Topic: A critique of AA meetings and an assessment of the nature of addiction. (Read 3849 times)

I'm thinking my understanding of how 'god' and the higher power thing fits into all of this (and is essential) is similar to yours.  I'm a big fan of Carl Jung and there is some evidence he was part of promoting the idea of the necessity of a spiritual awakening to early founders of the recovery programs that evolved into 12 step programs.  Now for most people, they can find this in what ever religion they know.  I feel that praying and appealing to a 'higher power' can easily be appealing to our own consciousness, without even knowing that is what we are doing.  Our full consciousness, I believe, is much more powerful than our familiar small sliver of waking consciousness.  And as Jung suggested.. that itself fits in with a collective consciousness and perhaps is a pool from which power can be drawn from (or passed into).  This may be an area in which we might have some agreement?

Oh.. I did real about Thomas Szasz... I do have similar beliefs.

Likewise. I always appreciate when people listen and consider other perspectives instead of zipping up the asbestos suit and doing battle. Thank you for showing up for the conversation.

smscotten;

I do not feel the need to refute any of your statements as they do not seem to be in direct contradiction with my views.

I do feel that our understanding is similar, and I appreciate the validity of your so-called "semantic quibble." I think it has too much meaning to deserve that label.

Your point regarding the convenience of using the term disease is also valid. I do not object to such casual use except in that I feel it can be misleading and result in confusion about the fundamental nature of addiction.

Regarding the god thing, I made a conscious decision to not make a paragraph about the constant references to god and religious overtones of the whole assembly; I chose to leave that bit out because I feel that the "inundated with religion" problem is not specific to AA but is more of a general cultural problem that deserves a whole thread by itself. My criticisms of AA could easily be drowned out if I were to begin attacking religion and that was not the purpose of this thread.

Thanks to all the folks who participated in this discussion; but especially thanks to you for your insightful responses. I always enjoy hearing other opinions and perspectives.

Two possibilities I'd like you to consider. The first is that the effect of chemicals on these so-called diseases indicates the existence of a physical component.

The second is: what if there were a set of behaviors which were not a disease, but which responded to treatment as though it were a disease? I suggest that because I am inclined to agree that mental disease is not a disease in the classic sense. However, because it can in many cases be treated as though it were a disease to good effect, I'm not sure that being technically correct on that count serves any utility. Some of me still cringes when I hear "the disease of alcoholism" but I no longer hesitate to use the phrase because I've found it to be a useful bit of shorthand.


I have been taking care to avoid some of the jargon because I agree that we have a lot in common when it comes to this subject, yet we seem to have come to some very different conclusions.

A piece of perspective that may be helpful (and which is probably not obvious) is that the book Living Sober is very much intended for people who are very newly sober. Its aim is by and large to help people survive long enough to get into a deeper process of recovery. That's not to say that nothing in there applies to later recovery, but that's not its focus. I agree that by itself it may not send the right messages. If that's the primary source of you knowledge about how AA works, it's easy to understand how you could have arrived at some of the conclusions here.

I'd be lying to say it wouldn't be possible to get some of those ideas directly from AA meetings, too. One thing that is important is that there is no real hierarchy to AA. Stuff that people say in meetings about how AA works is often well-meaning and sometimes good advice, but sadly only infrequently is it representative of the program of recovery set forth in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and expanded on in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. There is no screening of content to make sure it is in line with the literature, and that is a good thing, because AA is purely a group of peers. It works better without authority than it possibly could with.

(Alcoholics Anonymous is in fact much like Bitcoin. It is open-source and noncentralized. While there are central offices that maintain schedules, organize phone hotlines, keep bookstores, and whatnot, those central offices are responsible to the groups, never the other way around. They could be disposed of without much more than a decrease in convenience. And there are a ton of alternate fellowships with a few variables change but running the same software. And some people make physical coins to represent it. I could go on.)


I've seen people air gripes about AA enough times to be utterly tired of the people that get hung up on the God thing. I probably would not have replied if part of this were about how AA is pushing Christianity on people. Once someone has formed that opinion, it's really hopeless trying to discuss anything because of the lack of common ground.

