I wish I could see the article Bill White refers to.
Is it possible that it might be on the Internet for
easy downloading?

I've often wondered about these statistics that
don't paint a very good picture of AA's success
rate. I do know that we get lots of people who just
drop in and then drop out right away, but I think
the recovery rate becomes far better among those
who stick around for at least a year and give it a
real college try.

Mel Barger

___________________________________

From the moderator:

Mel,

Arthur S. (Arlington, Texas) and Tom E. (Wappingers
Falls, New York) are currently putting together
the most complete study I have seen on AA success
statistics, both early and modern.

From the draft version of that study, we can see
that the AA Triennial Survey figures show that
53% of the newcomers drop out before they get to
their fourth month. But 56% of those who get
into their fourth month, make it to the end of
the year.

That totally backs up your observations, which
are based, of course, on 56 years of experience
in AA, and seeing what actually happens.

That is not too bad, because that is an overall
26% success rate measured over the first year.

How well do people do after their first year?
Pretty good, it turns out, and it seems to be
getting better and better. We're doing twice as
well now as we were back in 1977. At this point,
50% of the people who attend AA meetings in the
US and Canada have anywhere from 5 to 60 years of
sobriety.

In 1977: 37% of the people attending AA meetings
were in their first year, 38% had between 1 and 5
years in the program, and 25% had 5 to 60 years
in the program.

In 2004: 26% of the people attending AA meetings
were in their first year, 24% had between 1 and 5
years in the program, and 50% had 5 to 60 years
in the program.

More and more AA members are achieving long term
sobriety. As a result, in 1977 the average AA
member had 4 years sobriety, whereas in 2004 the
average had risen to over 8 years sobriety.

To interject my own opinion on one aspect of these
figures, I believe that many of the changes that
have been made in AA between 1935 and the present,
have been made in order to improve long term
sobriety. AA teaching is based, not on airy
theological or psychological theories, but on
concrete experiential evidence and pragmatic
observation.

In 1939, nobody really knew how the program had
to be structured to achieve 5 years of sobriety,
because nobody had that much. By 1955, there were
some people who had achieved up to 20 years of
sobriety, and these people had learned valuable
things from their experience. They weren't stupid.
They understood the program a whole lot better at
20 years of sobriety than they had at 3 and a half
years of sobriety.

Some of the things that looked like good ideas back
in 1937 or 38, had been proven to be not really good
ideas if you wanted people to obtain 20 or more years
of sobriety.

Even though I have always believed that AA needs to
keep in contact with its Historic Heritage (back
during its first 30 years) in order to maintain its
vitality, in fact, a serious argument can be made
that modern AA does a better job in some ways than
early AA. I never thought I would write these
words (gasp!), but look at those statistics above.

On the other hand, maybe part of this increase in
our ability to keep people sober for longer and
longer times, comes from the fact that we of
today have a whole shelf of useful books about
early AA history to help us, written by people like
Mel Barger (with a grateful tip of my hat to you),
Mary Darrah, Sally Brown, Ernie Kurtz, Bill
Pittman, Robert Fitzgerald, William Borchert,
and so on.

Glenn Chesnut
(South Bend, Indiana)