[Eric_WVGG]

When he said "evidence-based," he's referring to statistically recorded rates of recidivism.

You are correct, NA and AA are primarily social clubs, and there's no harm in that. But if the point is to recover from addiction, keep looking.

[sn_master]

recidivism rates are applicable to rehab centers which offer multi-week in-patient programs. they're all legally required to provide them, and most are pretty sad (50%+ is typical).

no one claims attending a meeting with a few random people and talking is a "recovery program" by any stretch of imagination. they're completely different things.

[sneak]

> no one claims attending a meeting with a few random people and talking is a "recovery program" by any stretch of imagination. they're completely different things.

In my experience that is a false claim: AA/NA proponents frequently assert that they can help you recover from addiction.

Their religion-based system has about the same probability of helping you recover from addiction as not going to AA/NA.

[placer]

>Their religion-based system has about the same probability of helping you recover from addiction as not going to AA/NA.

Not this again. We know for a fact that treatments which encourage people to be a part of AA fellowships result in a significantly higher rate of abstinence from alcohol. [1]

See Ycombinator discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545557

This doesn’t mean AA is for everyone, but it does show that Alcoholics Anonymous is quite helpful for a significant subset of alcoholics.

[1] John Kelly, et. al. “Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12‐step programs for alcohol use disorder” Cochrane 2020 PMC7065341 (open access, no paywall: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7065341/ )