What happened to the success rate?

[c0n0r0]

Sixty something years ago AA had a success rate of better than 75 percent. Some groups like Cleveland and Akron had a success rate of nearly 100 percent. Nearly every person that walked through those doors got sober. Now if you can find any group that has a success rate that is 20 percent it is a miracle.

Is the message we are hearing today in meetings the same as was heard in the early days?

[RufusACanal]

No.

I only go back to 1977 and the Old Timers I have met since then say the same and some of their answers are not digestible to many today. Reading the historical accounts of those first few hundred can help bridge that gap if enough folks sincerely want to change AA and the diluted message passed today. Denial has crept into our rooms across America and many would rather parrot phrases then change their lives or help change the lives of others. Why is this? Because they have all of the answers.


"Recovered from a seemingly hopeless condition."



You see if you are recovering, you will always have a readymade excuse for failure. This recovering baloney is simply a mask for a modesty I would quickly scrap from the bottom of my shoe. We are soft. We are politically correct. We have self interest. We have rights. We are dying. God is a door knob now. Relapse is part of recovery! Completing step work takes years now. Anybody can be a Sponsor overnight now; just add ego. Let’s have everyone come to our closed meetings! Sure let’s talk about drugs in our closed meetings! Let's go to a meeting to get laid! Would you sign my card, the courts made me come.
Acceptance the key?

“Rarely, have we seen a person fail, who have thoroughly followed our path”, is still true today. Just look at the frigging path we have left for the newcomer.

[2ala2]

May I ask where you get your statistics?
Thank you..

[Music]

Originally Posted by c0n0r0

Is the message we are hearing today in meetings the same as was heard in the early days?

Success rate??? That number can be juggled around to suit anyone's purpose. However, when I go to meetings today, I hear what I want to hear. I still hear the message I heard 30 years ago when I came to AA, except now it's burried under a bunch of PC garbage for fear of hurting someone's feelings. IF the success rate was higher in the early day, it was because people came to AA at the lowest point in their lives and were hit in the face with no BS people who knew where they were coming from. Nowadays, we're not allowed to go to our bottoms, except in rare instances. So many people come to AA from places other than off the street and think they know more than they do about getting sober, and in general, if I'm honest about what I see and hear and tell someone, I'm usually accused of being mean spirited and insensitive.

The AA program was, is, and will forever remain(I hope)untouched by political correctness. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for the people in AA.

[findingout]

The message I heard last night was "Go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps and don't drink no matter what. If you want what we have, do what we did to get it." There was a different message sixty years ago?

If statistics include people who are at meetings without meeting the only requirement for membership, the statistics will certainly prove that A.A. isn't a miracle cure that can force a person to get sober against their will. So?

[RufusACanal]

I don't see any mention of forcing folks to sobriety, yet I am aware of the contrast in many groups around the country of moving away from "Treatment Based" recovery. What has worked successfully for many is outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and is the basis for the message you heard last night findingout.

[nandm]

my opinion is that it is largely based on people going into A.A. for reasons other than a desire to stop drinking. Many people wind up in A.A. via the court system, family wishes, because it is the popular thing to do (Look at Lindsey Lohan, Brittney Spears), just to get people off their back, etc.....

A.A. being more available than it was so many years ago is also a factor but it does open the doors to all sorts of people. This is not a bad thing as my first experience with A.A. was via the court system at the age of 21. Unfortunately, I did not see the similiarities and it was 15 more years before I made it back through the door via my desire to stop drinking.

I don't see the change as negative, I see it as positive because the more people that are aware that A.A. is their and become familiar with it the more likely the alcoholic will be able to find it when they need it.

[GlassPrisoner]

Court cards, wife cards, boss cards, and the raising of the "bottom" all contribute to the apparent low success rate. These people simply aren't "done" yet.

Every person that came into the program with me, and did as suggested, is still sober.

[RufusACanal]

"Raising the bottom or getting off the Elevator early", just does not seem to work for most.

