AA Sobriety Success Rate

Some of the critics claim that modern A.A. has a dismally low success rate, only 5% or less. The statistics cannot be supported either from U.S. government research or from A.A.’s own careful records. THE CORRECT FIGURE IS A CLOSE TO 36% SUCCESS RATE, when measured in the same way that the government would evaluate success in treating diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. The 95% dropout rate [claimed by some of A.A.'s modern critics] is inaccurate and based on flawed statistics. Rather than 5% of A.A. members remaining at the end of one year a more accurate estimate is that 36% remain attending A.A. at the end of one year and 32% are still attending at the end of 20 years. The 1989 AA General Service Office internal memo “Comments on A.A.’s Triennial Surveys,” Appendix C: “The First Year” has been widely misquoted as a measure of retention or dropouts. It is not a measure of retention or dropout, it is a simple frequency distribution of individuals by months since first came to AA and is limited to individuals with 12 or fewer months. The limitations of the A.A. membership surveys are well described in the GSO internal memo on page 4. A major limitation is the significant under counting of the A.A. membership resulting from the many groups that were not surveyed. The “A.A. Fact File” that I received from GSO shows the estimated A. A. membership in the U.S. as 1,168,990 members. This is a significant undercount of members....
Source: Recovery Is Sexy.com - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholism AA General Service Office flawed statistics success rate Source Type: blogs