>Listening to the various addicts "war stories" you could see many in the
>room absolutely jonesing. How could that be helpful?
This is by no means a large sample but I know people who have been through AA and NA who were helped by it, especially by the war stories. I think what happens is that for some people it becomes a form of talking cure.
From people I know it helped them stay clean through the tough beginning stages and then helped them build a network to stay clean afterward. Most of them stopped going to meetings a long time ago, but some still talk to people they met in the program, even to the point of having get-togethers that are a bit like meetings, sans the higher power stuff.
That said, the potential for cultdom in the set-up is hard to ignore. But I think it also depends on what meetings you can get to. People I'm talking about were in places where you can go to gay meetings, people with tattoos meetings (kidding, but you get the drift), etc.