Effectiveness of MAAEZ (Making Alcholics Anonymous Easier)

Making Alcoholics Anonymous Easier (MAAEZ) is a manual-guided, group-oriented 12-step facilitation intervention that aims to increase AA involvement and abstinence. MAAEZ addresses aspects of AA that may alienate some people, such as spirituality. The primary goal of MAAEZ is to introduce treatment patients to AA culture and prepare them for what it's like to be part of the 12-step community. MAAEZ is one of the first group format manuals for 12-step facilitation that has been tested and made available for treatment programs.

In a quasi-randomized trial, participants were segregated by program type (long- and short-term residential and outpatient) and randomized to either participate in MAAEZ sessions (“On” condition) or not (“Off” condition). We interviewed participants at six and twelve months after treatment completion, and assessed abstinence rates at each follow-up and over time.

In the long term residential arm, we found that those in the “On” condition had significantly higher odds of abstinence at six months compared to those in the “Off” condition. Likewise, those in the “On” condition of the short term residential arm had higher odds of abstinence over time than those in the “Off” condition.

In this presentation, we will discuss the various components of MAAEZ, as well as the findings of our study. We will focus on explaining the goals and implementation of MAAEZ, the effects we found in our quasi-randomized trial, and the implications of our findings.