Topic: FYI
Anonymous A started this discussion 10 years ago #56,554
Regarding your article on AA, have you talked to the people in the meetings for whom it works?
AA is the best thing I ever found — I'm sorry it did not work out for you.
Best Wishes
Hello, Blue Sky,
When you say, "I'm sorry it did not work out for you", you are completely missing the point. It isn't about me or whether I like A.A. meetings. It's about the total failure of Alcoholics Anonymous as a program that is supposed to help alcoholics. Even a leader of A.A., Prof. Dr. George E. Vaillant, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., found that A.A. had a zero percent success rate (above normal spontaneous remission), along with the highest death rate of any kind of treatment for alcoholism that he studied. A.A. was a total failure, and worse.
Of course I have talked with people who think that the program worked for them. (I have also exchanged letters with a zillion of them. Read the files of letters.) I remain totally unimpressed with their stories when they have only two or three out of each hundred newcomers who end up being sober old-timers who rave about how great A.A. is and how they have 10 years or more of sobriety. That is just the propaganda trick of "proof by anecdote", which is just what the A.A. Big Book is — just one long collection of cherry-picked success stories, without any honest discussion of all of the cases where cult religion fails to cure alcoholics.
By the way, you are assuming facts not in evidence when you talk about "the people in the meetings for whom it works".
There is no evidence that "it works". All of the real evidence says that "it doesn't work". The only success stories that A.A. has to brag about are those few people who were going to quit anyway — in other words, cases of normal spontaneous remission.
You are also "confusing coincidence or correlation with cause and effect". There is no evidence that Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps, or A.A. meetings cause people to quit drinking. The evidence is that A.A. involvement increases the rate of binge drinking, and increases the rate of rearrests for public drunkenness, and raises the death rate of alcoholics.
AA is the best thing I ever found — I'm sorry it did not work out for you.
Best Wishes
Hello, Blue Sky,
When you say, "I'm sorry it did not work out for you", you are completely missing the point. It isn't about me or whether I like A.A. meetings. It's about the total failure of Alcoholics Anonymous as a program that is supposed to help alcoholics. Even a leader of A.A., Prof. Dr. George E. Vaillant, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., found that A.A. had a zero percent success rate (above normal spontaneous remission), along with the highest death rate of any kind of treatment for alcoholism that he studied. A.A. was a total failure, and worse.
Of course I have talked with people who think that the program worked for them. (I have also exchanged letters with a zillion of them. Read the files of letters.) I remain totally unimpressed with their stories when they have only two or three out of each hundred newcomers who end up being sober old-timers who rave about how great A.A. is and how they have 10 years or more of sobriety. That is just the propaganda trick of "proof by anecdote", which is just what the A.A. Big Book is — just one long collection of cherry-picked success stories, without any honest discussion of all of the cases where cult religion fails to cure alcoholics.
By the way, you are assuming facts not in evidence when you talk about "the people in the meetings for whom it works".
There is no evidence that "it works". All of the real evidence says that "it doesn't work". The only success stories that A.A. has to brag about are those few people who were going to quit anyway — in other words, cases of normal spontaneous remission.
You are also "confusing coincidence or correlation with cause and effect". There is no evidence that Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps, or A.A. meetings cause people to quit drinking. The evidence is that A.A. involvement increases the rate of binge drinking, and increases the rate of rearrests for public drunkenness, and raises the death rate of alcoholics.
Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 41 seconds later[^] [v] #728,984
This is the year of the outsider, says former Vice President Dan Quayle, sharing his prediction on the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections and weighing in on today's meeting between Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump is going to find out that people in Congress "need a lot of stroking," says Quayle
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 5 minutes later, 6 minutes after the original post[^] [v] #728,986
