Do the 12-step programs really work?

It seems like were all looking for that "perfect" program, a program free of inherent flaws. Well, guess what, you ain’t gonna find it!! It does NOT exist. It’s so easy to throw stones and bitch about this program or that program, but the fact remains, many people have got and stayed clean using xA.

I agree, NA is not for everybody and I don’t particularly like it when they claim that their way is the only way. There’s a bunch of other crap about NA that I don’t like either, but when I look around the rooms and see other opiate addicts who have managed to stay clean for year after year and I ask those people how they did it and they all say NA, it gives me hope. Now, to be fair, there are other opiate addicts in the rooms who’ve been there multiple years and they’ve got 3 weeks clean or 2 months clean. Hell, I’ve been going to NA for 6 months and I’ve got 6 days clean. Do I simply need to man up?? If I look in the mirror and take responsibilty for my actions, then I’ll be clean forever?? Sounds pretty awesome to me, but it also sounds like shit I’ve been doing for 6 months??

So again, there is NO perfect program, but many have found success in NA so we can’t knock it too hard, can we??

I think one of the reasons that xA is so popular is due to the lack of other "programs" or support systems (I can’t seem to find the right word here). If there was a program out there that had a 50% success rate, NA would be out of business tomorrow, but there is no such program available, at least not to the best of my knowledge.
Thanks for posting this topic T, there’s great feedback and obviously different points of view, which is cool, it’s educational. It gets people thinking and talking about a subject with no clear answer and maybe we can all learn a little bit, I know I have.