Yes, there's a big difference between holding voluntary, free of charge meetings in the basements of churches, and incarcerating teens for years and filling their minds with complete bullshit. A.A. works for a minute percentage of adults, so claiming that it works for 85% of AARC's teen clientele is, again, complete bullshit.
"Dr. Whitfield agrees that AA's effectiveness can't be explained in scientific terms, or tested in controlled studies."
What that really means is, "A.A. doesn't work. It isn't effective at all. That's why it fails every real test. The reason that they can't explain how it works is because it doesn't work."
And the so-called "abundant anecdotal evidence that the 12 Steps do work", about which Thomas Anderson wrote, is completely worthless. That is just a few people telling cherry-picked stories. Just because some people are confused about cause and effect relationships, and have been fooled into thinking that the 12 steps did something for them, and then tell stories about those beliefs, does not prove that the 12 Steps actually worked and cured patients. For many centuries, quack doctors, snake oil salesmen, and fake faith healers have been making plenty of money by taking advantage of such confusion — constantly repeating grandiose anecdotal stories of allegedly wonderful successful cures that came from using snake oil and voodoo charms.
Those few people who actually do quit drinking while going to A.A. meetings are mostly just those people who were going to quit anyway — or who have already quit — because they got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and decided to save their own lives. They do the hard work of quitting, and then A.A. takes the credit for their work, and claims that it somehow made them quit.
Try SMART. That is, Self Management And Recovery Training. They use common sense and simple logic to quit and stay quit. For them, quitting definitely IS an option. I also hear good things about SOS, and WFS.
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_a0.html
