THE ORANGE PAPERS
A series of pages about Substance Misuse Recovery Programs, Real Recovery. and Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous.
An Online Book by "Orange"

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

HERBERT SPENCER

The above famous misquote1 was put in the Big Book by William G. Wilson, in Appendix II, "Spiritual Experience", in the back of the second and third editions. Bill Wilson was trying to imply that we should not dismiss his "spiritual cure for alcoholism" without first trying it.

That is curious, because in 1864 Herbert Spencer was actually arguing against fundamentalist religious beliefs and dogmatic blind faith, and in favor of Charles Darwin's new theory of evolution.

Nevertheless, that quote sounds like good advice. So let's really, honestly, investigate Alcoholics Anonymous, without rejecting criticism of A.A. before investigation of all of the facts...

What is the REAL A.A. success rate?

Out of each 1000 newcomers to A.A., how many will pick up a one-year sobriety medallion a year later? Or ever?
And how many will get their 2-year, and 5-year, and 10-year coins?
How about 11 years and 21 years?

HINT: the answers are here and here and here.



This mirror of the Orange Papers has no affiliation with the original author, nor with various discussion groups , chatrooms , or other forms of "social media" that are named after the Orange Papers. If/when the original Orange Papers website is restored to a working state, this site will be redirected there.

Report broken links , vandalism/defacement or copyright issues to [email protected]. Terry/Orange - If you're still out there and want access to edit this site and take over the email account, just send me a note and verify yourself via Twitter and I will hand you the wheel. This site does not need donations, a small annuity pays for everything in perpetuity.

CONTENTS:

Pro-A.A. Propaganda, analyzed:

  1. A.A.-Booster Pseudo-Science: Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism
  2. More A.A.-Booster Pseudo-Science: The Spiritual Dimension of Healing
  3. More Big Lies — A.A. Propaganda As Usual
  4. More A.A.-Booster Propaganda: the book Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, by Marc Galanter
  5. Five more fake-science AA-booster papers
  6. More A.A.-Booster Propaganda: The Cybernetics of Self
  7. The International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction totally discredited the faked Humphries-Moos study that supposedly showed that A.A. works better than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
  8. More pseudo-science and deceptions: Lee Ann Kaskutas, "Alcoholics Anonymous Effectiveness: Faith Meets Science".
  9. Dr. Harry Tiebout: The First Fascist Mad Scientist of A.A.
  10. Answer to a George Vaillant Speech
  11. The Recovery Propaganda Machine, part 7
  12. A reply to Kris Best's articles in the Lafayette Examiner

Letters, We Get Lots of Mail...


Auxillary and Supporting Documents


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Now you can see what was
Censored by Yahoo!

This web site, all of these pages and all of this information was suddenly totally erased without prior warning or notice, or explanation, on Sunday, April 20, 2003, by Geocities.Yahoo.Com, whose friendly staff didn't seem to like something that I said. They wouldn't say what it was that they were censoring. Read the story here.

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!
The censors and the book-burners are at it again.
Now my email is

Blocked by AOL!

Wednesday morning, December 28, 2005, I answered an email from somebody on AOL, and it immediately bounced back to me with a big hairy error message.

I investigated and found that AOL had blocked my email account and IP number because somebody complained about my web site. Read the story here.

And, if you are on AOL, you can help out by sending a letter of protest to the [email protected]

It's fixed! AOL silently removed the blocks, without a word of explanation or apology. Thanks to all of the people who wrote in support of this web site.



Footnotes:

1) Michael has done a lot of research on that quote, and he found that it actually came from William Paley, not Herbert Spencer. See Michael's paper here:
Survival_of_a_Fitting_Quotation.pdf





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Acknowledgements:

Copyright 2016 asserted by A. Orange on orange-papers.org [Mirror on the Wayback Machine establishing asserted copyright]

This website is being permanently migrated to the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) , it incurs no ongoing costs for hosting or maintenance. You will be able to access it via orangepapers.eth (or any number of IPFS gateways.) Due to the size of the orange papers , it is not practical to "push" minor updates to IPFS, therefore I cannot practically update alternatives to AA that exist or may exist in the future - nor remove information about such groups if they no longer exist.)

Absolutely no slight is intended in unlinking "Deprogramming from 12 Step Groups" , "Leaving AA" or any other support group for "ex steppers" who had a bad time or found these groups harmful or unhelpful at best- its just that once this page is live I can't remove or update links to them. With any luck we will all outlive some of the banal/toxic and extremely criminal and corrupt "social media" sites some of those groups (presently) do their outreach on. If I did my job correctly, the Orange Papers will be around longer than Twitter or Facebook. If I didn't, you can download the entire website with git:

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