An 80% Success Rate

And today the literature isn’t AA approved…

Let’s see if the profundity pushers/feather strokers can contradict this.

Circa 1990: “A.A. newcomers in South Bend, Indiana, were asked to come to a newcomers meeting on Thursday evenings for a full year. At each meeting, the pamphlet (in the form in which it appears on this website) was passed around the table, with each person in turn reading aloud a small portion of one of the four lessons. Then there was a group discussion. By using a different lesson each week, by the end of the year each lesson had been read through and discussed thirteen times. Busloads of people from treatment centers and halfway houses started being brought in, as news spread of the marvelously successful new beginners lessons.**

The success rate? If newcomers made every week’s meeting without fail, by the end of the year 90% of them had remained sober the entire year. Even now, many years later, 90% of those still have unbroken sobriety. That is an overall longterm 80% success rate, comparable to the kinds of success rates that were being achieved in early A.A. times.”

What did they say? A group discussion? Damn – sounds like crosstalk to me. Perhaps you have a different perception? Maybe we’ll be blessed with someone who truly knows about what happened (happens) in South Bend.

Oh yeah. What pamphlet? The Detroit Pamphlet (The Tablemate).