Does AA have a 33% success rate after 10 years?

These guys (all men - no women - staying power?...lol) had been around long enough for the billshit to have worn off. It was quite a laugh if I remember right...lol

http://www.aa.org/pdf/products/p-48_07survey.pdf

Page down - it's on the left hand side. Just under "Marital Status" with the options "Married. Single, Divorced, Other" (what's "Other"...lol).

Even in pretty blue and white it's deceptive bullshit. Got Clara hook line and sinker.

Prior attempts at achieving and maintaining sobriety by the A.A. 12 Step method need to be factored in to the calculated effectiveness. If a member has relapsed during a previous attempt at A.A. then that counts as a failure - not of the individual but of the process. If, on a second attempt, an individual achieves and maintains sobriety using the A.A. program then the overall success rate of A.A for that individual is 1 out of 2 or 50%. Similarly, on a third attempt the overall success rate would be 1/3 or 33.3% and so on. For every n attempts the individual’s success rate would be 1/n.

Therefore the relapse corrected effectiveness would be:

∑ (P1 + P2/2 + P3/3 + … + Pn/n) x Calculated effectiveness

Where Pn = the percentage of members who have attempted A.A. n number of times before achieving a specific length of sobriety and, n = the total number of attempts at A.A. by Pn percent of members before achieving a specific length of sobriety.

For example: take the 3.30% of members who had completed 10 years of sobriety and were at some point in their 11th year of sobriety in 2007. If 90% had never relapsed, 5% had relapsed just once on a prior attempt at A.A. (2 total attempts) and the remaining 5% had relapsed twice before on prior attempts at A.A. (3 total attempts) then the relapse corrected effectiveness of A.A. at the 10 year mark would be:

∑ (90% + 5%/2 + 5%/3) x 3.30% = 94.17% x 3.30% = 3.11%

This is only an example but it does demonstrate the effect which relapse has on the calculated effectiveness of A.A. Since not all members will achieve 10 years of sobriety on their first attempt then the relapse corrected effectiveness of A.A. will always be less than the calculated effectiveness. Surprisingly, A.A. membership survey forms do not ask for any information on how many times a member has relapsed or how many attempts have been made using the A.A. program before achieving a particular length of sobriety. It would appear that A.A. simply does not want to know anything about this vital information. The effect of relapse on the effectiveness of A.A. cannot be accurately evaluated but it could if only A.A. would add two simple questions to its membership survey form.

Considering the data from the University of Georgia’s National Treatment Center Survey studies UGaNTCS) it can be appreciated that relapse may be a significant contributor to a correction of the calculated effectiveness of A.A. In 2004 the UGa-NTCS reported that 54.5% of the total caseload in private treatment centers and 61.7% of the total caseload in public treatment centers were relapsers. Therefore, it can be assumed that there will be a certain percentage of those who complete major milestones of A.A. sobriety that will take more than one attempt at A.A. to complete that sobriety milestone thus reducing the calculated effectiveness of A.A. to some degree.