I can call myself a believer about as honestly as I can call myself an atheist. What I call God, many people don't. My use of the word has become very fluid as the fundamental concept I have of God is that It is (not exclusively but almost totally) outside of me and independent of what names I give It or stories I tell about It or ideas I have about It. Put more simply, my opinion does not alter the reality around me, it alters only my stories and opinions. I believe we're all—from atheists to the most fervent literal theists—telling stories about the same thing despite how different the stories are.


That sounds like it's working for you. Our stories about that higher power aren't tremendously different.

And um. Anything I may have said about Alcoholics Anonymous should be taken with at least a grain of salt. I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous, nor do I claim to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I do describe myself as a recovered alcoholic; I haven't taken a drink in 17 years. I have therefore had occasion to come into contact with a number of AA members, its literature, and I may have seen the inside of a meeting a few times.

Hey, no rush. I was dreadfully wordy and I understand that such discussions can be tiring.


I'm about to make a semantic quibble, but I think that it is an important distinction.

A few years back, I was held up at gunpoint. It could fairly be said that I wanted to avoid being shot more than I wanted to hold on to my possessions, so I did surrender my wallet and phone and iPod. I wanted to go for a walk that night more than I wanted to stay safe behind my locked door. It is logically valid to say therefore that I wanted to give away my possessions more than I wanted to stay safe at home. But in common conversation, it really doesn't mean the same thing. It ignores assessment of risk, the possibility of being wrong when predicting the future, and the possibility of factors from outside the equation making themselves known. And the distinction between avoiding a negative and pursuing a positive is not always clear, but can drastically change the meaning.

Take care when you simplify that you are in fact distilling down to the truth and not boiling away important factors. I think you've got a lot of your premises correct but are hitting some snarls when it comes to translating those principles into practical terms. That may account for some of the disagreement you've encountered on this topic.

Big surprise. [/sarcasm]

Yes. I do not acknowledge the validity of mental disease excepting those with a physical component, such as Alzheimer's. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
No, diabetes appears to be a legitimate disease, though it is usually caused by a poor diet and often can be resolved without medication by modifying the diet.
That's the problem right there. Again, see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz, I vehemently agree with him.

You seem to share most of my understanding of the nature of addiction and choice, even if you phrase it differently. I will also acknowledge that I have not read Alcoholics Anonymous and that the only literature associated with the group that I have read is "Living Sober," which was helpful to me on my quest for sobriety, though I found I had to "cherry-pick" my way through it and I feel that if did not take that approach it may have been very harmful to my development.

I am not saying that AA can't help anybody or doesn't help anybody, I am saying that they are fundamentally wrong about the nature of addiction and it shows in their rhetoric, which may stint the development of those who subscribe to it.

You also made mention of a higher power, briefly. I should note that I do not believe in a higher power by most popular definitions, but I contemplate that just maybe, perhaps...

 The "higher power" might be consciousness itself (as in The Self Aware Universe by Amit Goswami), or that possibly all existence consists of various representations of some core essence, in a self-similar manner (i.e. each atom contains the entire universe, as you zoom in it is repeated infinitely, as you zoom out it is repeated infinitely, but perhaps with no individual "scale layer" being exactly the same as the other, rather being equivalent mathematically but represented differently at each scale). In this model I see every element of the universe being representative of all the others and the whole shebang, so that theoretically with enough knowledge about any given atom one could understand the entire universe. Likewise, in this model it does not matter what you study as all knowledge is equivalent, the more you understand about any one thing (say Mahler's Ninth Symphony for example) the more you understand about the universe at large; all understanding is "portable" or "universal" and a complete understanding of anything, whatever it may be, equates to enlightenment.

But anyway. I digress.

smscotten, I wrote this bit while you were writing your bit. I will post this now and then proceed to respond to your bit in a separate post.


The drunk cyclist bit will lead to an entirely different discussion, the value system discussion, I'll leave that alone for the moment.

The part where you state "if A is valued more than B, then C" and "ordinary people often don't seem to consciously assess value. They just do things, like the Joker" is of more interest to me.

Ordinary people don't often consciously assess value, but I argue that subconsciously, every decision the make is based upon their assessments of value. Even people who appear to act irrationally, like the Joker, are making choices based upon values. In the case of the Joker, one might speculate that perhaps he values "chaos" more than he values, say, his own life.

If person "X" chooses "A" over "B", person "X" values "A" more than "B". "A" can be abstinence and "B" can be intoxication, or vice-versa.

