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you must be some fucking moron.
there is no "leader" of Alcoholics Anonymous. the steps are almost plainly obvious.
my sponsor has 41 years of sobriety. i've met thousands of AAs and NAs with 20+ years sobriety/clean-time. you show me the thousands and thousands who have abstained for 20+ years. i'll bet you my dick and balls you can't find more than a handful. a two eight-ball a night jerkoff like me does not suddenly come to his senses and say, "ya know what... i think i've had enough of this stuff forever" and never snorts another line. doesn't happen. i tried hundreds of times to quit. it's only with 12-step philosophy and practice that i've gotten two years clean. oh, i forgot that i bow down and kiss bill wilson's ass every morning and say secret sacred AA chants that i'm forced to repeat by the evil powers that be in that organization who are controlling my mind remotely by a chip implanted in my brain. wanker... am i a shining example of AA principles for writing to you and telling you to lump it? probably not. but i'm not a cult member. i do whatever the fuck i please. if i feel like getting angry at you... well... maybe i damn well should! you're propagating a bunch of idiot lies. OBVIOUSLY you've never fully read bill wilson's writing. did you ever read alexander pope? i think he has a little ditty that goes something like this...
"a little learning is a dangerous thing drink deep or taste not the pierian spring there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again." sober up, bruvva man! hey, and guess what? the moment i send this, my anger will pass out of my fingers, body and mind. i'll have a great day. no resentments! did i leave out... "eat shit and die"? oh. i guess not. take care! Steve C.
Date: Thu, August 21, 2008 1:25 pm (answered 23 May 2009) slogans are simply the bullshit PRACTICES of some assholes in the room. there is NOTHING WHATSOEVER that says
fake it till you make it etc. nothing of that nature in bill wilson's literature. and as for the grandiose claims of redemption... leave other people's faith to them fucking selves, nitwit. i'm an agnostic, but i respect other people's faith. if they want to think that way and it helps them, good for them. it never says anywhere in the big book or 12x12 that you need to adopt this or that god, but that you do need to take on a spiritual way of life. spiritual may, to those of limited capacity who can only read dictionaries, denote that which literally has to do with the divine aspect of a human being. to me... it means that part of a person which accepts that it is part of something bigger... is humble... open-minded. it is gnosis. the complete being as a single function. not a jumble of thoughts or emotions, but the whole integral self. that is not written in the most graceful, wonderful prose... nor is it well thought out. but come on, man! it's ALL OVER wilson's writing! you don't have to follow my way. follow your own star. what people say in the rooms of AA is their own idiot business. for each person who says... "there is ONE program: THE program" there is another guy like me who says, "fuck dat, yo. there are as many programs in this room as there are people in this room." it is only the closed-minded who hear one type of person... all the slogans... the jingos... who gets nothing out of the "shares" but that which they want to hear with their twisted, sadistic little minds which think nothing of drunks but that they're the rubbish of society and deserve their misfortune. i read your jerkoff page. the way you refer to drunks as a bunch of worthless pieces of shit is remarkable. Will being a booze-hound really get you that much good stuff? Booze-hound, huh? Really? that your first born be a gutter booze hound and that you learn by painful experience what it is to love another human being who can't find any love for himself! and that you may learn what, in recovery, that selfsame booze hound child of yours may achieve. nothing more or less than the next guy. but for a "booze hound", just to be functional and "part of" society is an incredible, incredible achievement FOR HIM. you don't have to think anything of it. it doesn't change anything, what you think. i'm only pissed off at you not because you are so ridiculously opposed to 12-step, but because you're clearly a recovery naysayer. that's disgusting. the fact that you're so smug and self-centered that you devote your time to poking holes in things that work for SOME people says a lot about your character (i.e., lack thereof.) what works for you is great for you. what works for others is great for them. to claim that AA is a cult simply misses the definition of cult. how can anything be called a cult where the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking/using? Steve C.
Well, Steve,
You really get upset when someone critically examines Alcoholics Anonymous, don't you?
I'll just leave your letters as they are. They aren't worth answering in detail.
You really do a good job of making my points for me. I offer your two letters as
evidence that A.A. really is a cult.
