Q&A: How well do alcohol recovery programs actually work?

I was looking through some old posts and found this question. I thought it was a good one so I wanted to post an answer here. The question comes from ‘almintaka’: Hi Everyone,Alcoholics Anonymous (“AA”, spiritual), Rational Recovery (“RR”, cognitive), SMART (cognitive), Save Ourselves (“SOS”, cognitive) and other alcohol recovery programs all claim varying levels of success in helping alcoholics on the road to recovery. However, there is a lot of controversy surrounding their claims, as even a quick search on the internet will reveal. Viewing this chaos of opinions from “outside the box”, it certainly seems as though they’re all blowing smoke. Anecdotal arguments are used, tabloid-style quotations are touted as being authentic, and “my way or the highway” rationalizing is often used. One thing they all have in common is that apparently none of them has a handle on real statistics (though I could be wrong here; I just haven’t found any). In addition, independent studies (NIAA, Dawson) have shown that these programs are no more successful than no program at all. What’s your opion? Do one or more of these programs work better than nothing? Answer: I can only tell you from my own experiences. With the help of AA I quit drinking over 8 yrs ago. I had reached my own personal bottom and did not know where else to turn. The amount of alcohol I was drinking nor the amount of time I spen...
Source: Addiction Recovery Blog - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Alcoholic Recovery Source Type: blogs