You sound like you had a bad experience with AA or something similar (NA, OA, etc.?)

Full disclosure: I am 19 1/2 years sober in AA, a thorough-going atheist, and 15 years a non-smoker --- after 29 years of 2+ packs a day. I simply can't understand where you get the "facts" you list. The recovery rate is very hard to even estimate, since (a) there is little objective data outside of what individuals volunteer (b) if you count relapses and subsequent sobriety (I know quite a few who didn't get it the first or more times around, but seem to have succeed after more than one attempt) the numbers --such as they are --- are much worse, (c) staying sober is an ongoing process --- "in recovery" or "recovering" is more accurate, and more helpful, than "recovered" so how do you count success? I could start drinking tomorrow and I would become a failure, immediately erasing 19+ years of success. Actually, some studies show that if you manage to stay sober for a year, your chances of long-term sobriety are greatly increased. I do know a couple of people who "went out" after as much as 15 years, but they are vastly outnumbered by folks with 15, 20 or 25 years and more.

That said, your other conclusions are, in my experience, utter nonsense. When I first went to meetings (after being ethanol-free for all of 2 weeks) many allowed smoking. Now none do (at least around Boston)...and no one I know who has really stopped drinking has become a heavy smoker, and that involves dozens, if not more than a hundred people. Nor is any meeting (and I have been to more than 2000) filled with obese, or even notably overweight people. So I cannot understand where you are coming from.

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inally, I have to agree with Heather and some other commentators that endless recital of "drunkalogs" or war-stories is tiresome and wears poorly at times, especially if you have heard hundreds of such. There is a tendency to hype such tales, almost in a contest to see who had it the worst...as in many recent life-in-the-gutter memoirs, for which there seems an insatiable market, and which is not immune to exaggeration or even outright fabrication. If it helps the speaker, it seems harmless enough. For newbies it helps to realize that however bad their own recent experience, somebody else has probably had the same, so they are not as unique or alone as they often feel. This enables them to feel part of a community, something that some have never felt anywhere else or at least for a long time.

Of course it doesn't work for everyone. But as our current dry-drunk president shows, just giving up the sauce and "finding God" without some hard work to change bad habits, especially of thinking, is not enough. Revelation is fine if you can get it, but the rest of us must just slog along, one day at a time.

Since I haven't read Wood, this may be unfair, but his disparagement of John LeCarre, who to my taste is one of the the 20th century's masters of the novel (his "genre" novels are so much more than that compared to,say, Daniel Silva or Ken Follett) is somewhat insulting. As a musician I am not insensitive to rhythm, tone, and nuance in prose, and one who cannot hear these things in "Soldier, Sailor" or some of the short vignettes of "The Secret Pilgrim" (especially the story --- yes a plot! --- of Hansen and the Khmer Rouge) would seem to be somewhat tone-deaf.

So I surmise that Mr. Wood has also left out of his pantheon another "genre" novelist who seems to be one of LeCarre's inspirations, Joseph Conrad. ("The Perfect Spy" of LeCarre actually compares well to the best of Conrad, IMHO --- but is so convincingly depressing that I find it difficult to reread.) Consider...and this from a writer for whom English was not his tongue

"I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism (sic), without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, than life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say... ”

"Genre" novelist indeed!

that is "native tongue"