I tried a 12-step based program for many years. It just wasn't for me. It was so obviously just a confidence game. They told me it only works if you really believe it... so they encouraged me to just try really hard to believe, and told me if I could do that, it would work.
There is plenty of criticism of 12-step programs. They can't even be honest about success rates... they fudge the numbers to make it appear to be more successful than it really is.
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“Peer reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between five and 10 percent,” writes Dodes. “About one of every 15 people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober.”
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And 12 step groups are religious organizations.
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Additionally, there’s AA’s barefaced religious affiliations to consider. True, the 12 steps have been worded in such a way as to suggest a certain amount of leeway in which God (or “higher power”) one ultimately surrenders to; but AA is a self-identified Christian organization with a significant portion of its methodology rooted in prayer. As it says in AA’s founding literature, known as the Big Book, “To some people we need not, and probably should not, emphasize the spiritual feature on our first approach. We might prejudice them. At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God.”
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