AA, NA Help Teens Fight Addiction

A U.S study that examined how helpful Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous may be for adolescents, found long-term benefits, researchers say.

It is difficult to evaluate the efficacy of mutual-help organizations like AA through randomized controlled experiments because the AA ‘intervention,’ being a community organization based on anonymity, cannot be directly under the control of the researcher in the usual way, the study’s corresponding author, John F. Kelly of the Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine and Harvard Medical School, said in a statement. Yet their popularity and cost-effectiveness cannot be denied.

The researchers recruited 160 adolescent inpatients — 96 males, 64 females — with an average age of 16 years, enrolled at two treatment centers with a focus on abstinence and based on a 12-step model. They were tracked over eight years.

We found that most of the youth attended at least some AA/NA meetings post treatment, Kelly said. Those patients with severe addiction problems and those who believed they could not use alcohol/drugs in moderation attended the most. The NA and AA focus on abstinence/recovery probably resonates better with these more severely dependent individuals who also typically need ongoing support.

The findings are published online ahead of print of the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.