six hundred fellowships modelled on the Twelve
At the zenith of the self-help-group movement in the B.S. mid-1990s, there were estimated to be over 600 wholly distinct Step-based fellowships in the U.S.A., all modelled, however heretically or flakily, on the ‘12 Steps’ of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Context
The scale of the Program's reach as a cultural fact: over six hundred distinct Step-based fellowships at the movement's zenith, all derived "however heretically or flakily" from AA's original Twelve. The single template proliferating into a whole national machinery of recovery, then contracting to a third by the novel's present.