[RufusACanal]

I believe the statistical numbers appeared in the AA Grapevine some years ago.

[bugsworth]

It is my understanding that the success rates were really low in the early days of A.A.

Bill Wilson wrote his history of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1957, he admitted that the early A.A. program had been a disaster:


At first nearly every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if indeed he sobered up at all. Others would stay dry six months or maybe a year and then take a skid. This was always a genuine catastrophe.
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, (1957), page 97.

And Nell Wing, who was a secretary of Alcoholics Anonymous for 35 years, and Bill Wilson's personal secretary for many of those years, as well as A.A.'s first archivist, reported:

"There were alcoholics in the hospitals of whom A.A. could touch and help only about five percent. The doctors started giving them a dose of LSD, so that the resistance would be broken down. And they had about fifteen percent recoveries."
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, (1957), page 370.

At a memorial service for Dr. Bob, Bill Wilson spoke about the pathetically low success rate of the whole A.A. program. Bill described the early days of A.A. this way:


You have no conception these days of how much failure we had. You had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait.
Bill Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952

[CarolD]

Gee...my noon meeting was on Gratitude.

I've never attended one on success rates.


My recovery is 100%
Hope everyone has the same!


Forward we go...side by side

[Pilgrim]

Here is my experience of AA today in New Zealand.

I started going to meetings. I got a few phone numbers but no one ever rnag me or took time to sit with me and go through the BB. In fact for many weeks I didn't even know there was such a thing.

People talked about the steps in meetings but I had no idea what they meant. I asked someone, what's the steps? how do we do them? I was told to take it easy - no hurry.

Someone suggested after a couple of months I should get a sponsor. I asked 8 people before I found someone - who then shared at the next meeting that she didn't want to do it.

Everyone was too busy.

One kind lady who was leaving the country tried to help me get a sponsor but couldn't find anyone either.

The sponsor I got who didn't want to do it told me it would take a year to do all the steps. One per month. But even that didn't seem to be happening. At our first meeting, she just asked me to draw a graph of how my depression linked with my drinking through my life. That was how she was sponsored. Not her fault.

I finally got stepped by someone from the Primary Purpose Group (a man although that is supposed to be against the rules but he was the only person I found who took the time to come and talk with me and get to know me).

IMO we don't have time to muck around with this stuff. Until I did the steps, I kept drinking and each time I drank, I nearly killed myself.

When I told my home group about my difficulties, someone stormed out saying that trying to find a sponsor was character building. She had never even given me her number. I have stopped going to that group.

When we come in we don't ring people. We hear how hard it is in meetings. We listen to people's difficulties like group therapy and then we leave feeling worse. The message is not good in some of our meetings.

That is my experience. Yours might be different.

[REZ]

The true question is the relative success rate. How does AA compare to other methods of getting sober, such as doing it on your own, getting religion, taking drugs to stop your from drinking, trying to learn to moderate your drinking, etc.?
I think you will find that AA compares very well to other methods. And what is most important, it is working for this alcoholic.

[RufusACanal]

The idea of success rates and looking at statistical data is simply a way to view a report card on how our service to the still sick and suffering Alcoholic is progressing. At least in this thread, those who contribute are in some form of recovery from Alcoholism, usually AA and each of us has the experience, strength and hope that can support the newcomer, the group and your area to receive the miracles we ourselves have been given. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why so many newcomers need so much more today and how little time we seem to have for them. So why the controversy?

What about our message of recovery, of a new life, is it unified? Do we all preach from the same book and sing from the same sheet? More than ever, our message needs to be unified. The strength of that message is outlined in the Big Book and from our own personal experiences. So when I hear 2% of those who come through our doors recover, I have to inventory whether I have given what was given to me. Could it be that our message of hope is inconsistent with our individual walk or that of our group? Could it be that our actions speak volumes about who and what we are to the newcomer? Could it be that we simply are so self centered that we truly don’t care?

