1/17/14 A.A.: What' s Not Good www.ora nge-papers.or g/orange-not_good.html 1/46 What's Not Good About A.A. by A. Orange I just can't resist: This is a searching and fearless moral inventory of Alcoholics Anonymous. 1. It doesn't work. We can do better than this. This is the year 2013, and we can come up with a better answer to alcoholism than "It's hopeless, so abandon yourself to God," and practice an old cult religion from the nineteen-thirties. Not only does the A.A. 12-Step "treatment" not work, but it kills as many people as it appears to save. That is a very strong damnation, but the numbers back it up. There are always lotsof A.A. defenders who will swear that A.A. saved their lives, and lotsof A.A. boosters who claim that A.A. is keeping millions of alcoholics sober, but all objective, fair tests of A.A. that have ever been done show no better success rate than no treatment at all. The only possible mathematical explanation is that A.A. kills one patient for each one that it appears to save, thus making the effective success rate balance out at zero. And that is, in fact, actually believable, given just how bad the so- called "treatment program" really is, and how high the A.A. failure rateand the A.A. death ratereally are. Read on. Bill Wilson actually bragged about that problem at the memorial service for Dr. Bob. Bill described the early days of A.A. this way: You have no conception these days of how much failure we had. You had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait. Bill Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 195 2; file av ailabl e here. If you have to cull hundreds of drunks to get a few success stories, then that sounds like a one or two percent success rate. But wait! That is only the gullible victims who "take the bait", as Bill Wilson called it, just the ones who believe Bill Wilson's religious ravings and join Alcoholics Anonymous. How many ofthose joiners actually stay soberfor any appreciable length of time, like several years? Even less, for sure. At first nearly every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if
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I just can't resist: This is a searching and fearless moral inventory of Alcoholics
Anonymous.
1. It doesn't work.We can do better than this. This is the year 2013, and we can come up with a
better answer to alcoholism than "It's hopeless, so abandon yourself to God,"
and practice an old cult religion from the nineteen-thirties. Not only does the
A.A. 12-Step "treatment" not work, but it kills as many people as it appears to
save. That is a very strong damnation, but the numbers back it up. There are
always lots of A.A. defenders who will swear that A.A. saved their lives, andlots of A.A. boosters who claim that A.A. is keeping millions of alcoholics
sober, but all objective, fair tests of A.A. that have ever been done show no
better success rate than no treatment at all .
The only possible mathematical explanation is that A.A. kills one patient for
each one that it appears to save, thus making the effective success rate balance
out at zero. And that is, in fact, actually believable, given just how bad the so-
called "treatment program" really is, and how high the A.A. failure rate and the
A.A. death rate really are. Read on.
Bill Wilson actually bragged about that problem at the memorial service for Dr.
Bob. Bill described the early days of A.A. this way:
You have no conception these days of how much failure wehad. You had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get ahandful to take the bait.Bill Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952; file available here.
If you have to cull hundreds of drunks to get a few success stories, then that
sounds like a one or two percent success rate. But wait! That is only the gullible
victims who "take the bait", as Bill Wilson called it, just the ones who believe
Bill Wilson's religious ravings and join Alcoholics Anonymous. How many of
those joiners actually stay sober for any appreciable length of time, like several
years? Even less, for sure.
At first nearly every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if
indeed he sobered up at all. Others would stay dry six monthsor maybe a year and then take a skid. This was always agenuine catastrophe. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, (1957), page 97.
The old-timers in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous brag about
all of their friends that they have buried. They talk like they are the last survivor
of the Lost Patrol — which many of them really are. They don't seem to be ableto recognize the fact that if the 12-Step program actually worked, then they
wouldn't need to be burying all of their friends.
2. It's a Big Lie.A.A. repeats the same lies over and over, using the same propaganda technique
as Adolf Hitler with his Big Lie about the evil nature of the Jews.
The single most important issue about Alcoholics Anonymous is the question of
how well it works to save people from alcoholism, and A.A. habitually,
routinely, lies about its success rate, and always has.
A.A. tells everyone who will listen that it has the only treatment program for
alcoholism — that it is the only "time-tested", "proven", method of recovery —
but their Twelve-Step program does not work . Rather than even concede that
the program might have some problems, the A.A. true believers just shove the
program on every victim they can find, using therapists, counselors, judges, andparole officers as their enforcers, while simultaneously avoiding any and all
scientific testing of the effectiveness of the Twelve-Step program. When some
testing does occur, like in Project MATCH, and gives results that they don't
like, they just deny and ignore the results of the test.
A.A. shills and hidden propagandists routinely plant untrue articles and stories
in the press and media to sell their Big Lie, articles which push strange ideas
like:
"AA and the sobering strength of myth", which actually sells the idea that
if you fool alcoholics into thinking that the cult-religion "spiritual" A.A.
program will work for them, then it will work for them.
(Which implies that if someone breaks the spell by telling the truth, he will
kill a bunch of gullible alcoholics.)
A "placebo effect" will heal alcoholics: Professor George Vaillant likes to
4. It features bad psychology and bad medicine.A.A. gives newcomers a lot of bad advice and misinformation about alcoholism
and recovery. A.A.'s dogma is based on myths and superstitions about how the
human mind and body works, not facts. For example, the Big Book says,
"Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful." No, it isn't. Ethyl alcohol is a
clear liquid, a hydrocarbon solvent, and it has no brain. It cannot think at all,
never mind be cunning, baffling, and powerful.
Another example: "He took his will back." The goofy dogma of A.A. has us
surrendering our wills to God, and then taking them back, then surrendering
them, then taking them back, in an endless tug-of-war, as if they were coins or
tokens that could be grabbed and yanked back and forth at will. Our will is part
of our mind, and we can't just give it away. And we sure can't "take our will
back" if we have no will to do so.
Another really bad example: in the bizarre theology of A.A., God is supposed toremove "the drinking problem" and the cravings for alcohol. When God doesn't,
the A.A. members will often relapse, and feel like they didn't do anything at all.
They will even describe the relapse with a strange detachment, as if it happened
to somebody else; the relapse just happened because the unexpected cravings
just came along...
Another really bad fallacy is Bill Wilson's declaration that alcoholics cannot
recover from alcoholism until they "hit bottom". Bill Wilson found that
ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in hisbrain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying
people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives
would swallow Wilson's delusions. So Wilson made up a story about how
alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and
"the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of
misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows
something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.
And maybe the worst example is, "Alcoholism is a progressive disease that is
caused by spiritual deficiencies, defects of character, moral shortcomings, and
sin." If alcoholism is really caused by immorality, then it isn't a disease at all.
It's a behavior problem.
Giving people misinformation doesn't help them stay sober. Teaching people
that they are powerless over alcohol, and cannot resist temptation and cravings,
is very damaging, and almost guarantees relapses and binges. Teaching people
to expect God to take away their desire to drink is self-defeating and also
guarantees plenty of failures.
Any competent doctor will tell you that a one-size-fits-all medical treatment
program is a good way to kill a lot of patients. And voodoo medicine
administered by amateur witch doctors is even worse.
