Posted on 03/23/2014 4:04:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I've never heard anyone ever utter these notions.
See okkev68’s post just above yours. “You fail because you haven’t reached your low” is about as “blame the addict,” “you failed because you are a failure, not AA” as you can get.
The data are what they are - AA has around a 10% effectiveness rate. Anecdotal reports of it working for this person or that person or why certain people don’t like AA are just that, anecdotal and thus highly subject to personal biases, agendas, and the like (aside from the fact that depending on the sample size, those people who report success could very well be in that 10%).
That said, I would argue that most people who are involved with AA truly want to help. The thing to do, in my opinion, is teach them to value what works, not just what they know. If certain things aren’t sufficient to produce the desired change, be open to including other things that can produce the change. God gave us a great many tools (not just faith but knowledge and the drive to understand the world around us) - there is nothing wrong with using both faith and our knowledge of how the world works (e.g., contingency management) to bring about the change we desire.
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