But there is one glaring contradiction in your first letter,
in your idea of "the A.A. Program", that I have to comment on:
First you say that the answer must come from outside of yourself because you aren't
finding the answers within you, and then, a little later, you
say "fuck the god part — the answer is deep down within you."
So somewhere around Step 1 or Step 2, you are saying that you need
the help of "Higher Power",
but then around Step 7 you decide that you can correct all of your "defects of character"
and "moral shortcomings" without "Higher Power" (God).
That makes no sense. You can't have it both ways.
And this is grossly wrong, and exactly backwards:
By the way, "Fake It Until You Make It", and "Act As If",
have been part of A.A. practices and slogans since before A.A. began.
That is, they were
creations of the Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker,
when he was the second in commmand of Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult.
Shoemaker created those practices to aid in the religious conversion of prospective victims.
Bill Wilson learned all of that cult religion stuff from Sam Shoemaker while he was a
member of the Oxford Group. Bill Wilson even said so:
Have a good day.
== Orange
You have NO Idea how accurate your papers are! 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). And I will be the first to point out the numerous examples of exploitation this CULT's members engage in, especially in the Los Angeles area and the members who are involved in the entertainment field. I have never been so taken advantage of in my life!
Hello Leon,
Thanks for the letter. Sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope things
are going better for you now.
Have a good day.
== Orange
 The mother goose and her goslings are working on a bagel. Carmen is the small one in the front and center. Carmen wants the mother, not the bagel.
 All of the goslings are looking at me expectantly, hoping that I will toss them some more "bagel bits". Carmen is the small one in the middle. The goslings' jaws and beaks are not strong enough for them to be able to rip a bagel apart. But they can eat it when I tear the bagel into little pieces and toss the pieces to them. So they were hoping that I would do that for them. I did. Carmen didn't really care about the bagel that much. She was very well-fed, not really hungry like the other goslings that were out in the tough real world, scrounging for a meal. But Carmen did whatever all of the other goslings did, just to fit in.
 Carmen walking along with the other goslings. She tried so hard to fit in. Carmen is the small one.
 Dog Alert The family of geese is running for the river, because a dog is coming. Carmen went with them. She's the small one on the right. When I took this picture, I thought that Carmen was gone, that I wouldn't see her again, at least not for a while, because she was going to go away with this family. [The story of Carmen continues here.]
I found your article very interesting. I have never wanted to join AA for a lot of the same reasons you've listed here. Do you know of other alternatives?
Hi Num Num Buns,
The answer is "Yes".
Here is a list
of discussions of alternatives.
Good luck, and have a good day.
== Orange
Wow, I found your page and what great work you are doing. I was AA for the better part of 20 years and saw, heard and preached all that muck! I tell people today, "Can you believe I was once part of a cult..........AA!" The bitch about it is I spent 20 years convincing my family about "the disease" and my NEED to go to meetings. Now, they call me "dry drunk" because I have nothing to say good about AA. Now, I get to spend the next 20 years trying to convince them that it was all bull. My sisters say "you've changed!" I say yes, I'm not a victim anymore. I fixed myself and like (love) myself just fine. I live and am from New Orleans. I am a working artist and have a happy life. Lots of my old AA friends just cant understand that what I do works for me. From time to time I well bump into an old AA friend and will always be asked "You drinking?" I say, "You cheat on your spouse, or your taxes?" In other words, don't hold that guilt yard-stick up to me! Anyway thank for what is clearly a very time consuming process. Putting the info out there. Regards, Elaine
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for the letter, and congratulations on your escape from the madhouse.
And thanks for the thanks.
And have a good day.
== Orange
Obviously you have vague knowledge of what it is like to recover from a seemingly hopelless , helpless state of mind. i am a recovered alcoholic and it is through the simple program of alcoholics anonymous that i've found my help. you stated in your ramblings that this program is a religion-it is not,it is a sound set of principles for living. our guidelines for living have been set down by people who have a common problem and have found through experience that one alcoholic helping another is what works. a " higher power " , a god of your own understanding, is an essential part of our recovery process. you have obviously devoted a lot of unnecessary time trying to convince another that a program only an alcoholic can understand , does not work . you need only look in the book of james to understand these principles. if you may be agnostic or atheist maybe you may consider another of a.a. essentials- that being open-mindedness- also if the alcoholic anonymous program is all you say, why has it helped millions of people in over 150 countrys recover from there hopeless , helpless state of mind ? god bless you for your time and understanding . p.s. saint francis prayer and sermon on the mount by emmett fox may give insight to this wonderful fellowship. good day
Hello John,
Actually, I have a lot of experience with alcohol addiction and recovery.