5. The cult-like atmosphere drives away moderate help
seekers.More than 90% of all of the people who walk in the door looking for help turn
right around and walk right back out the door when they discover just how bad
the religion is, and what kind of fanatics they are dealing with. This
phenomenon is so well known that it is called the "revolving door effect." Somepeople are so appalled by the bombastic, grandiose religiosity that they decide
they would rather risk drinking themselves to death than take the A.A. cure.
6. It is harmful to converts.No good comes of getting people to believe in a bunch of falsehoods, and do a
bunch of ridiculous busywork that just wastes their time and energy.
Twelve-Step "treatment" is psychologically harmful — especially the self-
criticism, and wallowing in shame and guilt — to the point of driving
some believers to suicide.
The strange theology dooms people to relapses, because God doesn't fix
all of the members' problems.
Teaching people that they are powerless over alcohol is self-defeating, and
guarantees big problems. A sophisticated controlled study revealed thatpeople who were sent to A.A. and taught to believe that they were
powerless over alcohol did five times as much uncontrolled binge drinking
as other alcoholics who received no such "education" in powerlessness.
And the A.A. group did nine times as much binge drinking as another
group of alcoholics who got Rational Behavioral Therapy, where they
were taught that they were powerful and could control their drinking.
A.A. raises the death rate in alcoholics. Prof. and Dr. George E. Vaillant,
who loves A.A. so much that he became a member of the Board of
Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., tried for 8 years
to make A.A. look good in clinical tests, but in the end was forced to
admit that A.A. had not helped the alcoholics at all — it was completely
ineffective — and it had an "appalling" death rate, a death rate that was
higher than any other treatment program that Dr. Vaillant examined.
Teaching people to expect a "spiritual experience" makes them feel like
failures when it doesn't happen, or it drives them to become delusional,
proclaiming that every little sentimental experience, or every intense
emotion, is a spiritual experience.
People get tired, they get run down, their energy and enthusiasm gets
depleted, they can become depressed, after they fail many times because
God still hasn't taken away all of their defects of character, moral
shortcomings, or "the drinking problem." Some people will just give up,and resign themselves to drinking forever or relapsing forever.
Telling newcomers to quit taking their doctor-prescribed medications, and
just rely on the Twelve Steps for healing, is killing people.
7. A.A. is harmful to drop-outs.
Even those who refuse religious conversion and leave A.A. are often harmed bythe A.A. dogma. The most obvious example of that is convincing people that
one drink will make them spin out of control, and they will go on a huge
drinking binge, because they are "powerless over alcohol." When people decide
that they would rather drink than be religious maniacs, they all too often then
proceed to fulfill the A.A. prediction. After one or two drinks, they think, "Oh
well, I've already blown it. I've lost all of my clean and sober time now. One
drink, one drunk. Might as well go ahead and really enjoy it now, since I don't
have anything left to lose..."
The few studies that have tracked various treatment programs' drop-outs and
failures have found that A.A. "treatment" was worse than no treatment at
all for those people. The A.A. drop-outs had worse relapses and binges than the
people who never got any A.A. indoctrination, "education", or "treatment".
8. A.A. encourages people to be illogical, superstitious, and
irrational.This irrational example is a doctor, explaining in The Big Book how it is some
kind of a miracle that wounds heal after he stitches them closed:
For myself, I have an absolute proof of the existence of God. ...
What healed those tissues, those tissues that I closed, whathealed them? I didn't. This to me is the proof of the existence ofa Somethingness greater than I am. I couldn't practicemedicine without the Great Physician. All I do in a very simpleway, is to help Him cure my patients.The Big Book , story "Physician, Heal Thyself!", 3rd Edition pages
350-351, 4th Edition pages 306-307.
Apparently, this poor doctor (not Doctor Bob, but some other doctor,) drank so
much alcohol, and damaged his poor brain so much, that he was no longer ableto comprehend how the body could heal itself, how it scabs over and heals up
wounds all by itself, quite routinely. This doctor actually thought that God had
to get into every single wound on every living creature on the face of the Earth
and make it heal? That kind of bizarre delusional thinking is sadly indicative of
a major mental disorder. What did Bill Wilson do, go collect all of the
mentally-ill, delusional, alcoholics that he could get?
(Hint: the answer is "YES.")
Milton A. Maxwell, Ph.D. (who later became a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services) did a study of A.A.
members where he heard very similar testimony:
My first impression of the spiritual part of the program wasthat it was complete nonsense. At first, I didn't turn my will andlife over to the care of God. I just used the "24 hours at a time"[approach to not drinking]. After a while, I started realizing that"something" was keeping me sober. After about 6 months in the
program, I came to realize that it is not "me" that keeps myheart beating, not "me" that keeps my brain functioning. Therehas to be some other power than "I" to keep my body alive.The Alcoholics Anonymous Experience: A Close-Up View For Professionals, Milton A.Maxwell, Ph.D., page 82.
1. First off, the speaker was assuming a lot when he imagined that some God
or "Higher Power" was keeping his brain functioning. His brain appears to
have gone on vacation.
2. The speaker was obviously incapable of understanding that our nervous
systems are divided into voluntary and involuntary systems, and that the
base brain manages the involuntary functions like heartbeat, breathing, and
blood pressure without any conscious effort on our part. We don't need
any Higher Power poking his fingers into our chests to keep us alive any
more than do the frogs, dogs, rats, or cats.
3. For that A.A. member to assume that his ignorance of the workings of the
human body proves the existence of a Higher Power is just as stupid asassuming that his ignorance of how thunder and lightning happen proves
the existence of the Thunder God Thor.
4. If some Higher Power were really making us live by micro-managing our
breathing and heartbeats, then that introduces a very nasty question: "Why
doesn't that same Higher Power bother to take good care of all of the
starving children in Biafra, Bengladesh, and Ethiopia while He is so
worried about the alcoholics' heartbeats? How can Higher Power be so
uncaring about all of those children's stomachs?" (Turning their wills and
their lives over His care didn't do them much good, did it?)5. Notice how the speaker was slowly converted to the standard A.A.
religious beliefs by prolonged exposure to the A.A. "program". In the
beginning, he thought that the A.A. "spirituality" was complete nonsense.
Nevertheless, after six months in A.A., he started yammering illogical
platitudes about some "Higher Power" keeping his heart beating and
making his brain function. What this story really teaches us is that A.A.
indoctrination is hard for newcomers to resist.
And the Northern Illinois Area A.A. newletter gave us this jewel of brain-damaged logic:
Trying to be scientific about to [sic.] alcoholism is like trying tonail Jell-O to a wall. But that's OK. A.A. isn't trying to bescientific. ...... those who are able to remain sober are the members whoare able to behave as though they believed. [Boldface in the
original.]Northern Illinois Area Ltd., Area 20 Service Letter, Volume XXIV, No. 1, Spring, 2000,Page 10.
It never ceases to amaze me how they can so blind themselves to the obvious
contradiction between Bill Wilson's Big Book statement that A.A. requires
"grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty"
( Big Book , William G. Wilson, page 58), and the constantly-parroted instructions to "Act
As If", and "Fake It Until You Make It", and "Behave as though you believe."
encourages people to be stupid.Just the vicious condescending slogans alone tell you all you need to know:
Quit your stinkin' thinkin'.
