March 11 in A.A. History

In 1891, James McCready “Mac” H. was born to Joseph Andrew H., a dentist, and Elizabeth Fishburn H. in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles [~50 km] south of Pittsburgh. In March 1940, he would help found Alcoholics Anonymous in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1851, American Weekly published “Dr. Bob: His Only Monument Is a Plaque, but the Thousands He Helped Rescue From Alcoholism Will Never Forget Him” [right: article and accompanying image] a memorial tribute by Booton Herndon.

In 2020, The Cochran Collaborative published “Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12‐step programs for alcohol use disorder” [left: cover] by John F. Kelly, Keith Humphreys and Marica Ferri. Their research was intended to

    … evaluate whether peer‐led AA and professionally‐delivered treatments that facilitate AA involvement (Twelve‐Step Facilitation (TSF) interventions) achieve important outcomes, specifically: abstinence, reduced drinking intensity, reduced alcohol‐related consequences, alcohol addiction severity, and healthcare cost offsets.

They looked for existing studies and included

    … randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi‐RCTs and non‐randomized studies that compared AA or TSF (AA/TSF) with other interventions, such as motivational enhancement therapy (MET) or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), TSF treatment variants, or no treatment. We also included healthcare cost offset studies. Participants were non‐coerced adults with AUD [alcohol use disorder].

They concluded:

There is high quality evidence that manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, such as CBT, for increasing abstinence. Non‐manualized AA/TSF may perform as well as these other established treatments. AA/TSF interventions, both manualized^* and non‐manualized, may be at least as effective as other treatments for other alcohol‐related outcomes. AA/TSF probably produces substantial healthcare cost savings among people with alcohol use disorder.

One anonymous writer on Substack titled a post that referred to this study as “Guess What? AA Works.”

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^*Manualized here means “refers to interventions that follow a standardized, structured approach. Specifically, [such interventions]:
    1.    Follow a session-to-session outline
    2.    Offer treatment based on standardized content
    3.    Deliver content in a linear or modular fashion
    4.    Ensure the same treatment is delivered across time and different sites”