Do you or your Home Group members go on Twelve Step calls?
Do you or your Home Group members actively help the newcomer by assigning a Temporary Sponsor and a plan of action?
Do you and your Home Group buy Big Books to give away to the newcomer?
Do you and your Home Group have a Beginners Meeting that works the Steps with every newcomer?
Have you worked the steps and are you sponsoring a man or a woman who is working the Steps and supporting the group?
Do you or your Home Group move toward the Traditions or away?
Do you bend to popular demand?
Are you considered Old Timers or New Timers or even no timers?


I think my Wife is calling the Cat to go to bed and I don’t want to lose my place. Amazing that I have that place you know? Thank you for my life today, Ron.

[laurenlanai25]

oh boy! here we go again!! did we do this once already from those stupid orange papers of ONE mans opinion!! ahhahahhahahah

im sitting this one out this time!!!

[jimhere]

The fact is that while we have more people coming to us than ever before, our membership has been in decline for quite some time. We have more meetings than ever before, with new ones popping up like mushrooms, yet our recovery rate is lower than ever before. This is due to our failure to adhere to our own principles. Bill always said that AA would die from within, not from without.

We do not need more meetings, we need more groups. Groups where sponsorship is emphasized, groups where the principles embodied in our steps and traditions are practiced and demonstrated. Not this vanilla-flavored, PC AA lite that passes for the real thing. My grandsponsor once said that AA as it is known today may have to die so that it may live.
Jim

[barb dwyer]

{{{Jimhere}}}

You know, when I first came to this site - I thought Jimhere was the most hard aXXed, hard core, book spouting disagreeable poster on this forum.
Now ... I look for him cuz ... as time passes - I'm thinking more and more like him. And I began quite a while back - to look up to his opinions. And when i go to a meeting - I'm sounding more and more like him.

LOL

I'm hoping that's a GOOD sign in favor of my own longevity.

I love that. 'vanilla flavored'. That's good.
*chuckle*
Im stealing that one.

And I'm shocked to see ... that once again - I agree with him.
Man =- do we CHANGE in our first year sober, or what?

Being our group's GSR really opened my eyes to some aspects of the group that I competely wasn't looking for. I've had to step down for health reasons, but I probably would have done soon anyway, as my own recovery seems to be taking a different turn than the totally open, anything goes meetings I sobered up in.

That's very interesting to me what your sponsor said, Jim ... I'm going to take that home and percolate on it for a while.

[Pilgrim]

Hi lauren. Make that two men's opinions although I am not a man.

Lol

[jimhere]

These are not opinions, these are facts.
Jim

[Fenian_Man]

I'm curious - I'm seeing the term "PC" here a lot. What exactly are the behaviors that constitute being "PC"?

[Music]

Success rate be darned. The only success rate I care about is my own. It's the only success rate I have any control over. The simple fact is that people who want to stay sober, stay sober. People who don't want to stay sober, drink. Period, end of sentence. My sobriety is contingent on my daily maintenance of my spiritual program, and whether or not I practice the AA program as it's outlined in the first 164 pages of the Big Book. People who have a problem with AA or the AA program, go elsewhere and stay sober, or drink. AA works if I work it.

[jimhere]

Originally Posted by Fenian_Man

I'm curious - I'm seeing the term "PC" here a lot. What exactly are the behaviors that constitute being "PC"?

The men who helped me cared more about me than my sensitive alcoholic feelings. PC means political correctness in the everyday sense of the term. And political correctness means that we walk on eggshells so as not to offend anyone else. However, the ways of the world don't make sense spiritually.

We love alcoholics to death in AA. I'm grateful for the kind of AA I encountered when I did. These men had a real answer and didn't pussyfoot around.

[Fenian_Man]

Jimhere.

What do you mean by walking on eggshells? What is it that you do not say or say differently when you are being politically correct?

TIA

[REZ]

Jim:
In understand where you are coming from. I have been sober for 23 years and things in AA have changed. (And I have changed.) I don't this means that AA is in danger of dying out of collapsing from within, at least not in my area.