But how do you get accurate figures on the success rate?  AA's General Office does not keep such records, nor does anyone else that I know of.  (I've been a member for over 5 years.)  Doing a simple head count at meetings is a poor indicator.  How do you know a person may not attend one particular meeting; he/she may attend different meetings at different groups.  (A more accurate count would be the number of "desire chips" handed out at each meeting vs. the number of "sucess stories", as indicated at "birthday night", where each person receives a chip based on the number of years of sobriety they have.  To do this, one would have to attend birthday nights for a year, to measure the number of people with "succcess" stories.)