I have recently heard some statistics that bothered me a bit. Apparently, the recovery rates of those people who join AA are around 7-8 %. If I remember right, that was the percentage of people who stayed sober for a year of more. I find this statistic shocking because from what I understand, the recovery rates of the people who came to AA in the 1940’s were somewhere around 75%.

Now I have no hard factual case studies to back up the opinion that I am about to give except that of my own personal experience. My experience tells me that everyone who practices the principles set forth in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous gets sober. Not only do they achieve sobriety but they learn to excel in life.

From what I can tell, there seems to be a big misconception about what goes on in AA. Or at least what the co-founders of AA had originally began. There are a lot of meetings that really have nothing to do with the solution to the alcoholic problem. They seem to be more of a place to vent anger and frustration. I have witnessed these meetings first hand and I can categorically state that these types of meetings are not for me. I am what the Big Book refers to as an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. I needed a solution to why I was unable to stop drinking even when every fiber of my being wanted to stop.

I have witnessed hundreds of people get sober first hand. I have been personally involved with scores of them. I have watched people embrace the program of action and practice specific principles and adopt specific attitudes which enable them to not only cope with life but do so cheerfully. I have also watched some of these same people neglect to practice the same principles that had freed them, and they revert back to old behavior and old ways of thinking and suddenly they have no choice but to drink.

You see, it’s not that the program of AA doesn’t work, because it does. It’s that people don’t work the program. One of my favorite sayings is that if you always do what you always done then you will always get what you always got. There is only one thing that you need to change in order to have a successful recovery, and that is everything.