Try reading
the introduction,
for starters.
Why do you think I was in an "alcohol treatment program"?
And I now have 8 1/2 years off of
alcohol, tobacco, and any other drugs. So yes, I've been through the mill,
and I know about addiction and recovery.
You said,
Why do we get this constant alternation between "God" and
"no god"? It looks suspiciously like
a bait-and-switch trick.
First, "You don't have to believe in God", and then you do.
And if "god" (lower-case 'g') can be anything, then god can
easily be something that cannot help you. I don't really believe that
using a bedpan, doorknob, or rock, as my "higher power" is
going to save me from addiction. Do you?
Then you declared,
But when I criticize the insanity of Alcoholics
Anonymous, suddenly I'm allegedly not an alcoholic,
so I supposedly can't understand how A.A. really works.
(Which it doesn't.)
The claim that outsiders can't really understand the wonderfulness of the organization
is just another standard cult characteristic.
Look at
The cult and its members are special and
Enemy-making and Devaluing the Outsider.
The Oxford Group liked to quote the Book of James to justify their
twisted theology and heretical cult practices, but the Christian Church
rejected and banned James' practices like group confessions nearly 1600
years ago, because of the many problems that practice caused. (And the correct
term is "practice", not "spiritual principle".)
Look here.
So, no, I'm not going to look into the Book of James to see the
"A.A. principles".
You are again repeating the Biggest Lie
of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Have a good day.
== Orange
Why the fierce attack against AA? It seems to me you take examples out of the big book and use unfounded examples. In all the time I have gone to AA I have never been in a group that told me I was wrong, I was going to die if I didn't do AA, etc. All of your negative examples I have never once seen. I've gone to perhaps 20 different meetings, some of which I attend regularily. What did you do to research your claims, as I find nearly all of them to be untrue. btw, I liked your rendition of the twelves steps (with santa claus in them and whatnot). I told that to my sponsor and he laughed. Something you say won't happen in AA. Weird how that happened.
Hello Jacob,
Thanks for the letter.
You seem to have found some very nice A.A. groups. Lucky you.
The fact that you have personally never seen anything bad happen in Alcoholics
Anonymous doesn't mean that it isn't happening. As Carl Sagan used to say,
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Many other people
who write to me have real horror stories to tell, so it isn't just my opinion
or my interpretation of the Big Book or the Twelve Steps. Look at
The list of horror stories has been moved to its own file, here:
And speaking of my interpretation of the Big Book and Bill Wilson's teachings
about God and alcohol, you might want to look at these items (then again, you might not):
Have a good day.
== Orange
Dear Orange Guy: You know if you attacked any organization, however good they may be, with the same negative zeal as you just ripped 12 step programs I'm sure you could dig enough dirt to send Mother Theresa's group to life at hard labour. While I admit that Bill Wilson was a failed AA all his life and that he was probably quite insane when he died, the concept of what the first several hundred AA's started is real and do-able. Granted AA is probably a dying organization because they are very orthodox and unchanging, NA has attempted to fix all that crap. For example, saying a higher power of your understanding and then in the next sentence proclaiming that it's a "Him" and his name is "God". NA has long had problems with AA purists and our organization works. You quote as many "fools" with statistics as AA does. All I know is that, at 55, I'm still alive and all my friends from my youth are now either dead (most) or insane (a few). The difference — I went to NA and worked the 12 steps and still do. Thanks for the entertaining web page but I think before you resume your crusade you should take a look in a mirror and get at the root of all that misplaced anger. Erik B
Hello Eric,
Mother Teresa didn't sell quack medicine as a cure for a deadly problem.
Mother Teresa didn't use the courts and police and judges and parole officers
to force people into her organization.
The rest of your letter is basically logical fallacies. You start with
minimization and denial —
"the problem was just Bill Wilson and A.A. purists".
(No, the problem is that the 12-Step program is a cult religion fraud.)
