Surely there are many avenues to sobriety. No one at PsychCentral would tell you that AA is the only way. So, I believe that if a poster want to engage in a discussion of alternative methods, I'm sure that would be fine. HOWEVER.....

When you talk about something as important as someone's sobriety, you know you are talking about (I mean this honestly) life and death. With that in mind, it would be important to use caution with our choice of words during such a discussion.

I think well chosen terminology, selected specifically to lessen the possibility of the discussion becoming incindiary, or inflamatory would be vital to a healthy safe discussion.

Careful rewording, deep breaths, counting to 10, whatever is necessary to ensure that respect is shown to BOTH sides of the discussion.

When I read your post, I had the sense that you were bringing with you some of your anger at the previous community. Please consider the slate blank. Start fresh.

I don't have the statistics, all I have are the names of many friends that AA has helped. I also know other people who have gained sobriety on their own. And others who have used both tools, and failed.

I'm interested in hearing about any methods which encourage sobriety. But I'd hope to leave words like "cult" out of the discussion. It's a bit high on the flame-inducing scale. It's a word that just begs for another bad word to be lobbed back.

So....could we try to just step back and have a no flame discussion? That would be the PsychCentral style of discussion.

That's Emmy's 5 cents.