AA's ineffective fantasyland of a program in which Man creates his own God, rather than "May you find Him now" as Bill and Bob did.

The reason Bill W. and Dr. Bob wrote the Big Book in the first place was because they were experiencing a 78-93% success rate over the first 4 years of AA's existence. Compare 78-93% with the accepted 1-3% success rate of today's shadow of AA's former self, and one would have to ask ones self "What happened? Why is the success rate so much lower than it was in 1939?"

The success rate of today's watered-down, diluted version of the program which inspired Bill to write the book in the first place would never have inspired anyone to write a book about it at all. In fact, I suspect that alcoholics who quit drinking by white knuckling it are likely about the same 1-3% success rate as AA's ineffective fantasyland of a program in which Man creates his own God, rather than "May you find Him now" as Bill and Bob did.

That is to say that quitting on your own without a 12 Step program probably accomplishes about the same success rate as AA does today: 1-3%. Certainly nothing to write a book about, amen? The truth is that there are specific and identifiable reasons why AA's success rate of 78-93% took a nosedive to just 1-3%. In fact, 1-3% is practically no success rate at all and I'm certain that if in 1939 Bill and Bob were only experiencing a 1-3% success rate, they never would have bothered writing a book about it.