Then you claim that Narcotics Anonymous works and fixes all
of the problems with Alcoholics Anonymous — but you supply zero evidence
to support those claims. You don't supply any facts like the all-important
actual N.A. cure rate.
You just use a simple
Proof by Anecdote argument —
"I'm alive today because I drank Dr. Bummer's Magic Koolaid."
No, you are alive today because you stopped killing yourself with drugs, not
because you joined a cult religion.
And you argue that,
"You quote as many "fools" with statistics as AA does."
Trying to reject statistics is the last refuge of someone who is losing an
argument. It is also the propaganda trick and mind game called
Antirationalism,
which is the argument that there is no real rational knowledge,
that we cannot know the truth. Baloney. Yes we can, and yes we do.
Please supply a success rate. If we send 1000 randomly-selected alcoholics
or drug addicts to Narcotics Anonymous, how many of them will pick up a
neat glow-in-the-dark one-year "clean and sober" keytag
a year later? And a black multi-year keytag two years later?
The answer is important. The answer shows whether the N.A. program actually
works.
By the way, I've still got my keytags — the whole set, including the 1-year
and multi-year tags — but I didn't get them by following
the teachings of either A.A. or N.A.; I got them by rejecting the teachings of
both A.A. and N.A., and using my own common sense and determination to save my
own life. That of course invalidates N.A. Step One:
Have a good day.
== Orange
Hi Your website has been of great use to me in under standing what my wife is going through in AA, we are getting divorced, and I think it all comes down to her sponsor and AA indoctrination, that I am bad because I will not get a program (I do not believe in a higher power or abuse alcohol) and want her to drink again. She also suffers from bi-polar and PDD which does not help. All very sad for me and the kids but it seems that is the way it is. Why not have a forum where people could learn from others about problems like this with AA. I can set it up for you or host it for you. It would be easier to search and follow than read through all your emails and people could chat about problems like I have been having. John
Hello John,
Thanks for the letter. Sorry to take so long to answer; I'm way behind on answering
email.
And I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. Destroying marriages is one of the worst
things that the 12-Step cult does. About the only thing worse is causing people
to die. Which they also do.
I have been thinking real hard about a forum or bulletin board system. When I
chose the current host system (Hostmonster.com), I made sure that they were running Linux
and that I could install my own custom cgi-bin, just so that I could do such things.
(I am an old cgi-bin computer programmer myself, so that part of the work isn't
a problem.)
Can you suggest some good free software for a forum system? Ideally, it should allow
multiple forums with multiple threads, and all of the usual features.
Allowing embedded images would be really nice too. I'm sure I'm not the only one
taking pictures of cute things like ducklings and goslings that they might want
to share.
And I know I will need the
help of volunteer moderators, because I don't seem to have much spare time for
running and managing such a system myself —
I'm still way behind just in answering email and working on the occasional web page.
And summer is here, and the river and sunshine and cute goslings are calling...
Have a good day.
== Orange
UPDATE: 2011.04.22:
Hi Agent. I hope all is well. You kinda scared me for awhile because you hadn't been answering your email. I thought maybe something bad had happened to you. I can't get enough of reading your mail, it always makes my day. I loved your pics of the goslings. They're so cute.
I'm sure you've already been to this site But I just found it recently. I started to read it and all I could think was WOW, this is totally aa!! Anyway I just wanted to say hi, and keep up the EXCELLENT work and all that you do. Don't let the thumpers get you down. :) They're just scared little aa'ers (that half the time can't even spell correctly) afraid your going to destroy their little world.
Thanks,
Hello Bill,
Thanks for the letter and the compliments and the laugh.
And I'm doing fine, in spite of current communications difficulties.
Thank you Qwest. (Hint: If you are chosing a phone company, you might avoid
Qwest.)
And thanks for the tip. I don't think I found this web site before:
And yes, those little goslings are just so unbearably cute. They really are
Tribbles. Remember the original Startrek series, "The Trouble with Tribbles"?
Well, little newly-hatched goslings are Tribbles. They are irresistable.
The photographs don't begin to convey the feelings
you get when you have one or even several cute little goslings
cuddling up to you and chirping happily
about "Oh, your body is so warm. That feels good. I want to cuddle more."
By the way, in case you didn't notice, I just got another orphan a few weeks ago.
