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Lurking on this site, I have been seeing a lot of misinformation about the efficacy of 12-step programs being made. I finally created an account when I found an active thread making the same dubious claims that the 12-step programs do not work.
The current science shows that the 12-step programs work for some alcoholics/addicts. Note that other recovery fellowships which do not use the 12 steps appear to also work.
This meta-study from the well-renowned Cochrane group showing very strong evidence of AA efficacy is open access: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7065341/
You’re not on Reddit. We actually frown upon dishonest and unethical behavior here.
Indeed. The one thing RationalWiki is good at is, when there’s some quack theory or junk science out there that’s not notable enough to grace the Wikipedia, RW often times has a page on it.
As an aside, I do not trust Rational Wiki to be a reliable source of information. Just one example: Their information about Alcoholics Anonymous’s effectiveness can charitably be described as a dumpster fire:…
Earlier in the article, it states that “The review found 42% of AA participants were completely abstinent one year later, compared with 35% of participants who underwent other treatments like CBT.” Cochrane reviews are…
Since the linked article mentions Glaser’s now-discredited 2015 article which falsely claims AA is not helpful: The latest science shows that Alcoholics Anonymous is a very helpful resource for many alcoholics, and that…
Indeed. As one point of comparison: Solid scientific information showing efficacy for AA gets routinely upvoted here at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25493182 Compare this to Reddit, where some high-traffic…
>Their religion-based system has about the same probability of helping you recover from addiction as not going to AA/NA. Not this again. We know for a fact that treatments which encourage people to be a part of AA…
Why do you feel the need to continue this conversation a day after the thread has died?
Comparing Pendery 1982 to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?? That’s a really emotionally charged and completely invalid reach. I’m not sure how a reasonable conversation can continue. We’ve moved to a Twilight Zone alternate…
That’s not what the judge looking at this very issue felt: “Judge Hauk concluded that on balance it was more important to determine how the patients were faring following treatment than any possible breach of…
Probably the most extensive critical account of that 1973 Sobell study, and how the Pendery 1982 follow-up came to be published, is the book Alcoholism: A Review of its Characteristics, Etiology, Treatments, and…
The reference was for the fact some of the original patients tried to sue the Sobells. The “delighted” bit comes from Alcoholism: A Review of its Characteristics, Etiology, Treatments, and Controversies by Irvine…
When clicking on the link multiple times, Cochrane no longer gives access to the full report. It will become non-paywalled (or should I say, non-semi-paywalled) come March over at…
Here’s the 2016 (i.e. done during the Obama administration) report from the US Surgeon General on some resources which help with recovery: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK424846/ Looking over at that Nice website,…
The full 2020 Cochrane review on AA is paywalled until March, so I’m linking to media summaries of the review until it becomes open access.
The subjects were delighted (Edit: See below for actual quote from one of the Pendery team researchers) to be contacted by another research group, and some of them felt the treatment they got in the Sobell group was so…
That article from The Atlantic uses outdated information. The figures Glaser used for AA efficacy do not come from peer reviewed science and are inaccurate. See…
This happened back in the 1970s when some researchers tried to get follow-up information about whether alcoholics can moderately drink again. Here’s what happened: The paper Sobell 1973 made the bold claim that…
The statement “by focusing on abstinence you are setting a significant part of your patients up for failure” sounds like advocating “moderate drinking” to me. If we’re not telling alcoholics that abstinence is the goal,…
It’s been established for a long time in the treatment field that AA (or pretty much anything else) works a lot better than no treatment. Brandsma 1980 is the only study I can think of off of the top of my head…
That information is, at best, out of date. The new Cochrane study links to a number of studies which show a far higher rate of abstinence than 5% for subjects randomly assigned to undergo treatment which encourages them…
That old 2015 article is out of date, and the brand new Cochrane review presents evidence which downright contradicts a number of its findings. Notably, that old article claims AA has a 5% success rate, but the new…
I am very skeptical about claims that heavy alcoholics can ever moderately drink over a significant period of time again. There are a lot of studies showing successful moderate drinking over the short term, but the…
This reply will probably be ignored, since it has been two days and ycombinator has a pretty short attention span, but I have skimmed over the full study. There are about 10 findings, and the only “high” quality finding…
According to reference.com, “cocktail casual” is not formally defined: “Traditional cocktail attire usually consists of knee length dresses for women, dark suits with a tie for men and fancy shoes for both. Cocktail…