Your best thinking got you here.
Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.
Keep It Simple, Stupid!Sit down, shut up, and learn something.
People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you
care.
Nobody is too stupid to get the program, but some people are too
intelligent.
He is suffering from terminal uniqueness.
Utilize, Don't Analyze!
Bill Wilson just oozed condescension and superiority when he criticized those
people who chose to think for themselves:
To the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman many A.A.'scan say, "Yes, we were like you — far too smart for our owngood. ... Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of thefolks on brain power alone." As Bill Sees It , quotes from William G. Wilson, published by A.A.W.S., page 60.
And of course the A.A. members love to congratulate themselves and imply thatalcoholism and A.A. is much better than a college education.
Here was a book that said that I could do something that allthese doctors and priests and ministers and psychiatrists thatI'd been going to for years couldn't do!The Big Book , 3rd Edition , story "Promoted To Chronic", page 473.
Here is a doctor describing going to his first A.A. meeting to fix his alcoholism,
and finding that the local butcher, baker, and carpenter were members:
"Here I am, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, aFellow of the International College of Surgeons, a diplomate ofone of the great specialty boards in these United States, amember of the American Psychiatric Society, and I have to goto the butcher, the baker, and the carpenter to help make aman out of me!"The A.A. Big Book , page 348.
increasing the failure rate by their refusal to look at the causes of drinking.
(Well, they think that they already know the real causes of alcoholism:
Bill Wilson said that it's really "sin and moral shortcomings and
selfishness and self-will and self-reliance and nagging wives driving a man
into a fit of anger...")
But this has to be the crown jewel: After yet another relapse, one A.A. memberwho was a chronic relapser declared:
When I came into A.A. the first time, I just had no feeling for thespiritual and paid no attention to it. But this last time in, I notonly recognized that there is something which distinguishes mefrom a tree but that it is something special that I have to lookafter, and pay attention to, as I am learning to care for myself.The Alcoholics Anonymous Experience: A Close-Up View For Professionals, Milton A.
Maxwell, Ph.D., page 86.
What?! You mean I'm not a tree?!
Right. The dead give-away is the color of your leaves. The tree's are
green, and yours are pink.
10. A.A. plays Blame-The-Victim with alcoholics.
You don't get more than five minutes into any Alcoholics Anonymous meetingbefore someone is reading a canned statement, the beginning paragraphs of
Chapter Five of the Big Book , that says that anyone for whom the A.A. program
doesn't work is "constitutionally incapable of being honest."
RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughlyfollowed our path. Those who do not recover are people whocannot or will not completely give themselves to this simpleprogram, usually men and women who are constitutionally
incapable of being honest with themselves. There are suchunfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have beenborn that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping anddeveloping a manner of living which demands rigoroushonesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those,too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, butmany of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest....At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find a
softer, easier way. But we could not. With all the earnestness atour command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough fromthe very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideasand the result was nil until we let go absolutely." Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter Five, "How It Works", page 58.
A.A. always plays blame-the-victim when the program fails to sober somebody
up or keep somebody sober: They are not at fault; they seem to have been bornthat way."
(That is a good example of Bill Wilson's double-talk: When he says that it isn't
their fault, he is really saying that it IS their fault because they were "born that
way" — born dishonest. The failure was certainly not the fault of Bill Wilson's
wonderful "spiritual program" that never fails.)
A.A. recruiters, promoters and proselytizers (like the counselors and therapists
who work in treatment centers) never, not for a minute, honestly consider the
possibility that maybe A.A. and the Twelve Steps aren't right for many people— never mind the fact that A.A. is wrong for most people, or that the A.A. 12-
Step program doesn't really work at all.
Notice the two veiled statements in the last paragraph of that quote, where Bill
Wilson underhandedly implied that the Twelve Steps actually do work: "The
members couldn't find any easier, softer, way, but the A.A. steps worked...",
and "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil
until we let go absolutely."
Both of those statements are lies. That is the Big Lie propaganda technique,used once again. The 12 Steps didn't work. They have never worked. The
"results" were always "nil".
Even as Bill Wilson was writing those words, his fledgeling New York
Alcoholics Anonymous group was experiencing a terrible relapse rate. Very few
of Bill Wilson's followers actually maintained sobriety. Bill and Dr. Bob
themselves actually calculated their success rate to be a mere five percent, but
that is not what Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book . He lied and said that 75%
recovered. (75% of those who "really tried". That is the propaganda trick of
Lying With Qualifiers.
Notice that A.A. is a "heads I win, tails you lose" kind of con game:
If you quit drinking and stay quit, then "the A.A. program" gets all of the
credit.
But if you relapse and die drunk, then you get all of the blame.
Of Alcoholics, contributes to alcoholism. And the fix is: Join ACOA, do the
Twelve Steps, read the Book, go to lots of meetings, confess everything, etc...
And make amends by apologizing for being angry about getting beaten or
molested. And for other family members, the answer is to join Al-Anon or
Alateen, and do the Twelve Steps, go to lots of meetings, confess everything,
etc...
13. It is a headstrong organization that does whatever it can
to block research and progress in the treatment of
alcoholism.A.A. refuses to allow any research into other treatments for alcoholism, some of
which might actually work, just for a change.
AA has taken pains to ensure that it's the only game in town.AA members have set up "educational" and "medical" frontgroups to promote AA and its ideology (especially the 12 stepsand the disease concept of alcoholism). In addition topromoting AA and its concepts, the hidden AA members (in"professional" guise) in these front groups have repeatedly andviciously attacked critics of AA and researchers who'vepublished findings contrary to AA dogma. They have alsoattempted to suppress alternative alcoholism treatment
approaches — and to a great extent they've succeeded.== From Chas. Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure, Preface to Second Edition
Again: We can do better than this. This is the year 2013, and we can come up
with a better answer to alcoholism and drug addiction than "abandon yourself to
God." (Or to "Higher Power", or whatever it is...)
14. A.A. illegally and immorally coerces people into joiningthe A.A. religion.The organization has a vast network of "counselors", "therapists", and other
treatment professionals who routinely send all patients to A.A. as a standard
part of the treatment program. A.A. also uses judges and parole officers to
coerce people into A.A..
The Little Red Book of Hazelden specifically teaches recruiters to indoctrinate
judges, police, doctors, clergy, and other officials as part of the proselytizing
work, prompting them to force people to go to A.A. meetings. It says that
faithful A.A. members can "carry the message" by:
11. By telling the A.A. story to clergy members, doctors, judges,educators, employers, or police officials if we know them wellenough to further the A.A. cause, or to help out a fellowmember.The Little Red Book , Hazelden, page 128.
And Hazelden is merely echoing Bill Wilson's instructions. In a 1939 letter
from Bill to Earl T., a founding member of the Chicago A.A. group, Bill wrote:
By educating doctors, hospitals, ministers along this line, youwill surely pick up some strong prospects after a bit.PASS IT ON, The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world ,Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., pages 225-226.
It is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional to force people to go to a religious
ceremony, like a church service. More than a dozen state and federal judges
have ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion, or engages in religious
activities, but the system still sends treatment patients and criminal offenders to
A.A., or to A.A.-based "treatment".
