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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Alcoholics Anonymous and Other 12-Step Programmes for Alcohol Dependence

About this resource:

Systematic Review

Source: The Cochrane Collaborative

Last Reviewed: March 2020

Workgroups: Substance Use Workgroup

In this Cochrane systematic review, researchers evaluated whether peer‐led Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and professionally‐delivered treatments that facilitate AA involvement, like 12‐Step Facilitation (TSF) interventions, achieve important outcomes like: 

  • Abstinence
  • Reduced drinking intensity
  • Reduced alcohol‐related consequences
  • Alcohol addiction severity
  • Health care cost offsets

Researchers found that:

  • Manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, like cognitive behavioral therapy, for increasing abstinence
  • Non‐manualized AA/TSF may perform as well as other established treatments
  • AA/TSF interventions, both manualized and non‐manualized, may be at least as effective as other treatments for other alcohol‐related outcomes
  • AA/TSF probably produces substantial health care cost savings among people with alcohol use disorder
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Objectives related to this resource (1)

Reduce the proportion of people who had alcohol use disorder in the past year — SU‑13
Little or no detectable change

Suggested Citation

1.

Kelly, J., Humphreys, K. & Ferri, M. (2020). Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12‐step programs for alcohol use disorder. Retrieved from https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2/full.