what's not good about a.a

7/22/2019 What's Not Good About A.A.

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1/17/14 A.A.: What's Not Good

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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 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

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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

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sell the idea of: Just play mind games on the patients and fool them into

believing that "faith-healing group-ritual conversion experiences" will

work, and hey presto! — the program will work.

"Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism", which sells a vague,

confused "spirituality" as the cure for alcoholism.

"The Spiritual Dimension of Healing", which is a far better demonstrationof deceptive propaganda techniques than it is a tome on recovery.

"Keep coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and recovering-

addict identity", which extolls the virtues of "false working" ("Fake It

Until You Make It") and "permission to 'act as if' they truly believe in the

NA message" — in other words, lie and deceive and pretend to get

positive results from the program in order to fool the newcomers into

thinking that it's a working, effective, program.

Doctors in A.A.; the profession's skepticism persists, but MDs in

Alcoholics Anonymous say the 12-step program could benefit all

physicians, by C. Thomas Anderson, actually declares that Alcoholics

Anonymous and the 12 Steps would be great for all doctors if only they

would quit thinking scientifically and analytically, and just "come home"

to the cult.

A.A. habitually lies about its success rate. They begin every meeting by reading

Bill Wilson's lie, "RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly

followed our path." "Rarely fails" really means "fails at least 95 or 98 percent of

the time, maybe even 100 percent of the time." Alcoholics Anonymous has a

death rate that is comparable to the Bataan Death March. Literally.3 And so

does its sister organization, Narcotics Anonymous.

3. It is bad religion.Any theologian will tell you that this is one very bad religion, just loaded with

heresies. It is surprising that so many Christian churches allow A.A. to meet in

their buildings. I suspect that they haven't examined the theology very closely,

and they just think that getting the drunkards praying is a good thing.

See the file The Heresy of the Twelve Steps for much more about that.

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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,

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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,


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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

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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

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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."

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9. Alcoholics Anonymous is anti-intellectual and

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.





Yes, Doctor, if you really wanted to get an education, you should have skipped

college and medical school, and just hung out in the back alleys with the

winos... They are always good at "making a man out of you."

Along the same lines, the Northern Illinois Area Service Newsletter gave us this

sneering piece of anti-intellectual propaganda that tells us that an ordinary A.A.

sponsor is much better than a professional therapist:

Twelve Ways to Tell the Difference Between

Your Sponsor and Your Therapist.

1. Your sponsor isn't all that interested in the "reasons" you drank.

2. Your therapist thinks your root problem is your lack of self-

esteem, negative self-image, and your poor self-concept. Your

sponsor thinks your problem is a 3-letter word with no hyphens.

3. Your therapist wants you to pamper your "inner child." Your

sponsor thinks he ought to be spanked.

4. Your sponsor thinks your inventory should be about you, not your

parents.

5. Speaking of your parents, your sponsor tells you not to confrontthem, but to apologize to them.

6. The only time your sponsor uses the word "closure," is before the

word "mouth."

7. Your sponsor thinks "boundaries" are things you need to take

down not build up.

8. Your therapist wants you to love yourself first, your sponsorwants you to love others first.

9. Your therapist prescribes caretaking and medication. Your

sponsor prescribes prayer-making and meditation.

10. Your sponsor thinks "anger management skills" are numbered 1-

2-3... 12.





11. Now that you haven't had a drink in six months, your therapist

thinks you should make a list of your goals and objectives for the

next five years, starting with finishing up that college degree. Your

sponsor thinks you should start today by cleaning the coffee pots and

helping him carry a heavy box of literature to the jail.

12. Your sponsor won't lose his license if he talks about God.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS AREA LTD. AREA 20 SERVICE LETTERVOLUME XXIV , NO.1SPRING, 2000page 7.http://www.aa-nia.org/

Note the attacks on you:

In item 2, your therapist will diagnose you as lacking self-esteem and

having a negative self-image, but A.A. says that you are egotistical,

and need to be put down even more.

Item 3 says that your inner child needs a spanking, and item 5 says

that you need to go apologize to your parents, and then the rest of the

items try to make you feel even worse about yourself... They really

want to burden you with guilt and self-doubts.

