A.A. Horror Stories
The reason I share this is, I knew people out there in the criminal
world who never treated me as bad, or untrustworthy as those in AA and NA.
Gay sponsor is brainwashing 22 year old newcomer to AA — HELP! ... He now prays about EVERYTHING and expects a message or sign from God.
My 13 months in AA was absolute hell. ... My first nine months, two new comers killed themselves. ... I had one horrible relationship with a very ill narcissist man, who lied and cheated and was hooked on prescription drugs, but claimed his sobriety each day in meetings.
My Stepper "counselor"
is arrested for, and convicted of, possession of cocaine, child pornography, and
two counts of criminal sexual penetration of a minor. That's the guy who was paid to
teach us how to live clean and sober.
...as soon as I got into speaking for the first time (The "Newcomer") I got bashed harder than anything.
Another friend goes missing .
Screwing with alcoholics in the U.K.
Seven rehabs, seven chances to get cheated .
More A.A. murders —
"...he raped her dead body for several days and spent all her money..."
Growing Up In a 12 Step Home
A.A. and treatment horror story
I'm sober twenty years. They got me as a baby! ...
My mother told me when I went to AA that I was "ruining my life." That got a big laugh from AA members, but I agree with her. ... I cannot "erase" the vulnerability left by my college rape experience. But AA has been even more dangerous.
...he's not only stopped drinking, he's stopped living.
I could write a novel about my AA horror story. I could write all of the same ideas, thoughts, and feelings that everyone has expressed on your website in my own words. Same horror story, same confusion, same conclusion, just a different person.
That core group of '80s era Narateen children all went on to become junkies.
I had a friend who was alcoholic. She kept being drawn back to AA and all its abuses. Well, she hung herself.
...we are getting divorced,
and I think it all comes down to her sponsor and AA indoctrination...
I have SUFFERED many a "consequence" for leaving A.A., from employment and
professional losses to down right stalking (God forbid you try to leave).
...a married lady who is being pressured to essentially cheat on her husband by members of her NA group .
It is insane to tell someone like my sister who was bi-polar and suffering from so much, that she should ... Stop taking all medications
my own sister had five years sober when she committed suicide in a most horrible way
I'm bi-polar and went off my meds (because of aa guilt) and ended up in a mental hospital because i was going to kill myself .
You have helped me get rid of some guilt I've been carrying around for three years, ever since I left AA.
another bad sponsor
My husband has changed,
since his indoctrination into AA five years ago, into a person I truly don't know.
another bad sponsor
The 'teacher' of the Steps class said I had to go to any lengths to remain sober. ...being in the program I BEGAN TO DISBELIEVE WHAT I KNEW WAS THE TRUTH.
A girl is hijacked to a 12-Step treatment center by a Stepper true-believer aunt, after the aunt gives the girl alcohol.
Another treatment center nightmare: losing a fiance to a rehab romance
The how and why of losing a fiance to a rehab romance
I ran into Dale, whom I hadn't seen in 17 years. Dale boasted 18 years sober,
is now in his thirties, and hasn't done squat with his life.
...
I know that in all probability, Dale drank only once in his entire life.
Another old-timer
writes about his experiences
with "the evil empire"
In AA, I have encountered countless people who are honestly spooky
and cult-like in their behaviors . Many of them belong to a subset of AA
that really creeps me the fuck out [that] is called The Pacific Group.
They were mad because I was getting married when I got back.
...after only a half dozen or so AA
meetings he began spouting crap i.e. the slogans, the higher power, and
instinctively I began to feel that the whole AA thing was very creepy.
In January of 2005 I entered the doors of AA. This was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life.
Firstly, I'm stricken by how firmly AA has held on to it's lecherous,
predatory roots of older men attempting to take advantage of vulnerable
women seeking help. After attending only a handful of meetings it became
clear to me that I could only possibly attend women-only meetings.
However, one of the clauses in the contract stated that it was "recommended" that I attend AA meetings three times a week.
I crashed and went into depression when I realized that a lot of other people were ignoring me after a while, because I didn't do it their ways.
It took a decade and a half of me freezing out my well educated and civilized friends and colleagues in favour of people in various states of damage and recovery to realize that I was not keeping company that helped me much, if at all.