Every American court that has ruled on the issue of compulsory A.A.
attendance has ruled that A.A. is a religion, or engages in "religious activities,
as defined in constitutional law," including the Federal District Court forSouthern New York, the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York
and Tennessee state Supreme Courts, and the Federal 7th Circuit Court in
Wisconsin.
Today, because of the judges' rulings, the coercion is often performed by
deception: People are told that they must go to a certain number of recovery
group meetings per week, or else, and they are handed a list of acceptable
meetings, a list which contains only A.A. and N.A. 12-Step groups. What they
are not told is that they can also choose to go to Rational Recovery, SMART,SOS, WFS, MFS, or any other secular recovery group meetings that they can
find. So, by default, almost everyone ends up at the twelve-step meetings,
unaware of the fact that they have a choice in the matter. The counselors are
taking full advantage of people's confusion and mental disorientation during the
early phases of detoxing and recovery. If asked about it, the counselors will
rationalize their actions by saying, "Well, those groups are what works. Twelve-
Step treatment is the proven successful program. It's how we all recovered." —
If a parrot says that it is an eagle, insists for years that it is an eagle,
screams to everyone who will listen that it is really an eagle, does
that make it an eagle? No. It's still just a crazy parrot.
If A.A. says that it is only a "spiritual fellowship", just a wonderful
spiritual quit-drinking self-help group, and not a cult religion, and
says it for years, for decades, does that make it so? No. It's still just a
crazy cult religion.
A.A. says that it is a program of attraction, not promotion — that's
Tradition Eleven. A.A. pretends to be just another self-help group that
doesn't want to get involved in "outside issues" or "public controversy"
— that's Tradition Ten.
But A.A. uses counselors, therapists, parole officers, judges and doctors to
coerce people into A.A., and A.A. uses hidden members and front groups
like ASAM and NCADD to promote A.A., 12-Step "treatment", and A.A.beliefs about alcoholism.
In addition, A.A. uses organizations like Hazelden as publishing fronts, to
print large amounts of stupid and dogmatic pro-A.A. propaganda, and if
someone criticizes the ridiculous P.R. that Hazelden cranks out, A.A. can
deny any responsibility for what Hazelden is doing or saying. In that way,
A.A. can have its cake and eat it too; it can benefit from the propaganda,
but it can't be criticized for it, no matter how dishonest, medically
inaccurate, blatantly stupid, religiously bigoted, dogmatic, or just plainwrong it is. Likewise, A.A. benefits from the actions of those hidden
members and front groups, but cannot be faulted for their actions either,
because supposedly, "No one speaks for A.A., and A.A. isn't responsible
for the actions of those people."
And lest you believe that the connection between Hazelden and AAWS is looseor tenuous, consider: Hazelden is the single largest buyer of AAWS books that
there is.2 Hazelden buys the books from AAWS and "gives" them to its resident
patients after it collects $15,000 from them for a 28-day stay there. Hazeldenalso redistributes AAWS books all over the country. So the true believers atHazelden have a lot of "pull" in dictating policy at AAWS. Likewise, AAWS hasa representative on the Board of Trustees of the Hazelden Foundat ion. Andabove al l, they are all fellow members of, and true believers in, Bill Wilson'sTwelve-Step version of Frank Buchman's weird cult religion. So they are all verymuch in bed together.
And AAWS does not tell Hazelden to quit printing that fanatical, stupid pro-A.A. propaganda that tells people to just dump their own religions and onlybelieve in Alcoholics Anonymous and the teachings of Bill Wilson to get theA.A. style of "spirituality"...
And then A.A. even advertises itself on television, trolling for more
members. And script writers who are hidden members of Alcoholics
Anonymous routinely plant plugs for the 12-Step cult in programs like ER,
The West Wing, and Hill Street Blues. They have no intentions of
following their declared "Twelve Traditions". Their behavior is
completely hypocritical.
On another issue, the national leadership of A.A., Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services, Inc. (AAWS), has been committing perjury and causing
grievous harm to foreign A.A. members for the "crime" of making cheap
copies of old, copyright-expired versions of the Big Book available to
poor people in foreign countries like Mexico, Germany, and Sweden. In
Mexico, their perjury got an innocent man — another A.A. member! —
sentenced to prison for a year. In Germany, they shut down a pro-A.A.
web site, and sued for enough of a fortune to destroy the A.A. member
who was carrying the message, as well as banning the member from ever
giving away another A.A. book to anyone. And now that German A.A.
member is facing paying a fine of 2.75 Million Euros or going to prison...
(The final verdict was supposed to be issued August 5, 2003, but the case
is still dragging on.)
AAWS did that just to protect its own profits. The A.A. headquarters
currently has $6,000,000 of cash reserves in the bank (as of their 2002
financial statement), but AAWS seems to want even more, and they are
willing to even put innocent people, including A.A. members, in prison to
get it. So much for their "rigorous honesty" and "unselfish, constructive
action."
In the newsgroup alt.recovery.from-12-Steps, Anthony of the U.K. said it
eloquently:
The issue I have isn't with alcoholics squabbling; I takethat as a given. The issue I have is with AlcoholicsAnonymous World Services presenting, in two differentcourts, false evidence. False evidence which in bothcases had very severe consequences for the individualsconcerned.
To clarify, in Germany, Alcoholics Anonymous claimedthat Bill Wilson was the *sole author* of_Alcoholics_Anonymous_, which clearly isn't true. In
Mexico, Alcoholics Anonymous claimed that one WayneParks was the sole author of _Alcoholics_Anonymous_[1], an individual who in all likelihood hadn't been bornwhen the book was written.
I realise that your concept of morals and ethics is verydifferent to mine. Suffice to say I believe that lying in court
under oath is one of the most serious offences one cancommit, since it is an attack on justice itself. There is areason why, in almost all courts in almost all countries,one is asked to swear an oath on a Holy Book, be it theBible or similar work of religious significance, to tell "thetruth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help meGod".
AA, at its highest organisational level, broke that vow.
That, in my view, puts AA as an organised body quitebeyond the pale....I believe that more and more recovering alcoholics ofgood character are walking away from AA in an organisedsense, no longer wishing to be part of such anorganisation. All people of conscience have to make suchdecisions, however painful they may seem. The lies, theobfuscation, the flexibility and dishonesty in matters of
law, morals and ethics fall way short of the ideals laiddown by our founders.
[1] http://www.aapubliccontroversy.com/mex/005.gif [Nowa dead link.] [Local copy of document here.]Anthony ([email protected]), 29 July 2001.
sponsors, they can collect a harem or circle of sponsees, and run the sponsees'
lives and get pretty much whatever they want. And some blood-sucking insects
really do that. Some sponsors have the reputation of getting every pretty young
woman who joins the group, and there is even a slang name for such behavior,
"thirteenth stepping" the girl. At the gay and lesbian meetings, the victims are of
the same sex, of course.
There are also financial predators who "sponsor" newcomers, and then "borrow"
money from them, and get them working for free or for very low wages, doing
anything from house-cleaning and mowing the lawn to doing free carpentry.
