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ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, celebrating its 76th anniversary this year, counts two million members who participate in some 115,000 groups worldwide, about half of them in the U.S. How well does it work? Anthropologist William Madsen, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claimed in a 1974 book that it has a “nearly miraculous” success rate, whereas others are far more skeptical. After reviewing the literature, we found that AA may help some people overcome alcoholism, especially if they also get in to in-patient 12 step rehabilitation program.
Alcoholics Anonymous got its start at a meeting in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, between a businessman named Bill Wilson and a physician, Bob Smith. “Bill W” and “Dr. Bob,” as they are now known, were alcoholics. Wilson had attained sobriety largely through his affiliation with a Christian movement. Smith stopped drinking after he met Wilson, whose success inspired him. Determined to help other problem drinkers, the men soon published what has become known as “The Big Book,” which spelled out their philosophy, principles and methods, including the now famous 12-step method. Alcoholics Anonymous was the book’s official title and also became the name of the organization that grew from it.
In AA, members meet in groups to help one another achieve and maintain abstinence from alcohol. The meetings, which are free and open to anyone serious about stopping drinking, may include reading from the Big Book, sharing stories, celebrating members’ sobriety, as well as discussing the 12 steps and themes related to problem drinking. Participants are encouraged to “work” the 12-step program, fully integrating each step into their lives before proceeding to the next. AA targets more than problem drinking; members are supposed to correct all defects of character and adopt a new way of life. They are to accomplish these difficult goals without professional help. No therapists, psychologists or physicians can attend AA meetings unless they, too, have drinking problems.
A for Abstinence?Most studies evaluating the efficacy of AA are not definitive; for the most part, they associate the duration of participation with success in quitting drinking but do not show that the program caused that outcome. However those who are enrolled into 12 step in-patient rehab program and proceed to join the AA fellowship obviously to have higher success of abstinence.
Nevertheless, the results of one well-designed investigation called Project Match, published in 1997, suggest that AA can facilitate the transition to sobriety for many alcoholics. In this study, a group of prominent alcoholism researchers randomly assigned more than 900 problem drinkers to receive one of three treatments over 12 weeks. One was an AA-based treatment called 12-step facilitation therapy that includes contact with a professional who helps patients work the first few of the 12 steps and encourages them to attend AA meetings. The other treatments were cognitive-behavioral therapy, which teaches skills for coping better with situations that commonly trigger relapse, and motivational enhancement therapy, which is designed to boost motivation to cease problem drinking.
The AA-based approach seemed to work and compared favorably with the other therapies. In all three groups, participants were abstinent on roughly 20 percent of days, on average, before treatment began, and the fraction of alcohol-free days rose to about 80 percent a year after treatment ended. What is more, 19 percent of these subjects were teetotalers during the entire 12-month follow-up.
