A brief observation on: "Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works" (see entry for 27/06/10)

""The sad fact remains that the program's failures vastly outnumber its success stories..." Really? As the old cliché has it, there are figures, statistics and damned lies! "Those who do not recover are those who cannot or will not COMPLETELY give themselves to this simple program... " (Alcoholics Anonymous, chapter five, 1939) i.e. those unable or unwilling "to go to any lengths" to stay sober. As Glenn Chesnut points out in AA History Lovers (6 April 2010): "If you have severe diabetes, then the combination of insulin injections and watching your diet will do a lot of good, but if you quit the insulin shots and start pigging out on chocolate cake again, you will get very ill - not because modern medicine 'does not work', but because you stopped following the doctor's recommendations. It's time to stop blaming AA if people go to a few meetings, pay no attention to what is said, put out no effort, and then disappear and go back to drinking again. If you take three or four violin lessons, refused to practice the violin at home, and then quit going to your lessons, then not even the greatest violin teacher in the world can teach you how to play the violin successfully. Let's get serious here!" "AA's 12 Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole." (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, 1952, Foreword). For the AA program to "succeed" it has to be practised as a way of life."

(our usual thanks to this AA member for their contribution)