"AA Helps Thousands Every Day!" Really?

This quote pops up frequently when someone challenges the effectiveness of any program.

"AA helps thousands every day!"

Where are those thousands?

How does this rhetoric stand up to the research and reality?

I have sat in meetings where individuals routinely cycled in and out.

They were not sober at all.

I have witnessed in my own household that one person may have given up alcohol, but she went on to abuse other things -- food, religious observances, etc.

Scientific American conduct a research survey, and while they discovered that some heavy drinkers do get sober ("tentatively yes"), they then added the following:

After reviewing the literature, we found that AA may help some people overcome alcoholism, especially if they also get some professional assistance, but the evidence is far from overwhelming, in part because of the nature of the program.

Imagine that. The very nature of the program precludes individuals from getting sober.

Earlier this year, Dr. Lance Dodes shared some damning evidence about the failures associated with AA:

Dodes tells NPR's Arun Rath that 12-step recovery simply doesn't work, despite anecdotes about success.

"We hear from the people who do well; we don't hear from the people who don't do well," he says.

Then:

There is a large body of evidence now looking at AA success rate, and the success rate of AA is between 5 and 10 percent. Most people don't seem to know that because it's not widely publicized. ... There are some studies that have claimed to show scientifically that AA is useful. These studies are riddled with scientific errors and they say no more than what we knew to begin with, which is that AA has probably the worst success rate in all of medicine.

After twenty years of studying addiction and recovery, Dodes concluded:

But unlike AA, I would never claim that what I've suggested is right for everybody. But ... let's say I had nothing better to offer: It wouldn't matter — we still need to change the system as it is because we are harming 90 percent of the people.

Lance Dodes shared these comments on Salon.com as well.

The Bible could not be clearer: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

Regarding AA, the truth is that AA is not the truth and has not set people free, at all.