And there are sequential bigamists who marry lonely older women whom they
find at A.A. meetings, and then they empty the woman's bank account, and take
her life savings, and max out her credit cards, and take out a loan on her house,
and then disappear with the money, only to show up at another A.A. meeting in
another city with a new name, to do it all again.
And again, the A.A. rules provide no simple way to get rid of such predators,
because the only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
The group can ask a victimizer to leave after he has become intolerably harmful
to too many people, but he can just go to a different group. The anonymity of
A.A. helps to hide the criminals.
In addition, it can be very difficult, or even impossible for the group to know
what a sponsor is doing with a sponsee. The sponsor does not have to turn in
any progress reports, or report the status of the sponsee's recovery, or answer toanyone for anything. There is no system of accountability. If the sponsee does
not report to the group what the sponsor has done, then no one will ever know.
Even worse, now there are many A.A. groups where sexual exploitation of the
newcomer young women is the actual goal of the group. The old-timers in the
group approve of it and practice it. And the A.A. headquarters will not stop it.
Read about the story of the Midtown Group, and the Phoenix, AZ, Young
Peoples' A.A., and Clancy's Pacific Group
18. Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of brutal
victimization.A.A. wants people to hit bottom so that they will be easy to convert to the A.A.
religion. A.A. people often say that alcoholics aren't much good for anything
until they hit bottom, and can be made to surrender. Hard-ass sponsors will
even say to people who refuse religious conversion as a condition of quitting
drinking, "Maybe you should go back out and do some more research on the
subject."
Any doctor will tell you that waiting for someone to hit bottom maximizes the
damage to the liver, kidneys, and brain, and is the worst possible way to handle
alcoholism.
In addition, the people who show the best recovery rates are the people who
have not 'hit bottom' and lost everything. The people who still have something
left to lose are more motivated to recover, so that they don't lose it all. The
people who have really hit bottom and lost it all don't have anything left to
come back to — they have no house, possessions, career or marriage left to
save, or to return to. Many of them feel like their lives are over, and they are
less motivated to recover.
In the Big Book , Bill Wilson lectured recruiters about an alcoholic who didn't
want to join Bill's religion:
If he is not interested in your solution, if he expects you to actonly as a banker for his financial difficulties or a nurse for hissprees, you may have to drop him until he changes his mind.This he may do after he gets hurt some more.Big Book, page 95.
So Bill Wilson says that you should just "drop him" and send him out to get hurt some more.
Why doesn't Mr. William Wilson recommend a "middle road," where you don't
loan the alcoholic any money, and you don't let him take advantage of you, but
you don't just drop him because he isn't interested in your "spiritual solution"?
Could it be that Mr. Wilson has no use for anyone who will not surrender to
him, and join his religious cult, and believe what Bill says, and obey his orders?
Again, Wilson wrote that if you won't accept his statements on faith alone, thenyou need to be beaten into submission:
Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we foundourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, andunreasoning prejudice. Many of us have been so touchy thateven casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle withantagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Thoughsome of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting
aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soonbecame as open minded on spiritual matters as we tried to beon other questions. In this respect alcohol was a greatpersuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness.Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one elsewill be prejudiced for as long as some of us were.The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Pages 47 and 48.
Note that you are "prejudiced" if you disagree with Bill Wilson's preaching, and
you need to get "beaten into a state of reasonableness".
Wilson repeated that idea in his later book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
Why all this insistence that every A.A. member must hit bottomfirst? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practicethe A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing
A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudesand actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking candream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest andtolerant? ...Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A. ...Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded toconviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be.Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 24.
1. Yes. "Who would want to sincerely try a cult religion?"
2. Normal relatively sane people will not believe in William Wilson'sdelusions, or join his cult religion, or follow his orders.
3. Only truly desperate, dying people can be so easily victimized.
4. Only truly desperate, dying people will become so "open-minded to
conviction", an essential element of Frank Buchman's cult religion.
19. It isn't really anonymous or confidential.Anything you say can end up on the streets, or in a court of law. You can be
blackmailed with what you say. A.A. meetings are a gossip-monger's dream
come true. Some A.A. members have been horrified to find that their innermost
dirty little secrets became common knowledge all over town shortly after
confessing them in a meeting or to their sponsor... One of the stories in Rebecca
Fransway's book AA Horror Stories reports a vindictive sponsor, who, after
being fired by her sponsee, got her revenge by blabbing all of the sponsee's
Fifth Step confessions all over town. Remember that sponsors are not Catholic
misery, bad repute and hopelessness? The practical answer is thatsince these things have happened among us, they can happen withyou. Should you wish them above all else, and be willing to makeuse of our experience, we are sure they will come. The age ofmiracles is still with us. Our own recovery proves that! The Big Book ,
3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, A Vision For You, page 153.
I saw in these people a quality of peace and serenity that I knew Imust have for myself. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 310.
They had that certain something that seemed to glow, a peace and
a serenity combined with happiness. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 290.
This wasn't "religion" — this was freedom! The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page
228.
What is this power that A.A. possesses? This curative power? I don't
know what it is. I suppose the doctor might say, "This ispsychosomatic medicine." I suppose the psychiatrist might say,"This is benevolent interpersonal relations." I suppose others wouldsay, "This is group psychotherapy." To me it is God. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 352.
I know the biggest word for me in A.A. is "honesty." The Big Book , 3rd
Edition, page 482.
I owe everything to A.A. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 344.
I am grateful to A.A. for my sobriety... The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 383.
Why am I alive, free, a respected member of my community?
Because A.A. really works for me! The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 421.
I had been brought up to believe in God, but I know that until I found
this A.A. program, I had never found or known faith in the reality of
God, the reality of His power that is now with me in everything I do.The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 341.
In return for a bottle and a hangover, we have been given the Keys
to the Kingdom. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 312.
I feel that there is no situation too difficult, none too desperate, no
unhappiness too great to be overcome in this great fellowship —
Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 395.
I always believed in God, but could never put that belief
meaningfully into my life. Today, because of Alcoholics Anonymous,I now trust and rely on God, as I understand Him... Daily Reflections; A Book of Reflections by A.A. members for A.A. members, Alcoholics AnonymousWorld Services, Inc., 1990, January 1, page 9.
May I never lose the sense of wonder I experienced on that first
evening with A.A., the greatest event of my entire life. Daily Reflections; A Book of Reflections by A.A. members for A.A. members, Alcoholics AnonymousWorld Services, Inc., 1990, October 19, page 301.
"God in His wisdom has selected a group of men to be the
purveyors of His goodness. In selecting them through whom to bringabout this phenomenon He went not to the proud, the mighty, thefamous or the brilliant. He went to the humble, to the sick, to the
unfortunate — he went to the drunkard, the so-called weakling of theworld. Well might He have said to us: 'Into your weak and feeblehands I have entrusted a Power beyond estimate. To you has beengiven that which has been denied the most learned of your fellows.Not to scientists or statesmen, not to wives or mothers, not even tomy priests and ministers have I given this gift of healing otheralcoholics, which I entrust to you.'"Judge John T., speaking at the Fourth Anniversary of the founding of the Chicago AlcoholicsAnonymous Group, October 5, 1943.
"... there are times, oh so many times, when I wish I had been analcoholic. The reason is that I consider the AA people to be the most
charming in the world. ...