These beliefs spur from my fundamental world-view. I hold a lot of other beliefs some might like to argue with, i.e. "There is no such thing a selfless action," "Existence precedes essence," "Logic is inherent in the structure of the universe," "mental events are reducible to neurological occurrences," and back on topic here, "one can not only do what he wills, but can will what he wills," in direct disagreement with Schopenhauer.

To phrase it yet another and even simpler way, "If an individual wants to do A more than B, then they will do A rather than B."

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
I pretty much agree with everything he says, at least everything I've read so far.

I think you've gone into a semantic briar patch about desire and action. In your model there is no difference whatever between waking up and going for a run and waking up and having a conflict of desires that eventually ends up in me going for a run. We can agree on empirically which side won out but from my own experience there is a huge difference between those two days.

The fact is that at any given time any given person has a very wide range of desires, and some of those desires are mutually exclusive of one another. The importance of individual desires changes from moment to moment and, as you point out, one can consciously change one's desires.

It's also true that these desires can be quite hidden from our conscious minds. It sometimes takes a lot of looking to find out what the payoff is that you're getting. Smoking a cigarette rarely produces a change in one's mind that one is aware of, yet the subtle feeling of well-being that it produces is very real. It can be very bewildering to have a conscious desire to quit smoking while your entire brain associates the act of lighting up with the feeling of well-being. I'll gladly admit that this is an example of wanting to smoke more than wanting to avoid lung disease, but from any practical or experiential point of view, it's ludicrous. And in fact, it's not a matter of wanting to smoke being more important that wanting to avoid lung disease, it's a matter of wanting a feeling of well-being more than wanting to avoid lung disease, and a lack of conscious awareness of the connection between the feeling of well-being and the action of smoking.

As a side note, in my opinion, that is why the concept of a higher power is useful. The person-whom-we-will-not-stigmatize-by-calling-them-an-addict has to let go of acting purely in the realm of conscious desires. That power greater than yourself may in fact be yourself, but it has to be more powerful than your conscious awareness. And perhaps that's not so much of a side note as it goes to the "powerless" question. If one is bewildered by the fact that they show empirically that they want something (eg by getting drunk) that they intellectually know that they don't want (eg to end up with a smashed car having killed someone), it is highly useful for them to understand that they don't have to consciously want something in order to want it, and that their conscious will in the moment is insufficient to make themselves want the thing they consciously want more than the other thing. That does not mean that over time (maybe not even very much time) they can't reorient the entirety of what they want in the direction of their values (what they want to want, if you will)—in fact, that admission is what makes such a reorientation possible.

Even if you don't agree with any of the above, you ought to also include that we're talking about mind and mood-altering substances here. If I want to drink just one beer once in a while, I am not necessarily going to have the same set of wants after the first drink than I did before. I think that is a big reason for sticking with the abstinence plan rather than trying to help people along a treacherously slippery path. Someone wanting to use their better judgment and wanting to learn to more consistently use their better judgment is probably well-advised not to indulge in substances that affect judgment, especially if one has a history or habit of exercising poor judgment regarding that substance.

A final note about changing what you want. Again, what someone wants is not singular. Belief that it is singular can lead to that person simply giving up when they have observed a desire in themselves. Changing what you want can take a very long time, especially when what you want is to keep indulging in a substance that changes what you want in the opposite direction. That is why AA seems to put behavior first before desire. People often do not realize or believe that they will be OK if they delay gratification of a desire. If we have to rely on someone changing what they want before they can change their behavior, it may never happen except in a rare few. You may think these rare few are superior to the others and in fact you may be right. But for the rest, there is hope in not picking up a drink even if they feel like they want to pick up a drink. Is that part of the process of changing what they want? Sure.

And the point of that is to go back to: you're misrepresenting AA. Here is what you picked up on in your one hour of contact with AA:


(Alcoholics Anonymous, pg 24)

Please note that this describes the problem, not the solution. Sixty pages (many of which contain specific suggestions about actions which will bring about a change) later:


(Alcoholics Anonymous, pg 84)

I think you'll agree that what is described there is a change in what the person wants. In fact, except for two factors (that they keep the label "alcoholic" and that they abstain rather than start occasional drinking) that seems like just the kind of change you said that someone should have instead of the change that AA wants people to have. So is it possible that your ideas and those put forth by the book Alcoholics Anonymous are actually much closer than you've claimed?

