Yep. AA is effectively a cult, and while itself is not a profit-making venture, is pretty tightly entwined with halfway housing and rehab programs, which are a massive racket in themselves (offering little actual treatment and costing a ton), but which also have become a significant cog in the prison industrial complex machine.
A typical cycle looks like: person from lower class, dysfunctional family potentially already with drug issues, lack of educational opportunities or decent jobs leads to drug dealing, drug abuse develops concurrently, eventually leads to jail, which leads to rehab and/or halfway housing, which does not help the disease nor the person's socioeconomic situation, which leads to more drug abuse and crime, leading to more jail or prison now, and so on it repeats...
That's interesting. Most of the AA people I know are middle class, and perhaps that leads to substantially different outcomes.
For them, they view the alcohol itself as their biggest problem, but are otherwise safe. They've often severely messed up their support systems but aren't completely devoid of friends and family.
They portray AA as the absolute last ditch: if you have any other way to quit, do that. You go to AA when you're desperate and nothing else works.
That would leave you incredibly vulnerable and prone to predation, especially if you're poor. For the people I know, it makes them emotionally precarious but have at least some resources for getting the rest of their lives back together. It would be incredibly easy to take advantage of them, and I'm sure in some places it happens. (AA varies a lot from meeting to meeting.)
Still, this is a much more fortunate set of people than the ones you're talking about. I hope they find something. I know people for whom it has worked when nothing else did, but it's no guarantee.
What it does offer is a social support group for people who choose to be sober, and it does serve that role, and for that I can't fault it, and the core members are more fortunate, as you say, and use it as such. In particular this is effective because alcoholics/junkies tend to have a terrible friend group (all other substance abusers), and this gets better influences in their life.
But there is a huge rotating pool of mostly young people that are obliged to go, do not stay long, and often go back to their old ways. Overall, the program efficacy is in the single digits. I was such a person that went through multiple rehab cycles and periods of going to meetings, but ultimately I stayed sober of my own accord for quite some time, and these days I imbibe an occasional casual beer or toke, with no habit to speak of, but back in the day I used more than just about anyone I knew, to extremely unpleasant consequences.
Just goes to show their core tenet of 'once an alkie, always an alkie' isn't exactly true, and this is corroborated by a lot of other people. Furthermore, the 'once you've had one beer you can't stop' mantra is particularly damaging because some people entering the program internalize this belief, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy anytime they relapse in the future.
Forcing somebody to AA is the worst way. You go to AA when you're desperate enough to do crap like "surrendering to a higher power". The thought is incredibly repugnant to me, and it's no wonder they don't stay. If they're not desperate enough to volunteer, the program isn't aimed at them.
It's so much better to find the motivation to quit on your own. And congratulations. The people who do that often find that they can partake casually. AA people often know that they could, if they chose to, but they make a point of not choosing it.
If nothing else, they've gamified it with the chips, and we all know how motivating that can be. And as with the gamification, it has downsides.
A typical cycle looks like: person from lower class, dysfunctional family potentially already with drug issues, lack of educational opportunities or decent jobs leads to drug dealing, drug abuse develops concurrently, eventually leads to jail, which leads to rehab and/or halfway housing, which does not help the disease nor the person's socioeconomic situation, which leads to more drug abuse and crime, leading to more jail or prison now, and so on it repeats...