AA gave my dad's selfish, violent behavior justification.
When my gut instinct screamed at me to, "Get Out!" of AA, I was really
sick and getting sicker with every meeting.
a sad story of Narcotics Anonymous,
the "sexual, social cult"
I've been pathologized for twenty years. I can't go back there.
...
I had one of those "dual lives." Like AA convinced me that my "nice" friends could never accept "my disease." When I got sick, (with a real disease), I lost a lot of my nice world, and only AA was left. It has been hell.
holding a parent's children hostage until they go to AA or NA is just wrong.
I had NO IDEA that these programs were like this until I was forced to attend them.
I found his fawning, appeasing
attitude distasteful, and was offended by his single minded determination to get forgiveness from me.
I have noticed that you cannot criticise AA in meetings. You cannot discuss the
steps in a rational way. You are expected to blindly accept everything about the 12 steps.
I have been
haunted by this program for almost 30 years now. Often, I would just
give up and resign myself to drinking, rather than submit to AA.
I used to attend the badger group in waukesha, the biggest aa cult in waukesha ...
What has always been shocking to me is the
rationalization of a death after a person has quit taking their meds
under the so-called direction of their sponsor.
I didn't like being called insane. I didn't like being told not to think. I didn't
like being attacked when I asked questions. I didn't like being told that
"Your best thinking got you here".
The Q Group:
Young women have been raped by much older men. My old sponsor had sex
with a 14 year old girl and he is in his 30's .
He acted like it was no big deal. I mentioned to him that such things
are wrong. He said "who says so"...
more Midtown Group sexual exploitation of youths in A.A.
There is much more about the "Q Group" or "Midtown Group" here .
...the leader of the cult was stealing money from the group in the
thousands to go on his own personal vacation with his underage flavor
of the week. There was indisputable evidence to confirm this, yet
still the "higher-ups" claimed this was okay because he was the leader
and he saved so many lives. It wasn't till my sponsor essentially
gave me the option to swear loyalty to this disgusting prick or leave.
I chose the latter and am very glad for it.
the local TV station in
Washington DC has been reporting on the Midtown issue
the Phoenix, Arizona, Young People's A.A. says that it's all about "cars, pussy, and money"
the Bainbridge Island, Washington,
A.A. group is another sex society . And also, "When I was in detox in Everett I was kicked out with a bad case of D.T.'s because I brought up the topic of prescriptions in group."
the Pacific Group of Clancy I., another exploitative sub-cult within the A.A. cult
Also see this list of links to media coverage of the Midtown Group story.
the harm done to a lot of people
abuses in England
another treatment center horror story
I am a 38 year old woman who was put into the most notorious concentration camp....
Straight, Inc. back in 1982.
Then, they asked me to read the big book, which I did. And, that was when the doubt started to invade me. What was this all about? It was so stupid, so fascistic, so untolerant, so childish.
She is now displaying a completely changed personality. She has ignored her previously good friends...
The AA Cult has absorbed my wife into its fold.
You basically "chose" to feel miserable because you were a dirty, whining, lying bastard.
The Heaven's Gate suicides in 1997 disturbed me greatly, but when it happened I ran into
immediate opposition within NA to automatically making these people out to be wrong.
"We don't know they didn't take the right path," one guy told me.
On his arm was tattooed a self-immolating monk from the Vietnam protest. "It's wrong to
judge."
Unfortunately, AA does harm some people. I've seen people ridiculed for not believing what they have
been 'suggested' to believe. I've seen people degraded for not doing the
things have been 'suggested' to them. I have seen AA's holier-than-thou
attitudes chase people away.
...
Why would someone who has double digit sobriety still go to a meeting every day, sponsor 10+ people and spend 3 out of 4 weekends at some type of service function?
I thought I was going crazy and still feel guilty and neurotic at times when not "perfect".
...they decided to "intervene." In the evening I heard numerous individuals (all women from her support group) knocking on my door and windows. I ran in the bedroom and hid. I felt like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead were coming for me.
*AA sabotage* (framed as a warning from a Good Samaritan, but really a character assassination) was the culprit for much of my grief. ... *AA sabotage* could get me fired from a job with a single phone call, or investigated with a complaint to the police.
