions of people be sent to the “cancer ward” of AA these days by misdiagnosing treatment center counselors and ignorant courts – the unscientific failure rate of AA is grossly overstated.

Personally I have NEVER seen a real alcoholic who follows the path detailed in the Book, Alcoholics Anonymous fail. Not once! Not yet.

So when you see these exaggerated “Success and Failure” rates of AA – just keep this in mind.

From my experience, with the men I work with – the Twelve Steps of AA has a 100% success rate. In fact my own group has a recorded and verified “success” rate of 83%! And that includes all members, not only those with whom I have personally worked. Sounds good right? But I have included only those who members who vocally qualified as real alcoholics and who didn’t “Drop out” of the Twelve Step Program while staying solely for the meetings.

Peace,

Danny S