[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/ )