One hand-drawn graph in a paper summarizing the 1977 through 1989 Trennial

Surveys has been misread by many people. The myth of a 95% drop-out in the

first year comes because it reported the membership length of people who

were in their first ever year of Alcoholics Anonymous. The x-axis scale

of the graph was the percentage who had been coming for any given number

of months, it was not the retention percentage.



http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/2379



My AAHistoryLovers Post 2379 (with added comments by moderator Glenn C)

presents the proper reading of the graph.  The retention from any month to any

other is the ratio of the number of members found.  For every 100 people who

were in their first year, 19 were in their first month and 5 were in their

twelfth.

5 / 19  = 0.26   So 26% remain at the end of their first year.  Newcomers often

are told, "Try A.A. for three months and decide if you are an alcoholic." About

half leave during that "test drive." The Survey found 9 in their fourth month.

5 / 9 = 0.56  So 56% of those staying beyond three months finish the year

of their first ever A.A. experience.



"If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the

right-about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him." (BB p.31)

I want to avoid starting the "real alcoholic" debate again but that is true.

Alcoholism is a self-diagnosed malady. A.A.'s shared experience can help

a visitor decide for himself if he is an alcoholic. As they say, "Yet."    :-)

Although some in A.A. want to "save" everyone who walks in the door, there

really are drinkers who don't need Alcoholics Anonymous at their first visit.

[Sponsors are free to tell their sponsees, "This doesn't apply to you."]   :-)



There are many reasons someone might not stay for their first full year.

It isn't up to us to decide if their reason is or is not valid.

* Not alcoholic

* Not "alcoholic enough"

* "Not ready"

* Denial

* More an addict than an alcoholic

* Discouraged by false claims like 95% Dropout Myth

* Life's other pressures

* Travel distance

* Don't "want what we have" by their perception

* Never sober enough to hear the message

* Wrong group for them

* Other psychological problems

* Try recovery by some other means

* Move

* Die (cause is irrelevant)

[Sponsors are free to tell their sponsees, "These don't apply to you either."]  

:-)

_____________________

Tom E

Wappingers Falls, NY



  -------------- Original message ----------------------

From: Billy-Bob <backtobasicsbillybob@...>

> ... According to some of AA's own triennnial surveys a good 95 percent

> seem to drop out during the first year. That means that about 5 percent

> "really try".  Which means that if 50% get it right away figure and 75%

> get it eventually figures hold true, it means that after all is said and

> done that 75% of 5% achieve a lasting sobriety.

>

>   Sincerely, Billy-Bob

There was also an article in the *Alcoholism Treatment

Quarterly* a few years ago that dissected this too

widespread fallacy.  Perhaps someone can give the

exact citation, which I do not have at hand right

now?



ernie kurtz

Ernie,



     The article you refer to was written by Don  McIntyre and appeared in

Volume 18, Number 4, 2000, issue of Alcoholism  Treatment Quarterly, pp. 1-18..

The title was "How well does A.A. work? An  Analysis of published A.A. surveys

(1968-1996) and related  analyses/comments.



Bill White







In a message dated 4/23/2006 3:57:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

kurtzern@... writes:



There  was also an article in the *Alcoholism Treatment

Quarterly* a few years  ago that dissected this too

widespread fallacy.  Perhaps someone can  give the

exact citation, which I do not have at hand right

now?



ernie kurtz













[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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)

The 95% dropout rate is inaccurate and based

on flawed statistics.



Rather than 5% of A.A. members remaining at

the end of one year a more accurate estimate

is that 36% remain attending A.A. at the end

of one year and 32% are still attending at

the end of 20 years.



The 1989 GSO internal memo "Comments on A.A.'s

Triennial Surveys" Appendix C: the First Year"

has been widely misquoted as a measure of

retention or dropouts.  It is not a measure

of retention or dropout, it is a simple

frequency distribution of individuals by

months since first came to AA and is limited

to individuals with 12 or fewer months.



The limitations of the AA membership surveys

are well described in the GSO internal memo

on page 4.  A major limitation is the signi-

ficant under counting of the AA membership

resulting from the many groups that where

not surveyed.



The most recent "A.A. Fact File" that I

received from GSO shows the estimated A. A.

membership in the US as 1,168,990 members.



This is a significant undercount of members.



Using a national representative survey of the

US, the NIAAA 1991-1992 National Longitudinal

Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES)I found

that in 1991-1992 2.4 million individuals

reported attending an A.A. meeting during

the last year.



I have posted a brief summary of my findings

on A.A. membership on my website Alcohol

Reports, www.alcoholreports.blogspot.com ,

as a Data Brief, dated July 29, 2007.



Loran



- - - -



Note from the moderator:



Loran Archer served in key positions at

NIAAA after being recruited from the

position of Director of the California

Office of Alcoholism.  In the later 1980s,

for example, he was:



Deputy Director

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services



He has now started

"Bulletin Board - Alcohol Reports" at:



www.alcoholreports.blogspot.com



He is also one of the contributors to

ALOCOHOL REPORTS (an international website

dedicated to providing current information

on news, newsletters, reports,publications,

abstracts of peer-reviewed research articles

and data briefs concerning alcoholism and

alcohol-related problems throughout the

world):

USA

-Loran Archer

-Thomasina Borkman

-Tom Colhurst

-Jared Lobdell

-Albert Pawlowski

-Don Phillips

CANADA

-Tim Stockwell

FRANCE

- Philippe Arvers

SOUTH ASIA

- Prasantha De Silva

UNITED KINGDOM

-Libby Ranzetta

FETAL ALCOHOL SPECTRUM DISORDERS

- Peggy Seo Oba

EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

- Paul M Roman