The way I stayed sober is almost the exact opposite of the 12 Steps, but of course I would never say this in a meeting. If you don't tow the party line, you are laughed at or ostracized. Even though I have almost 20 years, people would surely say "He's going to be drinking soon."
But something about Midtown was not right. After a few months, the group's embrace of May began to feel like a chokehold. She says the sponsor assigned to give her moral support and help keep her sober pressured her to cut off ties to anyone outside the group. Another member snatched her cell phone and deleted names in the directory. She says she was pressured to stop taking the medication a doctor had prescribed to manage her bipolar disorder: group members told her she couldn't be sober if she was taking any kind of drug.
The leader of the group
was a man named Jerry S. This particular group was nicknamed "Jerry's Kids".
... About four years ago shockwaves erupted in the rooms
when Jerry wound up marrying a 15 year old girl who came to meetings seeking recovery. .
My wife just informed me yesterday that she wants a divorce,
within hours after I forwarded to her the information that
I found on line from your web site
A good friend of mine that came from another state, 38, married, good
life ahead, changed noticeably after some dickhead gave him the Big Book,
he told me about it but I never told him what I knew about A.A., and
he killed himself last year.
I left unnanounced with the distinct feeling that I had been the
"designated failure" in the group from the start.
One of my friends in a different group experienced exactly the same thing.
I expect this is a standard cult tactic to make the "insiders" feel more...
inside. Or maybe just weed out the people who detect that this is all just a bunch of crap.
"They really seduce you
at first, just like someone with narcissistic personality disorder does when
they are looking for their supply. But then as the relationship progresses,
the constant devaluing begins, as you are only there to give them what they need.
Then ultimately, the victim is depleted and discarded."
The thing that really stuck out for me was the information about the Synanon games and
the cult that used them, and their psychopathic leader. What is really
very disturbing is that they use that very method at the main rehab
center here on O'ahu.
I can't even recall the number of people I have seen torn apart during
my seven years in AA in London.
I had no drinking problem or drug problem but went to try and help with my
gambling addiction. I finally started saying I was an
alcoholic so I could fit in. I really became an Alcoholic due to going so much...
I recently lost two friends in August 2009. One to severe alcoholism (he had major family history of the disease) he had been to meetings and rehabs all over the continent — didn't help. I lost my second friend to AA.
My sister died last month, I don't blame AA completely but I feel that they definitely contributed to her death .
I can control my drinking but I can't control the AA person she has become.
It didn't occur to me at the time that my insurance card was about to become their personal credit card.
So I grew up having bits of the 12 step ideology fed to me. ... As she tells the story to her friends now, she waited until I was weak and vulnerable to force me into the program. And she's *proud* of that.
Okay, so now I tell my "sponsor" about what happened. Her response was
"there was a womanizer in the meetings that she was from. Even though he
did those things to those women, he still carried a great message." Oh my god.
I started to think that if after years clean and doing all these steps people still seem as stuck in the rounds of divorce, out of control children, affairs, lack of cash, unhappiness, relapses etc I wonder what good NA is doing for them exactly?
the resident drug and alcohol counselor invited me into a quiet room where he absolutely GRILLED me over the idea that I was an alcoholic. ... Now, the kicker is that he had no degree. He was just the resident 12 step old timer who was given a job to herd people into AA. He proceeded to grill, badger, and try to cajole me into AA. ...
...my older brother left for a program similar to mine to quit drinking too. ...
When he came back, he was much, much worse.
It was then when I realized that I have absolutely no connection to these people.
i'm writing to you to raise the very bad subject of paedophiles operating within AA.
As soon as I divulged that "The God of my understanding" is God Almighty
(God The Father, God The Son, God The Holy Spirit) —
I noticed a HUGE change. I experienced being ostrasized, I was keenly made aware
that I was the "joke in the room".... people laughed when I "shared" anything. I saw
people in the room nodding their head, rolling their eyes at the ceiling,
snickering, putting their finger up to their nose and looking in my direction.
stop taking medications to please A.A.
Since he found AA our life together has been a living nightmare. He stopped communicating... My
husband left me this past week (with 6 children still at home),
choosing his AA family over us.
A letter from someone who knew him: Tom Powers, the co-author of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions was a crazy scheming lying child-molesting con-man who never stopped drinking.