Can't say much more than that I vehemently disagree with your premise. You are only seeing and hearing  what you want to see and hear to corroborate your preexisting negative assessments.  Would you also say that obsessive compulsive disorder can be helped by the sufferer just deciding mot to be a person who is obsessive/compulsive?  Would you suggest to a diabetic that they really are not in need of their medications because they just need to realign their identity to be that of a person who is not diabetic?  Your argument is another twist on the debate of disease vs. not a disease. Addiction as a disease is our current way of viewing the problem and its viewed that way along the lines of a variant of obsessive/compulsive disorder.  It is  amazing how you think that the way it works in these programs is hurting the members by somehow forcing them to reinforce to themselves they are what you think they should be convincing themselves that they aren't.   Yeah, that was a bad sentence, but let me finish up with what is actually occurring... They are gaining power through the group to remove addiction's influence in their lives so they can become whatever they want.  The solution being finding out who they really are after being what they never meant to be for so long.

I'm getting a bit bored of this subject as I've been discussing it at length in person with various people lately, but I will respond to this one critically important line:


Wrong. When you get up in the morning, and run, that is proof that you want to go for a run more than you don't want to go for a run.

That is the core of my idea. Your actions expose your values. Perhaps the "I don't want to run" bit is more prominent at the level of conscious thought in the morning, but ultimately, you want to run. If you didn't, you wouldn't.

You don't "go for a run even though you don't want to," you don't "accept that about yourself and run anyway," no. You choose to run, that choice reveals that you want to run more than you want to stay home in bed and relax, or do anything else with that portion of your day.

Similarly, those who say "I want to quit" but continue to use, clearly want to use more than they want to quit. Your actions reveal your values. If you truly want to quit more than you want to use, you will quit, at the very moment that your desire to quit surpasses your desire to use. If you are still using, that is proof that you want to use more than you want to quit.

I propose that the only way to quit is to change what you want. Some people who go to meetings successfully achieve that, others don't. Some people who never go to meetings successfully achieve that, others don't. I argue that meetings generally encourage using terminology and viewing addiction from a particular perspective that is not helpful for those who are trying to change from wanting to use more than they want to quit to wanting to quit more than they want to use.

First of all, that's a false equivalence there. Second, check this out:


(Alcoholics Anonymous, p100-101)

Does that sound like AA is about avoiding temptation?

If you're talking about some stuff you heard someone say at some meeting, keep in mind that's a bit like saying, "Bitcointalk says you really have to buy more WorldCoin or else the whole world economy will collapse and we'll be resorting to cannibalism." Someone on Bitcointalk may have said that (in fact I just did) but it is unlikely that person speaks for the entire website or for the admins of the site. Are there some people in AA who are vocally full of shit? Sure. There are some people on Bitcointalk who are vocally full of shit too. One difference? That AA has a book. It's a book I've read. It has some things I don't believe and some things I do believe. But none of the stuff you're ascribing to AA bears much resemblance to AA.

Whatever. You're doing a great job of convincing me that you are making a bunch of semantic hash out of nothing. Yeah, people make labels. It's called language. You describe something, give it names based on your observation. I'm right-handed but I learned to shoot pool left-handed. Should I reject all this labeling and use my force of will to write with my left hand or shoot pool like a right-handed person? Have I trapped myself in some self-limiting and destructive way if I continue to write with my right hand? Hogwash. Make observations, ascribe labels to help characterize things—yes, even about yourself—and take appropriate action.

You had some sort of unpleasant experience with drugs, decided not to call yourself an addict, and used whatever means to stop doing those drugs while continuing to drink occasionally. Here's a secret: the existence of Alcoholics Anonymous is no threat to you. AA does not say that there is something wrong with you for drinking. You can drink as much as you like.

Me? If I could drink like normal people do, I would. Every day, all day. Except that's not how normal people drink. Normal people have a glass of wine and leave half of it on the table when they leave the restaurant. Normal people have one drink and stop. I have no idea what the point of that is. So I leave it alone. It doesn't matter whether I call that being an alcoholic or call it Roger. Could I learn to have an occasional drink? I will allow theoretically that I could. But given my past history and how completely useless I regard an occasional alcoholic beverage, the reward-to-risk ratio is staggeringly low.