And see how they want to keep you down and in the cult. Item 11 says

that you should not think about finishing college — you should just spend

your time on A.A. busy-work like cleaning the coffee pots, and

proselytizing and recruiting at the local jail. Heaven Forbid you should go

off to college; you might get smart and really recover and not come back

to the cult.

(But you know that if you don't go get that college degree, that you will

probably be working for minimum wage, or for very low wages, for the

rest of your life. And then your job might be outsourced to India or China.

What kind of a future is A.A. really offering you? Just a life of poverty-

stricken slavery in the cult. Misery loves company, and they want you to

stay and keep them company.)

Also notice how the sarcastic sponsor in that sneering piece of propaganda

does not want to know why you drank. (Item 1.) But if you don't figure

that out, and fix what's broken, then you will probably relapse. They are

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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

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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.

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A.A. is perfect; you're a loser.

When a doctor prescribes penicillin, and it fails to clear up an infection, the

doctor switches to using something else, perhaps streptomycin or Keflex or

dicloxacillin. The doctor does not just claim that the reason the penicillin isn't

working is because the patient is immoral, and insist that the patient just take

more penicillin and pray more. But that's how A.A. treats alcoholism with the

Twelve Steps.

Again, A.A. claims that a magical "spiritual" one-size-fits-all fix, the Twelve-

Step Program, is the answer to everything. And even more outrageously, the

"fix" is to turn people into religiomaniacs — religious fanatics. And, again, the

real A.A. failure rate is 95 or 98 or 100 percent, and A.A. arrogantly claims that

they all fail because they are all "constitutionally incapable of being honest,"

and they were "born that way" and they "will not completely give themselves to

this simple program.""The program never fails anyone; people just fail the program."

To use A.A. terminology, A.A. is in denial about its true nature:

A.A. is constitutionally incapable of being honest with itself.

And:

A.A. is "naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living

which demands rigorous honesty."

And:

A.A. members seek a narcissistic easier, softer way by attempting to returnto infancy where they laid helplessly on their back sides and waited for

Mommy or Daddy to take care of them and satisfy all of their demands.

Now they want to declare powerlessness and demand that God take care of

them and solve all of their problems for them.

And:

A.A. members seek an easier, softer way by demanding a simplistic solution

to all of their problems — a magical 12-Step cure-all where God removes

the desire to drink alcohol, and God also takes care of their wills and their

lives for them.Where they previously thought that alcohol was the solution to all of their

problems, they now think that 12 simple "spiritual" steps are the solution to

everything:

"Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all

my problems."(The Big Book , Chapter 3, page 42.)

Alcoholics Anonymous was just born that way.






11. Alcoholics Anonymous stereotypes alcoholics.

Not only does A.A. stereotype alcoholics and try to shove them all into the

same mold, A.A. uses an extremely negative stereotype of "the alcoholic". Bill

Wilson and A.A. say that alcoholics are all dishonest and in denial, and selfish

and self-seeking and manipulative, and too stupid to ever be able to figure out

how to quit drinking by themselves. And they are all suffering from a "spiritual

disease" because they aren't holy enough.

A.A. even goes so far as to declare that you can kill alcoholics if you tell the

truth, because those stupid alcoholics just cannot handle the truth — "You are

doing a great disservice to those seeking sobriety."

See the web page "The Us Stupid Drunks Conspiracy" for much more on this.

12. It totally ignores all social issues.A.A. says that the answer to all social problems is the Twelve Steps, and that all

of your problems are of your own making. Like the Oxford Group before it,

Alcoholics Anonymous believes that all social problems are caused by sin, and

only by sin. A.A. will not look at any of the social causes of alcoholism, like

poverty, racism, child abuse, lack of education, lack of opportunities, war,gang-banging in the 'hood, or injustice.

A.A., along with all of the other 12-Step recovery groups, is not only apolitical,

it is downright anti-political. This, combined with the anti-intellectualism listed

above, makes the A.A. organization a corrupt politician's dream come true —

those people just will not do anything to rock the boat or threaten the status quo.