They have found a power greater than themselves which they
serve diligently. And that gives them a charm that never was
elsewhere on land and sea. It makes you know that God Himself is
really charming, because the AA people reflect His mercy and His
forgiveness.
... when they have found their restoration, their sense of humor
finds a blessed freedom, and they are able to reach a god-like
state..."
Where Did Everybody Go?, Paul Molloy, pages 187-189.
You would never guess, from reading all of those self-congratulatory stories,
that the A.A. 12-Step program actually fails at least 98 or 99 percent of the
21. It aids and abets unrealistic blind faith.Mulder, on The X-Files, has a poster that says "I Want To Believe." That should
be the motto of A.A.. Far too many people are in the position of just wanting to
believe that it works, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, including the
shrinking circle of friends and the mounting stack of dead bodies. Then they tellall of the newcomers "Keep coming back, it works!" (and attack anyone who
points to the stack of dead bodies and questions whether it really works). Thus,
A.A. also aids and abets a monomaniacal obsession with a single panacea, a
twelve-step program.
Just because you want to believe doesn't mean that you should believe, any
more than the fact that you want to take a drink means that you should take a
drink.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamicinitiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society ,Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
22. It is a genuine irrational religious cult, not a quit-
drinking program.Too many things about A.A. are irrational and crazy, so irrational that the A.A.
believers even revere the teachings of a madman, William G. Wilson, who
openly demanded that people abandon Reason, logic, and human intelligence,
and just embrace blind faith in his religious beliefs as the answer to all of their
problems.
Wilson's writings and behavior clearly demonstrate that he was suffering from
"301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and "297.10 Delusional (Paranoid)
Disorder, Grandiose Type", as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manualof Mental Disorders, 3rd Edition (DSM-III-R) on pages 200 to 203, and pages
658 to 661, respectively. Bill Wilson also showed characteristics of a messianic
complex and delusions of grandeur, claiming that God had given him the
mission of saving all of the alcoholics.
So now we have a country full of certified drug and alcohol counselors who
swear that the ravings of this lunatic are the answer to this country's drug and
alcohol problems. No wonder the "treatment" fails so much.
23. It's a pretend church.People who never made it through the seminary now get to play priest and lead
the congregation in prayers. Unfortunately, they also get to lead the newcomers
in everything else in their lives too, and play wise know-it-all spiritual teacher
even if they are stupid jerks or cruel fools. And they don't even need muchseniority to do it. Six months or a year of sober time is plenty for someone to
start lecturing the newcomers as if he were an old pro, a successful abstainer,
and a wise guru. And that's part of the fun of A.A. and N.A.: stick around for a
while, and pretty soon, you too can start passing yourself off as an old-timer,
one of the great ones, a big frog in a small pond, admired and respected by the
young.
24. It's also pretend medicine.People with no medical qualifications or training whatsoever get to play both
doctor and psychiatrist, sometimes with disastrous results, like when they
decide to tell sponsees not to take their doctor-prescribed medications.
25. It is a culture of sickness.Members are expected to spend the rest of their lives going to meetings with abunch of alcoholics, drug addicts, street criminals, convicts, and dogmatic
religious believers, all of whom complain that they are powerless over their
addictions, and that their lives have become unmanageable, and that they can't
ever recover. And they even brag, "Quitting isn't an option for addicts like us."
Do you really want to have some loser alcoholic or drug addict who has failed
to run his own life and who is now addicted to 12-Step meetings and cult
religion, to be your sponsor, your advisor and teacher and spiritual guru, giving
you orders and determining the rest of your life?
A far better treatment plan is to just quit drinking forever — not "one day at a
time" — forever — and then get out of the meetings, and go hang out with a
bunch of healthy, successful people. Forget the "nobody understands us
alcoholics but another alcoholic" nonsense. Do you want to be understood by an
old drunkard, or do you want to live happily?
I am still noticing what a joy it is to talk to an attractive young woman about
drug or alcohol problems, and hear her respond, "Oh, I don't do that kind of
stuff. I think it would just mess me up..." Then we are free to talk about other
stuff, like art, music, computers, children, or whatever... Anything but more
stories of misery. Anything but more stories of drug and alcohol problems.
26. It is unnecessary.More people recover from alcoholism without Alcoholics Anonymous and the
Twelve Steps than do it with them, several times over. More people recover
without any support group of any kind than with one. A.A. won't tell you that;
that's one of the biggest dirty little secrets that A.A. has. The A.A. dogma says,
"Nobody can do it alone." The truth is, most people do it that way.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of theNational Institutes of Health, performed the 2001-2002
National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related
Conditions. For it, they interviewed over 43,000 people. Using
the criteria for alcohol dependence found in the DSM-IV, they
found:
"About 75 percent of persons who recover fromalcohol dependence do so without seeking any
kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab)programs and AA. Only 13 percent of peoplewith alcohol dependence ever receive specialtyalcohol treatment."
The Harvard Mental Health Letter, from The Harvard
Medical School, stated quite plainly:
On their own There is a high rate of recovery amongalcoholics and addicts, treated and untreated.According to one estimate, heroin addicts breakthe habit in an average of 11 years. Anotherestimate is that at least 50% of alcoholicseventually free themselves although only 10%
are ever treated. One recent study found that80% of all alcoholics who recover for a year ormore do so on their own, some after beingunsuccessfully treated. When a group of theseself-treated alcoholics was interviewed, 57%said they simply decided that alcohol was badfor them. Twenty-nine percent said healthproblems, frightening experiences, accidents, orblackouts persuaded them to quit. Others usedsuch phrases as "Things were building up" or "Iwas sick and tired of it." Support from a husbandor wife was important in sustaining theresolution.Treatment of Drug Abuse and Addict ion — Part III , The Harvard
Mental Health Letter, Volume 12, Number 4, October 1995, page 3.(See Aug. (Part I), Sept. (Part II), Oct. 1995 (Part III).)
And most of the people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous don't quit drinking.
The A.A. headquarters inadvertently let leak out the news that their triennial
surveys revealed that A.A. has a 95% drop-out rate in just the first year.
When the vast majority of the successful people recover without Alcoholics
Anonymous, and most all of the people who go to A.A. don't get sober in A.A.,
then you know that it isn't A.A. that is making people get sober. Alcoholics
Anonymous is unnecessary.
27. Nobody is responsible.When something goes wrong, and somebody is badly abused, misguided, or
harmed in some way, there is no one to answer for anything. Nobody is really
in charge. Every group is independent, and has no connection to any other, even
if they are all doing the same thing. "No one speaks for A.A.", they say, so
nobody can answer criticisms. But because nobody is responsible for anything,
and nobody is in charge, nobody can fix anything, either.
Also, when a member relapses and dies, or commits suicide, nobody is
responsible. A.A. blames the victim: The victim was just morally inferior and
"constitutionally dishonest with himself", or "he wasn't ready", or "he hadn't hit
bottom yet", or maybe "he held something back in his Fifth Step". It was not the
sponsor's fault, they say. No matter what the sponsor did to the guy, like tell
him to stop taking his medications, the sponsor isn't responsible for anything.
