Prophecy by Michael X.

A.A. has been pressing its own grapes from the beginning.

A.A.'s program has often worked against people. The emphasis on personal powerlessness, moral deficiency, the limited alternatives of an alcoholic death or life on "spiritual terms", the requisite of hopelessness, and hitting a bottom have sometimes helped people to their demise. Some people just don't do so well with "paradox" and counter-intuition. Nope, this is not mere philosophical conjecture. There is much anecdotal and scientific evidence. One striking example is the work of George Vaillant. Vaillant followed 100 A.A. members for 8 years. He had set out to demonstrate A.A.'s effectiveness. His conclusions however were bleak. His A.A. subjects fared worse than the natural course of the "disease". Vaillant is one of the non-alcoholic trustees on the AA General Service Board. He continues to push AA in spite of his findings.

Now that there are a growing number of effective alternatives to A.A. it has become incumbent upon A.A. members to start offering alternatives to A.A. for people who do not want what A.A. has to offer. It's time to put the needs of the sufferer first, and the needs of the twelfth-stepping AA member last. But don't take it from me. Look what Bill Wilson said about this in 1958:

"Your President and other pioneers in and outside your Society have been achieving notable results for a long time, many of their patients having made good recoveries without any A.A. at all. It should here be noted that some of the recovery methods employed outside A.A. are quite in contradiction to AA principles and practice. Nevertheless, we of AA ought to applaud the fact that certain of these efforts are meeting with increasing success."
- Bill Wilson, Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Address to the New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism, April 28, 1958.