My first sponsor ... starts screaming at me
because she knew I took medication for some mental illnesses I have.
He [my sponsor] laughed at me saying that the way I was going I could give up
[drinking] for a month or two, but then I would go on binge and would either die
or end up in prison...
It's all bullshit....
and I paid the price for this quackery for far too many years .
My sponsor with 22 years
sobriety behaved like a dictator in my life TELLING me what to do..
... My sponsor found out I was on medication and told
me to stop taking it... she then in an open meeting addressed me being
on medication and the meeting proceeded to be a SHIT ON SARAH FEST for
being stupid to allow myself to be medicated!!!!
...every time I felt even a minute amount of any undesirable emotion (sadness,
depression, boredom) [I was told] that I just needed to get busy and get with the
program! Not a word was ever said to me about actually addressing why I felt the
way I did and that it was okay to feel normal human emotions!!!
The crap these people taught about medication was reprehensible. I stopped taking medication after MY sponsor called me out on my Prozac.... I was shamed into stopping it.
But that message, "Let go and Let God" or the similar "Take your
hands off the steering wheel" is a very insidous message. They brainwash
people to not be too ambitious or too willful, even though you could be willful
for a good reason, like to start taking college classes or to take on a second job.
When i was nearly 4 years sober, a LONG timer with over 20 years of "RECOVERY"
decided that i need his help. ... He ordered
me to drink his urine as it had special powers .
her sponsor forbid her from seeing
me for thirty days... and at the end
of the 30 days I was told by my now ex that I could never talk to her again
I have been so manipulated by an old timing AA woman. I was led into a
marriage to her incarcerated son...
Many years ago, I ran into my AA sponsor at lunch when I was out with some work
colleagues. At the time, I had been sober about five years, and away from AA for
about three years. I had noticed that he and several other "elders" of our local AA
scene were drinking at a nearby table.
My partner has just passed 5 months in a highly restrictive 12 step based
treatment center. (She has the "option" of staying up to a year,
which has been "suggested".) ... It is being strongly
"suggested" that she cut all ties with me.
Two weeks after being there, no individual therapy, meetings AA meetings AA...
I also remember that my AA sponsor laughed at me when I told him about my suicide attempt in the
psychiatric ward... ... This same evil wolf in sheep's
clothing had me writing a Fourth Step for an entire twelve months, the
twelve months after my father had died in January 2003.
When I came to the end of my time in "The Program" I was on the verge of suicide.
I ended up in the psych ward and told to continue meetings.
I broke down to my command chaplain; a Lutheran minister who I had always trusted...
The next thing out of his mouth was a slew of insults aimed at making me believe how stupid and evil I was. He called me a liar, manipulator, and pointed out how screwed up I was in the head because I was an alcoholic.
...
My sponsor began telling me that I wasn't ready to embrace the program
yet because I still wanted to do it on my own. Then he started asking me for money.
... Turns out, the dude had nowhere near
the amount of success that he claimed AA had given him.
I believe I have a very real Faith in God and what goes on in those rooms is at best, a very diluted version of Christian Principles in action...... and at worse, nothing short of evil.
...
....I still heard recently that I was thought of, by an 'Elder Statesman' as a very sick man.
She was seriously mentally ill — personality disorder probably. She hit me, stole
money from me, had a serious gambling addiction, was chronically unfaithful, was
extremely verbally and emotionally abusive, etc. etc.
After I gave birth I had severe postpartum depression. I had not
healed from the birth and my sponsor told me not to take any medication.
...
My sponsor had said that god would heal me and when god wanted me
to sleep I would.
...
Her father was a treatment counselor and when we would go over to his house he would (this man was 60 or so) say to me, please just let me see those breasts. Please let me feel that firm ass. My friend thought it was funny. Come to find out her daughter had been molested by one of the aa creeps she ended up with. Another lost friendship.
ANYTIME I don't follow a direction, no matter how small, I get yelled at and
lectured and told repeatedly that I'm not willing and haven't had a real bottom.
There are no choices, it's an illusion. It's really controlling.