So you think I'm weak minded for not having an occasional drink? I don't give a shit. Do you think I've caused myself some sort of psychological harm by not triumphing over alcohol? That's a fine opinion; it's one I don't share. I have spent a lot of time learning about myself and changing myself. When I watch science fiction movies, I have a good time; I accept that about myself and don't try to change it. When I get up in the morning I don't want to go for a run; I accept that about myself and run anyway. When I drink, I drive in a blackout; I accept that about myself and don't drink. It's not about how limited I am, it's about recognizing who I am and shaping myself into who I want to be.

I run 10Ks and half marathons and do triathlon. I think I know something about the experience of breaking down the barriers of my own willpower. Crossing the finish line in a shorter time than I ever have, or running farther than I ever have before, those are accomplishments that build my sense of self. Learning to ride a motorcycle meant practicing a kind of focus and attention on the road that I can take pride in. Honing my game of chess gives me a sense of accomplishment. Creating and exhibiting artwork gives me great satisfaction.

Learning to drink a beer safely and occasionally? That's not any kind of accomplishment that would boost my sense of self. So I really don't see what I'm sacrificing by not drinking alcohol and I don't have the foggiest clue what you're talking about when you say that I've mentally or psychologically crippled myself by calling myself an alcoholic and quitting drinking.

Edit to add: above I wrote "by not triumphing over alcohol". My continued sobriety, to me, means I have won. I win every day. Your continued moderate drinking means you have won. Good for you, and cheers! I still fail to see how your victory proves your psychological mettle in any way that mine doesn't also.

I do not propose that I have some system which works better, or some method that can be applied to solve addiction. I propose that one chooses (and it is a very personal choice) either to be an "addict" or not to be an "addict."

"But people should just be smart enough like you to realize they should just stop identifying themselves as 'addicts' or 'alcoholics'." -- It has little to do with being "smart" and a lot to do with strengthening your resolve and choosing who you want to be. The confusion here is over my usage of the term "identify." I'm referring to your identity, internally, your self image, not just to the term you use to describe yourself (although, of course, using a term to describe yourself helps reinforce that part of your self image).

I must clarify further.

If a person wants to quit [substance A] and yet also wants to indulge in [substance A], if they continue to indulge, that is proof that they want to indulge more than they want to quit.

Now sure, changing what you want and how much you want it is easier said than done, but I am declaring that what you want and how much you want it is under your control and that it is the determining factor in how you act.

This appears to be a misunderstanding. I propose that anybody who smokes is more attached to smoking than they are to health and life itself, provided that they are aware that smoking is killing them. I don't want to get too particularly specific about my history with drug use, but  assuming I had tried cocaine, and then stopped, that would be hard evidence that I am less attached to cocaine than I am to my health, money, and general well being. The principle here is that if you know something is killing you, and you continue to do it anyway, that is proof that you value that activity more than your life.

Regarding the portion of your statement that I've italicized, you've misunderstood. Whether you choose to stop drinking or doing drugs entirely, or you choose to try to drink or use drugs in moderation, I believe that the AA system is harmful to any person attempting to overcome addiction and become a healthy individual who takes responsibility for their own actions. AA encourages you to disclaim that responsibility, declaring that you were "addicted" and therefore you were not in control of your own actions. I disagree. I believe every individual is always in control of their own actions and that claiming otherwise is a "cop-out" if you will.

You also state that " has helped 100,000's if not millions of people find a way out of addiction and live good lives."
I disagree. I think that this method treats only the symptoms of addiction without addressing the core problems, namely control of and responsibility for your own actions. If you still need to go to meetings and you still believe that you are incapable of controlling yourself, you have not yet found a "way out of addiction." I think it encourages a mindset which is detrimental to the quality of life of all of it's members, who might otherwise have truly found themselves and came to the realization that they choose each and every one of their actions and are responsible for the consequences. Now, many members may "live good lives" but I don't agree that AA can take any credit for that.

Well, if your drinking is getting in the way of your job and your life, then you are likely an alcoholic. Now, I propose that you evaluate why you have chosen to be an alcoholic and reshape your identity (not just call yourself by a different label), adjusting your values to create a situation where you will choose not to drink. In this example you might decide that you value your job and the quality of your life more than you value the relief that drinking alcohol brings you. Clearly, if you are drinking to a degree that it is damaging your life, this is evidence, even proof that you value drinking more than you value the quality of your life.

