Question by almintaka: How well do alcohol recovery programs actually work? Hi Everyone, Alcoholics Anonymous (“AA”, spiritual), Rational Recovery (“RR”, cognitive), SMART (cognitive), Save Ourselves (“SOS”, cognitive) and other alcohol recovery programs all claim varying levels of success in helping alcoholics on the road to recovery. However, there is a lot of controversy surrounding their claims, as even a quick search on the internet will reveal. Viewing this chaos of opinions from “outside the box”, it certainly seems as though they’re all blowing smoke. Anecdotal arguments are used, tabloid-style quotations are touted as being authentic, and “my way or the highway” rationalizing is often used. One thing they all have in common is that apparently none of them has a handle on real statistics (though I could be wrong here; I just haven’t found any). In addition, independent studies (NIAA, Dawson) have shown ...