When I was 26, and quite naive, I went running to my drug and alcohol counselor because I felt like drinking. He was in AA, and he makes a pass at me. This devastated me, and I won't tell the whole story. (I got caught up with him)
I also have a history of going to a crazy cult-like drug and alcohol rehab, when I was 27 and very desperate. I was in this place for 5 months, it was severely abusive (psychologically) and I had a mental breakdown afterwards.
He is already a wreck... He attends AA
meetings 6 days a week with a sponsor, one of the counselors tells him that he
should not be taking Paxil, which he takes for severe anxiety, because it's "all
in his head and he is causing his own anxiety".
Sexual misconduct is so
pervasive and ignored in AA that young women are being hurt, abused, and becoming
pregnant while newly sober.
Go to ANY Young People's meeting in the country and you will find young women,
some young men, and many older men who have no business at a YP meeting. You can
guess why they are there.
I would allege that almost all of the sexual abuse I was referring to happened at
the hands of members of our local Pacific Group offshoot called "Nursery."
The guy who harassed me for 3 years was a "Nursery Guy."
Then I asked how long he'd "been in". He looked at me, his whole persona
menacingly transformed, as though I'd just asked if I could sleep with his mother
for money or something. It was very odd and unnerved me.
I was 13th stepped by my drug and alcohol counselor, who was sober in AA.
He was in his 60's and i was 26. It did a great deal of harm.
I was raised by an abusive AA member who, of course, told me I was alcoholic since
before I ever had a drink. In fact, everyone is an alcoholic in his mind.
The counselor tried hard to get in my girlfriend's pants and recommended I leave her, his name was Chuck. The "treatment" they gave us was the issuance of a Big Book and meetings.
...
The entire reason I would drink was to escape the pain of rejection and marginalization I received from society. The hospital and AA completely missed it, my diagnosis was always alcoholic and the cure always Alcoholics Anonymous.
Horror Story of 12 Step Eating Disorder Treatment
I'm angry and feel betrayed by the medical system who sent me to 12-step programs in the first place and filled my head with lies when I was at my most vulnerable. ...
What I'm really struggling with right now is trying to enlighten my boyfriend...
He never got a sponsor, or worked the steps, or did anything AA supposedly requires for sobriety. And yet he parrots back to me the same old "How dare you say something about a program that's saved millions of lives, relationships and families??"
When I was about eleven years old, my mother became a devout AA member. Even though I'd never
had a drink in my life, she started telling me that I was an alcoholic anytime that
she and I had an argument, which only got worse when I was a teen.
[At a "treatment center":]
So I decided to leave. They made it impossible. They wouldn't
give me my things, which included my bank card, saying if I left AMA I can't
get them instead they mail my possessions to my house. Well I was far from
home, had no money (needed the card), no phone and no way to even get to the airport.
Several years ago I sought the help of a Psychiatrist who happened to be in AA. I gave him
my complete trust. His prescription for depression was going to meetings rather than
"feeling sorry for myself" and "carrying the AA message".
Wow. Another Jew who claims not to be a Jew. How original. ...
Mr. Jew, you are trying to denigrate and weaken Alcoholics Anonymous.
For years I watched my beautiful gentle husband turn into someone I don't know or like.
An A.A. sponsor describes her sponsee as a retard who "has a serious spiritual disorder and
also one inside his head" .
A reader's comments to the previous letter .
"Without rhyme or reason, the system disowned Leo and he spent the last month
or so of his life in miserable pain. He died alone living effectively in exile"
"... the counselor ... tried to convince me I was an alcoholic.
Among his evidence that I must be an alcoholic was that I cut back on
drinking after blacking out when I was in college (I'm now in my
mid 40s, college for me was back in the 1980s)."
...he's hardly at home
when I get home from work he's gone, he eats dinner at his group because they take
turns at taking dinner for eveyone, he said they told him it's ok if he doesn't eat
with his family...
"my husband says whenever I go to AA it
causes so much trouble at home as they tell me to leave him as he drinks."
"as soon as I got into speaking for the first time (The "Newcomer") I got bashed harder than anything. I was shocked with the way they were speaking to me and then I kept my mouth shut for the remainder."
I've seen AA do nothing for my parents, nor Alateen and Alanon do nothing for me.
After a few months of this, my partner and I were
effectively leading separate lives, and I hardly saw my family at all. My entire
thinking was being taken over by AA.