It's all the victim's fault. No way will A.A. accept even the tiniest bit of
responsibility for the failures and the deaths, even though it gleefully claims all
of the credit for the successes.
The applicable A.A. slogan is, "Some must die so that others can live."
This also means that no one does any post-mortems. No one is accumulatingany data on failures, in order to improve the "treatment" program, and avoid
making the same mistakes again and again. Real doctors study all of their
successes and failures, in order to learn from experience. But not A.A. or N.A..
They don't learn. That alone is a giant tragedy — it means that the program will
never get any better.
28. The dogma is frozen.The current crop of true believers smugly declare that they have all of the
answers to alcoholism in the teachings of Bill W. and Doctor Bob, and that
there is nothing more to discuss. They won't even look at new alcoholism
treatments. That is not how Bill W. and Doctor Bob worked. They were very
inquisitive and inclusive, not exclusive. Both of them learned everything they
could about alcoholism from Dr. Silkworth, and they consulted with whatever
other experts they could find, on a wide variety of subjects. Bill experimented
with using megavitamin doses to treat alcoholism, and even tried LSD for thesame reason. He never stopped looking for new answers. Alas, that isn't how
the current high priests behave at all. They don't know the meanings of the
words "investigate" or "experiment." They just arrogantly declare that their
Twelve-Step program is the infallible answer to all of the world's ills. — Not
just the answer to alcoholism, but the answer to all of the world's ills.
Also, because of the cultish worship of Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob Smith,
nothing new can be added to the A.A. scriptures. No one compares in holiness
or wisdom to those two, so no one can dare to update or change the dogma,even when it is blatantly wrong. The first 164 pages of the Big Book are
considered sacred, inviolate, and cannot be changed.
And they weren't either. Now the Fourth Edition of the Big Book is out, and the
first 164 pages remain untouched. Only other people's autobiographical stories
were changed. And Clarence Snyder's story ("Home Brewmeister") was
removed from the book because Snyder dared to criticize Bill Wilson's financial
29. A.A. uses fear, guilt, and lies to manipulate people.This is not a positive, life-affirming program. It is very negative to keep telling
people that they will relapse and die unless they do everything right. And there
is a lot to do right: not just the Twelve Steps with all of the self-criticism and
guilt induction, but also attending lots of meetings, and complying with all of the accumulated "wisdom" like "you can't have any resentments", "stuff your
feelings", and "do what your sponsor says." People become neurotic and
depressed, they become mentally ill, if they spend too much of their time in
states of fear and guilt. And A.A. tells a lot of lies, myths, untruths, and fairy
tales, to keep people trapped in fear and guilt.
Remember that we are dealing with alcohol — cunning, baffling,
powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who
has all power — that One is God. May you find Him now!The Big Book , William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, pages 58-59.
John Barleycorn promises us jails, institutions, or death.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.The Big Book , William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, page 33.
We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip
of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse,
never better.The Big Book , William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, page 30.
I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they
had prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and placewould come — I would drink again. They had said that though I didraise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivialreason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, forwhat I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knewfrom that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will powerand self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blankspots. I had never been able to understand people who said that aproblem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was acrushing blow.The Big Book , 3rd Edition , William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 41-42.
If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking.The Big Book , 3rd Edition , William G. Wilson, chapter 6, Into Act ion , page 72.
Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our
suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs hisown death warrant.Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.
30. No cross-talk.The term "cross-talk" means saying something in response to something
somebody else said. That is forbidden at meetings. The original idea was to
prevent put-downs or criticism of what someone said, to allow people to be as
open and honest as possible. But now it just means that nobody gets any
responses to anything they say. Hence there is no way to give anyone any
feedback in a meeting. You can't tell people that they are going off the deep
end, or babbling crazy nonsense, or mindlessly embracing cult dogma.
Everybody is just talking to a blank wall, and gets no answers or comments
back. Thus there is no brake to keep people from going off on a tangent. They
can say lots of crazy things and everybody just sits there and silently accepts it.
In any ordinary group, people cannot talk crazy for very long before somebody
else will call them on it, and say, "Oh yeh? That sounds really goofy. Can you
explain that? Can you prove that statement? Where did you hear that? Who told
you that?" In A.A. meetings, they won't ever get called on anything. They will
never get a reality check.
Also, no one can shut up the nuts who rave on and on about how wonderful the
organization is, and how it gave them a life, and the organization is their new
life, and how the Twelve Steps are the answer to everything — a brilliant
solution to all of the problems of the world...
31. It is throw-away therapy for throw-away people.
All of the city, state, and federal governments want to do "something" about thedrug and alcohol problem, but they don't want to do much. So they just give a
contract for drug and alcohol treatment to the lowest bidder, and ignore the
problem for the rest of the year. And if the lowest bidder's therapy doesn't really
work, well, what can you expect for so little money? To get something better
would cost more, wouldn't it?
And, of course, the cheapest "treatment programs" are based on free A.A. and
be repaired by confessing all of your defects and shortcomings to man and
God. Then they will tell you that you can't ever recover, and that you must
spend the rest of your life going to their church services ("meetings") and
confessing.
See the file "The Bait and Switch Con Game" for many, many more points.
36. A.A. makes "God" into a dirty word.Those of us who are not atheists or agnostics, who do believe in a "Higher
Power" or God of some kind, and who try to be sane and reasonable in our
religious beliefs, get tired of the constantly-parroted bizarre A.A. theology that
makes God into a cruel, heartless, arbitrary, authoritarian, dictatorial, wish-
granting, patriarchal monster Who micro-manages the world, and does a very
poor job of it.
And the same goes for the gross misuse and misinterpretation of spiritual
concepts like ego loss, surrender to God, or "spiritual experience."
The "spiritual experience" term, in particular, has really been beaten to death.
To Bill Wilson, it meant seeing God in a belladonna-induced white flash, or
confessing all of your "defects of character", sins, moral shortcomings, and "the
exact nature of your wrongs" to your sponsor, while to another story-teller in
the Big Book, it was:
A "spiritual experience" to me meant attending meetings,seeing a group of people, all there for the purpose of helpingeach other; hearing the Twelve Steps and the TwelveTraditions read at a meeting, and hearing the Lord's Prayer,which in an A.A. meeting has such great meaning — "Thy willbe done, not mine."The Big Book , 3rd Edition, "It Might Have Been Worse", page 381.
("Yeh, don't you just get all choked up when you hear the TwelveSteps read out loud? That's a real spiritual experience, for sure...")
And those of us who try to be sane and reasonable in our religious beliefs get
really tired of the moronic, superstitious, childish Santa Claus spirituality of
the the A.A. true believers who think that they can get whatever they want just
by praying for it — "Just incant the name of your favorite Higher Power three
times, loudly, and then read your Christmas wish list out loud, and Santa Claus
I have no other explanation for the many good things that havehappened to me since I have been in A.A. — they came to mefrom a Greater Power.The Big Book , 3rd Edition, Rum, Radio, and Rebellion , page 367.
(Those good things couldn't have been caused by quitting drinking? They
couldn't have been caused by no longer constantly shooting yourself in the footby always being drunk at the wrong times? They couldn't possibly have been
caused by being clear-headed, healthy, and able to work and get stuff done —
just for a change)?