It is no surprise that fascist dictators like having A.A. in their countries, and

Latin America is one of the biggest growth areas for A.A..

Indeed, an organization that tries to ignore all societal causes of social problems

"and to concern itself not at all as to the way in which the corporate life of

society is organized" ... "enters the social arena inevitably on the side of

reaction". In other words, it becomes fascistic in nature. The editor of The

Christian Century magazine wrote that.

The only apparent exception to the rule of ignoring the societal causes of

alcoholism is that A.A. recognizes that past child abuse, being an Adult Child

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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

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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." —


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Thus repeating the standard party line and the Big Lie one more time, and

revealing that the counselors are sending the patients to the counselors' own

religion.

15. Alcoholics Anonymous is dishonest.A.A. is grossly dishonest, and lies like a rug. A.A. lies about:

1. its cult religion roots,

2. its history,

3. its founders,

4. its religious philosophy,

5. its true nature,

6. what it is now,

7. what it is doing now,

8. how the program works or doesn't work,9. its failure rate,

10. bad groups that practice sexual exploitation,

11. and more.

And A.A. will not honestly discuss its problems. It is an organization in

denial.

A.A. says that it is not a religion, but its official literature spends an

immense amount of time raving about God and religion and how you

absolutely must believe, or else.

The Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book" even instructs recruiters in how to

hide the intense religiosity of 'the program' from prospective new

members, so A.A. also practices deceptive recruiting.

And A.A. literature — which is mostly Bill Wilson's mad rantings and

ravings — declares that the only people who object to the crazy religiosity

and dishonesty of Bill Wilson are atheists and agnostics.

A.A. says that it is not a religion, and is not a religious organization:

Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization.The Big Book , Forward to the 2nd Edit ion, William G. Wilson, page XX (of the 3rdedition).

But the state and Federal judges say that it is, and that A.A.'s denials don't

count. That is simple enough to understand:

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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"...

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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

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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.

Obviously, AAWS is only in it for the money.

Also see:

Mitchell K. 12: The Saddest Day In A.A. History

Mitchell K. 13: German Court Date Delayed

Mitchell K. 15: Open Letter to A.A. Members

Mitchell K. 20: The A.A. German Court Case

Mitchell K. 21: German Court Orders A.A. Books

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Mitchell K. 22: Threats By Alcoholics Anonymous

World Services Attempt Cutting Off a Members Right

To Communicate with the Fellowship

Mitchell K.'s appeal to the membership, 1998

Please note that Mitchell K. was present in Germany,

witnessing the courtroom proceedings. Also note that Mitchell

is an old, faithful, member of A.A., who has written a lot of

history of A.A., including a biography of Clarence Snyder.

And see a pamphlet that A.A. members have been circulating,

denouncing the dishonesty of the A.A. leaders.

And see where a Mexican A.A. member was sentenced to a

year in prison for reprinting old out-of-copyright materials:

http://gsowatch.aamo.info/mex/sentenced.htm.

Here is the document that A.A. General Manager Greg Muth

signed that authorized A.A. and its foreign affiliates to sue

A.A. members to protect the fraudulent, expired, copyright on

the first edition of the Big Book .

16. Alcoholics Anonymous is a haven for fanatics and

religiomaniacs.It is routine for the true believers to dominate the meetings, bragging about the

amount of "quality knee time" that they rack up each day (praying on their

knees), or delivering well-practiced sermons that declare that A.A. with the

Twelve Steps is the only way to survive alcoholism, and that Bill Wilson was

just the greatest genius in the world, who was so brilliant to have made up

twelve such perfect steps that will solve all of the world's problems... And there

is no way to get those nuts and fools to shut up. Sure, you can walk out and go

to a different meeting, but it will usually be the same thing over there.

17. Alcoholics Anonymous is a haven for sexual predators

and other manipulative personalities.Once such people get (or can claim to have) enough sober time to become

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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

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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

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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

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Priests, sworn to secrecy by sacred oaths on the Bible. You just hope that

sponsors and other A.A. members will keep their mouths shut. Professional

people, like politicians, doctors, and lawyers, are noticeably absent from the

A.A. meetings — it would be professional suicide for those people to publicly

declare that they have an alcohol or drug problem.