A few years ago I got sucked into the AA nightmare. At the time I thought it was the only way out of an ongoing battle I'd been having with alcohol. Well, it turned out that it only made it worse. I was always relapsing, going back to meetings, relapsing, going back and on and on .
...this group went to friends of mine outside
of A.A. and spread lies, ruined my reputation and cost me dear friendships .
they started showing a
video of a new 18 year old girl that had just came in to the group and they said
she was going to be one of the sponsor's girlfriend "the sponsor is 38 years old"
This guy was diagnosed as a
manic/depression. ... & he did a lot of sponsoring people & he CHARGED them for it,
you heard me right, HE CHARGED PEOPLE FOR IT.
Is it ME??? They talk and they talk about
helping and spirituality and they snub at the same time. All they want to do is
praise AA.
GA members wax rhapsodic on the "good ol' days" when they could slam members against
the wall and scream at them to "STOP GAMBLING!".
In 1993 my then ACOA sponsor introduced me to AA after 2 years in ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). I was sober for 1 year at that time, but when I admitted that I was an "alcoholic" I felt as if I had arrived and the world had stopped for a moment. It was an ephiphany. But, a false one at that.
So into the 90-day program I went, and, deja vu
all over again, about two-thirds of the way through I learned that it wasn't really
a 90-day program, but "Stage I" of a year-long program...
...they informed her that I was a bad influence and she needed to leave a stable
man who found his own power and ability to not drink.
Recently I discovered that a person who was "helping" me, who had
directed me to AA and was my self-proclaimed "spiritual adviser," had
actually been using thought reform. He had also convinced me that he
was a demonologist and empath who could read my thoughts, and that "a
demon was on my path." I spent many months with my life being
consumed, sleep- and food-deprived, as well as socially isolated.
A "gifting table" pyramid scheme ends in murder
I knew a woman who was fresh in AA, told to stop her psych meds & when attempting
suicide during a meeting in the meeting bathroom...
So, i was an internet junkie, and that made me lose the control of my life...
I asked for help from my father and he adviced me to handle this problem
through religion. ...
I told him than i need a psychiatrist or someone like this
profession. So he found out a private program in my town and I went there.
...
I started to feel good in the mornings but the
evenings where so boring and full of misery. I was also "IN DENIAL" 10x
a day and "I DIDNT KNOW HOW" to deal with things cause every thought of mine was my
"monkey's" thought, not a GOOD one.
AA is seriously a Cult. I have been stalked and like I said you would not
even believe me the shit I have had to put up with because I was vocal
about how over the top AA has gotten.
I had to go into a cult recovery
center after leaving the group... they really did a number on me.
Steppism bills itself as "a bridge back to reality" but as this man's
case clearly shows that is their biggest lie of all.
What I encountered in the following years was downright scary.
My life nearly obliterated thanks to the AA Cult.
Then came the rounds of Sober Livings, all 12 Step based and each one more insane and depraved then the last.
...my experience with AA. I started attending when I
was just 16 years old. ...
As soon as I began going, I was approached by numerous older men. I was
very promiscuous at a young age due in part to abuse from my childhood.
To make a long story short, I took these men up on their offers. I'm
lucky I didn't catch any sort of disease. I left home at 17 to move in
with one of them — a 50 year old man. He was a fairly popular AA guy and
I looked up to him.
A man is held prisoner in a treatement center because he refuses to convert
to a fraudulent counselor's religious beliefs .
I spent 19 years in the 12 Step Program of AA and a year in NA. ...
However by 1994 could no longer tolerate much of what I heard and saw in AA meetings.
I entered a sober living facility in december of 2011. ...
a social circle of self congratulating hypocrites who quickly showed their
true colors.
it was the actual treatment that came closer to killing me than
the substance abuse.
My mom and aunt, who were heavily involved in Al-anon, forced me to go to Al-a-teen meetings.
I was house-sitting with an AA guru...
He insisted that we have sex. ...
they had both videotaped me and put it on
YouTube
YOU HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PROGRAM AND "SHARE IN THE
MEETINGS"..... "YOU HAVE TO GO TO ALL OF THEM WHICH IS AT LEAST 4 A DAY PLUS HOME
GROUP,ETC,ETC" .
He told me that in order to get sober, I had to get off anti-depressants: they were dope.