37. A.A. features questionable advisors and counselors.The biggest losers are the best advisors, or so the story goes. The people with
the worst war stories and drunkalogues have made the biggest recoveries, sothey are the best teachers. Or are they? The road of excess leads to the palace of
wisdom. Or does it? What if it leads to the palace of brain damage and insanity?
What if the biggest losers were that way for a reason, like that they had big
mental problems even before their alcoholism or drug addictions, problems that
they vainly tried to fix by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol? Or, what if
the biggest losers were horrible vicious criminals even before they ever started
drinking and drugging to excess?
Do they automatically become sane, wise, kindly advisors, knowledgeable
priests and ministers, and competent recovery counselors, just because they quit
drinking alcohol and taking drugs, and attended a bunch of A.A. meetings, and
started talking about "seeking and doing the will of God"? Not likely.
The simple fact of the matter is, healthy, wealthy, and wise people do not join
Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, so your odds of getting a
wise, intelligent sponsor to guide you through your recovery are extremely
poor.
Then it gets worse. There are many A.A. and N.A. groups that are notorious for
existing to supply the elders with young girls, money, and slavish followers.
The sponsors are not wise counselors — they are sexual predators and energy-
sucking vampires. See the "Midtown Group" in Washington DC, and "the
Pacific Group" in California, for starters. Also check out YPAA — Young
People's A.A. — which is a happy hunting ground for pedophiles.
The Big Book specifically states that A.A. is a substitute for an alcohol
addiction, as well as a substitute lifestyle:
You say, "...I know I must get along without liquor, but how canI? Have you a sufficient substitute?" Yes, there is a substitute, and it is vastly more than that. Itis a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find
release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will befired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactoryyears of your existence lie ahead. Thus we find the fellowship,and so will you.A.A. Big Book , William G. Wilson, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 152.
Bill Wilson's second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, adds this
Orwellian double-think:
Therefore dependence, as A.A. practices it, is really a means ofgaining true independence of the spirit.Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 36.
Big Brother says, "Freedom is Slavery! Slavery is Freedom!"
See the Cult Test item "They Make You Dependent On The Group" for much
more information on dependency.
41. A.A. is terribly self-absorbed — the cult is the most
important thing in the lives of many cult members.A.A. tells the newly-sober people that they must put their "sobriety" (meaning:
the A.A. program) before everything else, and come to depend upon A.A. to run
their lives for them. Absolutely nothing must come between themselves and
their "sobriety". That includes wife, children, job, career, everything. The Big
Book actually teaches that wives and families are expendable in the selfish
pursuit of "sobriety" and "spirituality." The new A.A. member must spend all of his spare time going to meetings, preferably 90 Meetings In 90 Days, and must
get a sponsor who will supervise his indoctrination and keep him busy with
reading the Big Book and making lists of personal defects. A.A. becomes such
an obsession for some members that they attend from one to three meetings per
day.
After the husband joins A.A., the wife may becomediscontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous
has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failedto do. Her husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and hisnew friends that he is inconsiderately away from home morethan when he drank.Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 118.
Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A
kindly act once in a while isn't enough. You have to act theGood Samaritan every day, if need be....Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected.The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William Wilson, Chapter 7, Working With Others, page 97.
Note that "helping others" is a euphemism for recruiting new cult members.
"I decided I must place this program above everything else,even my family, because if I did not maintain my sobriety I
would lose my family anyway."The Big Book , 3rd Edition, Chapter B10, He Sold Himself Short , page 293.
In addition, Doctors Donald Gerard, Gerhart Saenger, and Renee Wile
described the phenomenon of "A.A. Successes", people who succeeded in
quitting drinking but who became addicted to Alcoholics Anonymous, and had
no life outside of A.A.:
AA Successes... It is evident that they are as dependent on AA
as they were before on alcohol. They are very active in AA.Some of them spend all or practically all of their free time at AAor in 12-Step work. Conversely, they have little or no social lifeapart from AA...."The Abstinent Alcoholic," by Donald Gerard, Gerhart Saenger, and Renee Wile. Archives of
General Psychiatry, Volume 6, 1962, pp. 99-110.
42. It is a secret conspiracy.I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't like to find secret conspiracieseverywhere, but this is one. It has taken control of our nation's drug and alcohol
treatment facilities and institutions, and is using part of the billions of dollars
that our government and the health insurance industry spends on drug and
alcohol rehabilitation each year to further its own secret agenda, which includes
coercing the patients into becoming members of the A.A. and N.A. 12-Step
A.A. members can easily hide their A.A. membership, because it's all
confidential and anonymous, by definition. Hidden members have worked
themselves into positions of power where they control the future of our nation's
drug and alcohol treatment programs. A.A. uses its entrenched position to
prevent any other treatment modalities from encroaching on what it considers to
be its territory, and its money. A cult religion with an ineffective treatment
program has no business running our nation's drug and alcohol treatmentprograms and lying about what it is doing.
Personally, I could hardly care less what a bunch of crazy cultists want to
believe. It's their lives, and they can do pretty much anything they want to with
them. I get leafletted and hit on by the Hari Krishnas and the Scientologists
often, and it doesn't matter. I don't care if a bunch of feeble-minded alcoholic
burn-outs want to cluster together in church basements and convince each other
that they are God's special children, and The Chosen People. It doesn't matter.
But it does matter when a cult uses City, State and Federal tax money, as well
as State, Federal, and private health insurance money, to promote its own
religion while pretending to provide medical treatment for a deadly disease.
That is unacceptable and unjustifiable (and felony fraud, too).
It does matter when a cult uses parole officers, judges, and therapists to force
more people to join the cult. That is unacceptable.
It matters when people who are sick, desperate, confused, and going through areal crisis, are deceived and lied to and fed a crackpot cult religion as the
universal cure for all drug and alcohol problems, by people who are supposed to
be therapists, but who are really just proselytizing religious nut-cases. That is
not acceptable.
To force the insane, bizarre, and superstitious practices of a cult religion on
people who are supposed to be receiving medical treatment for a deadly disease
is a crime so monstrous, so evil, and so sick, that it is basically unbelievable.
That is how groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous aregetting away with it. People can't believe that it is really happening. The other
people, that is — the people to whom it is not being done.
2) Kurtz, in Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1991, page 281, says that
one large treatment agency accounts for two thirds of the outside sales of A.A.W.S.literature. Without a doubt, that one treatment agency is Hazelden. They so
aggressively redistribute A.A. literature that the California Supreme Court ordered all
Hazelden and A.A. literature removed from the California schools on the grounds
that Hazelden was promoting a religion.
3) The Bataan Death March itself had a death rate of about 16 or 17%. Then that
many more died during the following four years of imprisonment in a prisoner-of-war
camp where the prisoners were starved, beaten, infected with diseases, and subjectedto summary executions. The total death rate from the march and the following four
years of imprisonment was about one third. Half of the total deaths occurred on the
Death March, and the other half in the prison camp.
Professor George E. Vaillant reported that his A.A.-based alcoholism treatment
program had a 29% death rate after 8 years of treating the patients with Alcoholics
Anonymous. So yes, A.A. has a death rate that is comparable to the Bataan Death