You also misunderstand, in that my assessment applies equally to people who are choosing to be entirely abstinent and people who are choosing to drink moderately. If you are choosing to be entirely abstinent I still would not advise you to go to AA meetings. They will indoctrinate you with a rhetoric that will reinforce the concept that you "are" inherently "an addict" and leave you with lasting character flaws, whether or not you achieve abstinence or overcome your dependence upon one particular substance or another.

You really hit the nail on the head when you imagine an alcoholic who says "OK, I'm shitty at drinking and I almost certainly always will be shitty at drinking." I equate this to somebody saying "I'm shitty at controlling myself and I almost certainly will always be shitty at controlling myself." And this is the core problem with AA. It does not teach you to control yourself, it teaches you to avoid temptation and accept that you will always be bad at controlling yourself.


I'll respond to some of the other replies tomorrow, it's 1:00am here and I have work in the morning. I would just note here that my initial post is not just a criticism of AA, it is also a criticism of the general concept of addiction. I propose that anybody who appears addicted to something simply values that "something" more than they value whatever that "something" takes away from them. Essentially, I'm saying that there is no addiction, only choices, motives, values, decisions. When you label it "addiction" you reinforce the idea that you are not in control of yourself. This notion is false. You are in control of yourself, and when you convince yourself that you "can't control yourself" you are simply justifying your actions by blaming them on your "addiction."

The whole notion that it is "impossible" to overcome addiction on your own is nonsense. I know many heroin addicts. The one thing they all have in common is that they value heroin more than they value their own well-being. The only ones I have ever seen truly kick the habit are those who decide to value their own well being more than they value heroin. Once you have committed yourself to that decision, the substance is no longer a temptation that you must resist--you go from being a person who wants so badly to do heroin but restrains themself, to being a person who doesn't want to do heroin anymore.

It just seems odd to feel the need to criticize a method that has helped 100,000's if not millions of people find a way out of addiction and live good lives.  Every other way to do it has always existed.  Its just a way to do it that works well for many.  People who don't like the idea of a solution being not drinking at all (or not using drugs at all) probably are those who have problems with drinking or drugs , but want to find a way to do it still and control it.  That's been around too!  And it really does not work out too well for most.  If that has worked for you.. well great, but you have to admit that's really not the answer for everyone or else these 12 step programs would have never become so big.  The programs also address the healing and care for spirit.. its not just about avoiding something.

What's so terrible about identifying as an addict? I haven't had a drink in four years, or a smoke in three. Do you think I've replaced those habits with other compulsive behaviors? You would laugh if I told you how many times I checked to see if anyone clicked on the affiliate links in my signature today. That signature has earned me 70 cents a month, and yet I persist. Buy some silver via my signature, you drunks!

Also, you enjoy smoking more than life itself? Have you tried cocaine?

Doesn't the book Alcoholics Anonymous actually use the words, "alcohol was but a symptom"? Seems to me that criticism applies to… well, I don't know who but not AA.

As far as the negative self-image associated with calling one's self an addict or alcoholic, I think that's a non-issue. It's basically admitting that they are shitty at drinking. Almost every one of them has spent decades trying to become good at drinking and getting worse at it. At some point one just has to say, "OK, I'm shitty at drinking and I almost certainly always will be shitty at drinking. It's fucking up my life and maybe it's time to admit that I'm shitty at drinking and try to get better at living." In that context, can't you see how maybe having a label that creates the possibility that "maybe someday I'll be better at drinking" would make things worse?

And actually, while society at large may look down at addicts and alcoholics, I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks it would be better to be "not an alcoholic" whose drinking is getting in the way of their job and life than being an alcoholic who doesn't drink anymore.

Finally, get me some statistics on the number of people killed by drivers who were impaired by their use of coffee and/or cigarettes and I'll consider whether it's pathetic that someone might stay sober while chainsmoking and guzzling coffee.

Not entirely accurate but that is symptomatic of AA  because they identify their problem as alcohol.. a inanimate object.. their real problem is addiction.. a mental issue..themselves.  A genetic and/or chemically induced condition of obsession/compulsion.

It wouldn't make sense to count those people since such 12 step programs are for people who have tried everything else and have failed... that's who they are for.  People who don't ever get to that point of desperation..well, they never end up walking into a meeting.