20. A.A. is arrogant, smug, and self-congratulatory.

Alcoholics Anonymous arrogates to itself the role of defining alcoholism as

well as its cure.

Bill Wilson declared that alcoholism was "an illness which only a spiritual

experience will conquer", and then Bill claimed that practicing the Twelve Steps

that he copied from the Oxford Group cult could produce that spiritual

experience.

A.A. members imagine that they actually talk to God, and get their orders from

God, while doing Step Eleven. It is the height of egotism and conceit for

someone to maintain that he knows what God's Will really is, because God talks

to him, and tells him, every day — and then imagining that ordinary people are

not so religious, and don't follow God's Will, because they don't do Bill

Wilson's Twelve Steps.

Likewise, Bill Wilson's books declare that A.A. members will actually become

more spiritual or enlightened than they ever would have if they had not been

lucky enough to be alcoholics.

When someone talks to God, that is called prayer.

When someone hears God talking back and telling him what to do, that is called

schizophrenia, or delusions of grandeur, or a messianic complex...

And A.A. is terribly smug, sanctimonious, and self-congratulatory. The Big

Book yields such jewels as:

"You poor guy. I feel so sorry for you. You're not an alcoholic. You

can never know the pure joy of recovering within the Fellowship ofAlcoholics Anonymous." The Big Book , 3rd Edition, page 334.

It may seem incredible that these men are to become happy,

respected, and useful once more. How can they rise out of such





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.





And then there is...

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

people who try it...


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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.

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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%

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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

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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

dishonesty when he was alive.

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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

N.A. meetings.





32. A.A. claims that it is the only way.Beginners are told that the Twelve-Step program is the only way to achieve

sobriety, and that nothing else works. If the student believes that, then there is

no reason to do anything else, or to study anything else, to help oneself, other

than just do the Twelve Steps and do whatever the sponsor says. When theTwelve Steps don't work, the student has no other techniques or knowledge to

use to prevent a relapse, or to recover from a relapse, so he relapses and

sometimes dies drunk out in the streets.

A.A. is quick to accuse all competing groups and recovery methods of killing

patients, but maintains its own innocence. A.A. claims that it does not kill and

could never kill patients. But I don't know what else to call it when they just

give people a lot of misinformation, and then play blame-the-victim when the

program fails and those people die. (In addition, Professor George E. Vaillant,who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World

Services Inc., did an 8-year-long test of A.A. treatment of alcoholics, and found

that the A.A. program had the highest death rate of any kind of alcoholism

treatment that he studied.)

33. The authoritive literature is vague, imprecise,

bombastic, and grandiose.Too much of the organization's defining literature, like the Big Book, Alcoholics

Anonymous, is written in a euphemistic style where words mean whatever

someone wants them to mean:

"We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the

Spirit of the Universe."(The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 6, page 75.)

"Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward thedesired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of the New Land had

brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits."(The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, We Agnostics, page 53.)

"We are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve

contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a

day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our daily

activities."







(The Big Book , 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 6, Into Action , page 85.)

(Just where did that "vision" come from? Prayer, meditation, belladonna,

delirium tremens, LSD, or delusions of grandeur?)

"We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the

clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth.

That is where our fellow travelers are, and that is where our work must be

done. These are the realities for us. We have found nothing incompatiblebetween a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy

usefulness."(The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, page 130.)

"He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love."(The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, page 56.)

"Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's

ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that

our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the

beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?"

(The Big Book , 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, page 49.)

Uh, Hello? I just came here to get some advice on quitting drinking. Hello?

Does anybody here speak English?

34. It is voodoo medicine and cult religion masquerading as

medical treatment.The "treatment" for the very real, very deadly, sickness of alcoholism is faith

healing — blind faith in a religious cult, and faith in the teachings of a couple

of brain-damaged alcoholic wrecks who were at best neurotics, or were more

likely one neurotic and one psychotic.