Against my doctor, I tapered off. I wound up psychotic and catatonic in a
psych ward where they put me back on meds.
In the year 2004 my husband started to go to meetings of AA. He wanted to be an
alcoholic in recovery (without having been a real Alcoholic before — he just wanted
a cult that took control over his whole life).
...after about a week they told her I was a trigger?
Even though I don't smoke any sort of drugs and only drink socially. They
then went as far as saying sex and even seeing me was a trigger and to
leave me asap.
Apparently, about 15 years ago, a woman out in California that had many years sober
(heavily involved in service work, a circuit speaker, et al) brought her teenage
daughter to an AA dance at the Snake Pit. Well, the teenage daughter was brutally
beaten and raped out in the parking lot while the AA dance was happening.
The first thing the councilors said was that he needed to change his meds from Welbutrin to Cipralex. When I told him he should only take medical advice from a qualified person they told me I could not talk to him anymore.
15 years of friendship gone in just 6 months with the 12-steppers.
A man is held in virtual slavery in a 12-Step halfway house .
When I told my company HIMS rep that I did not want to work for PSA, that I did not trust the training department, and that I wanted to be a mainline pilot, he told me I was self will run riot, delusional, and a dry drunk.
...the ignorance and closed-mindedness of this suggestion has kept me sick. My obsession with alcohol comes from AA.
i was told i'd be going someplace upstate new york...
a van picked me up from the outpatient facility, drove all over queens
picking up other people, then ends up somewhere on long island
[ie NOT UPSTATE] where we're all theoretically going to stay. my
protestations of Well I Was Supposed To Go Somewhere Else are met
with silence,
I too went to AA for 6 months going through difficult times. I allowed an alcoholic to tell me I had a problem and needed to go to AA. When what I needed was a therapist and anxiety medication. It destroyed me emotionally and mentally. Altered my sense of reality and my faith in humanity.
Actually, she approached me and asked if I needed a sponsor. That should have been a warning sign. I found out later she was unemployed and collected sponsees like it was her full time job.
...
She had to keep asking her sponsor for advice about how to handle me since I was an atheist. Yet another warning sign. Really? After 21 years of sobriety you still need to call your sponsor every day and ask them what to do?
When exactly does the actual recovery part come in?
It has been difficult to get past the tsunami of hypocrisy I witnessed, and
the astounding levels of both organizational manipulation/exploitation, and
yet also the nature of the individuals coming into those rooms looking to
utilize others to satisfy their various appetites. It was a circus of evil,
propelled by greed, ignorance, fear, power, and exploitation.
Enter this vigilante neighbor who runs this out patient program ice again.
Whenever I would see him at weddings, in the street, etc. he would privately talk to my fiancée.
Little did I know this prick was corresponding with her that I was "a dry addict", that I would ultimately die (mind you I didn't gamble or drug for years), and that I needed to enter NA now.
At rehab:
THE ENTIRE CLIENT LIST WAS DOING DRUGS THAT WERE BROUGHT IN BY A MEMBER OF THE STAFF.
Practically my entire emotional and intellectual life has been overshadowed and
twisted by the doctrines of AA since my father was "12th-stepped" when
I was 15 years old. I am now 61...
She told me to move out of the apartment that I share with my husband and into a
recovery home even though my husband is not an addict and we have a good relationship.
...I did stay sober for 3 years, until I met a man who was 25 years sober.
that is when REAL FEAR started.
I voluntarily entered a private rehab program. (weed, cigarettes, casino's)
I spent many years as a state Parole Officer. During that time I sent countless
offenders to AA and NA. I never gave them a choice; it was do it, or violate your
court-order to get 'treatment.'
...if you imply that you have a thing to do with staying sober or off drugs then that makes you a heretic...
The thing is since she
started AA she is a different person; almost robotic. ...
I can't recognize my best friend and it's sad.
He wanted me to quit my job, ask my brother to take care of my mother and try to
cut contact with her to as minimum as possible. According to him keeping in touch
with my mother would lead to codependency which is for him another form of addiction
that is also treated used the 12 Steps program. This advice was received after
having met him only 20 minutes earlier.
Search the Orange Papers
Click Fruit for Menu
Last updated 26 March 2015.
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-horrors.html
