I am with right with you in your post, wpainterw, as you recounted and shared your experience, how the 'experiment in your lab' succeeded through recourse to a group and your understanding of your Higher Power. That is good stuff.
Where you lose me is when you say that 'it is apparent' that experiments in achieving sobriety 'through our own efforts or by one on one counseling', are expensive and risk laden, with death and loss of family, job and reputation the result.
This is not true, you have made the assumptions of the blind men and the elephant, believing that their own direct experience describes the totality. It is a much different elephant than the one you have touched. While it was apparent to each of the blind men that the elephant was a rope, a snake, a wall, a spear, we understand that they were limited in their own experience and limited in their ability to comprehend anything outside of it. It was not until the blind men collaborated and listened to each of them share their own private experiences that they learned what an elephant was.
It will be a much different discussion we will have when this misinformation stops.