And when the "spiritual" treatment fails, their answer is to switch from 3 to 7

meetings per week, or even to 3 meetings per day.

It is also voodoo medicine in another sense: It is completely unscientific, and

uses superstition instead of facts. A.A. claims that alcoholism is a "spiritual

disease," without ever defining what a spiritual disease is, or explaining

how spirits can get sick. And then A.A. says that the "spiritual treatment" for

this "spiritual disease" is going to A.A. meetings, doing the Twelve Steps, and

recruiting more group members. Bill Wilson called that "spiritual growth."

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35. It is all a big bait-and-switch con game.There are so many bait-and-switch stunts pulled in A.A. that it borders on

amazing. Here are just a few examples:

They start off by telling you that A.A. is a loose, easy-going fellowship,

where the Twelve Steps are only a suggested program for recovery. Later,they will tell you that you will die if you don't follow the Steps correctly,

and perform all of the Steps to the best of your ability.

They will tell you that you can "Take what you want, and leave the rest."

Then they will tell you that you can't ever leave, and that your brain is too

damaged for you to be able to choose what is right for you.

Finally, they will tell you that you do not even have "the right to decide all

by yourself just what you shall think." (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William

Wilson, pages 36-37.)

To get you to join, they will tell you that "it isn't religious, it's spiritual"

— just a wonderful spiritual quit-drinking program. Later, they will talk

endlessly about moral shortcomings, confessions, surrender to God, and

religion. You will only gradually find out that it is a crazy cult religion

based on the strange teachings of the fascist Lutheran minister Dr. Frank

Nathan Daniel Buchman. Finally, they will tell you that the real purpose

of the program is to get you to "seek and do God's will", and to bring you

under "God-control":

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximumservice to God... Big Book , page 77.

Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you willpresently live in a new and wonderful world... Big Book , page 100.

They start off by telling you that alcoholism is a progressive disease overwhich you are powerless, but they end up telling you that you are guilty of

sins, "defects of character", and "moral shortcomings" — that you have a

moral problem more than a medical problem. In Step One, you have a

disease, which is "respectable, not a moral stigma." But by Step Four,

they have you busy doing a "searching and fearless moral inventory", not

a thorough medical examination.

And even worse, they will tell you that it's a moral problem that can only

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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

will soon bring you all of the goodies."

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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.

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38. A.A. pushes a one-size-fits-all treatment program.It doesn't matter what someone's personal history or psychiatric condition is,

every newcomer gets prescribed that same 12-Step cure-all.

"The answer to all problems is 'Do the Twelve Steps, Get a sponsor, and Read

the Big Book.'"

Even worse, the 12-Step program aims to fix the "character defects" and "moral

shortcomings" of one specific stereotypical alcoholic — someone who is very

egotistical, manipulative, arrogant, selfish, inconsiderate, grandiose, dishonest,

and resentful. In other words, the A.A. founder Bill Wilson.

39. The meetings are a joke.All too often, the meetings are just a stupid ritual that everybody does because

they think they have to do it. The formula is always the same. After everybody

is done incanting all of the standard plastic-laminated dogma at the start of the

meeting, people go through the motions of "sharing", which follows this

formula:

Hi, my name is fill-in-the-blank , and I am an alcoholic.

I am stupid.

A.A. is wonderful.I lived a life of crime and misery until wonderful A.A. miraculously saved

me.

Here is a list of my favorite sins and crimes that I like to brag about.

My life is blessed with Serenity and Gratitude now because I do the

Twelve wonderful Steps that the saintly genius Bill Wilson invented.

My thinking is all screwed up, and I can't manage my own life, but my

sponsor is clear-headed and qualified to run my life for me, in spite of the

fact that he recites the same speech and says that his thinking is fucked,

but his sponsor is really clear-headed, in spite of the fact that his sponsoralso gives the same speech, and says that his thinking is also really

fucked, etc...

40. A.A. is a substitute addiction, and just another

dependency.

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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

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_a8.html#ca_dependent

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-rroot930.html#freedom_slavery





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

religion.

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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.

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Footnotes:

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

March.

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