The story starts
here. Yes, it's already another
year and another generation of cute fluff-balls.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Hi Orange, More than eight years ago, I was alcohol-dependent, and had been so for most of my 22 year-long drinking history. Eventually the disgraceful consequences of my drinking (and signs of liver disease) were too much to pay for the "benefit" of getting drunk and I decided I wasn't going to drink anymore. I believed then, and still do, that I no longer have any moral licence to drink. I subsequently have not touched a single drop of alcohol, and I have no sense of missing anything in life by being abstinent. I know that even if I could somehow avoid the bad consequences of drinking, the best I could get out of a hypothetical drink now is no more than what I got out of it thousands of times before. I just have no interest in drinking again — I've moved on. At the time I made this decision for abstinence, I did feel that I needed the emotional support of abstainers in making this sudden move from being a drunk to being alcohol-free. I went to my first AA meeting in search of such support, which in large measure I did get. On top of this, I also got all of the "advice": get a sponsor, go to meetings, go especially to steps meetings, listen, and so on. I baulked at the idea of "getting a sponsor". The word "sponsor" means someone who gives financial support to a community group, for example a sports club, and gets some advertising in return. Was someone going to pay me money to wear a shirt with his name on it? I recognized absurdity right from the beginning — I was only an idiot when I drank, I'm not usually an idiot otherwise. Early on, I saw a couple of cases of new AA members driven out by dysfunctional old-timer sponsors. I've also never accepted the dogmatic disease-of-alcoholism model, and got away with saying so at a couple of meetings. My attitude though, was if the emotional support I needed was available, I could ignore a degree of nonsense, especially recognizing the slogan "take what you want and ignore the rest". I never did invite a "sponsor" to control any part of my life. I was also perplexed about what relevance the twelve steps had in recovery from alcohol dependence. To be sure, some of the content in itself is good — for example, making amends for misdeeds — but what significance does this have for someone pushed by a sponsor to do it, under threat of relapsing into drunkeness otherwise? Anything good in the steps is removed by the AA context. As a drunk, I often freely made amends to people for bad behaviour, with no effect, or expectation of effect, on subsequent drinking. So up to here, I've got no sponsor, and I'm ignoring the steps, at least in their dysfunctional AA context, but I'm attending meetings for emotional support, not drinking anymore, and not missing it. At first I was attending four or five meetings a week, and did service as group treasurer for one of them — at two months in. Taking this up was the first of several uncomfortable experiences, revealing something of the sick nature of much of AA. The group needed a treasurer, and strangely no-one present wanted to do it. Naively, I volunteered, to the objection of one "old-timer" I hadn't seen there before spouting rules about needing at least six months sobriety to take up AA service. The others shushed him up with some effort, and I was the treasurer. As it turned out, the "old timer" was a group regular who had been overseas for a couple of months, and when present dominated the meeting with abusive put-downs of anyone present, and declarations of his perceived superiority. He particularly didn't like my university background, and let me know from the floor many times that I was just a "useless academic". What could I do now that I had taken on a group role that obligated me to attend this meeting every week with this AA-conditioned narcissistic lunatic? I realized also that the rest of the group had deliberately dumped me in it — none of them wanted to be obligated to be in the room with this madman every week! What is also clear in this, Orange, is your own point that there is no organizational structure in AA to remove people who more desperately need professional psychiatric counselling. Eventually, I was courageous enough to turn up at the meeting and announce I was passing on the treasurer job and leaving the group. Of course my mad friend who objected to me taking it up in the first place had plenty to say about me "dumping the job" and harangued me about my "lack of integrity" until I could get away, never to return. I was sensible enough to just roll with the punches for about twenty minutes, knowing that I would never see this sociopath again (and I haven't). I kept up other meetings though, and made it my policy to drop meetings where I experience sick attitudes. When I heard conversation at one of the meetings about thirteenth-step conquests on the meeting table (!) before the opening of the meeting, that meeting went. When I heard someone else claiming, in all apparent seriousness, that he derives divine power from the knob on the door to not drink, and the following week someone else make the same claim about the chair he was sitting on (no-one there ever batted an eyelid!), that meeting went. At meetings I've witnessed people getting shouted down for saying AA is a religion — while taking people seriously who worship doorknobs and chairs? I currently attend just one small meeting, and not every week anymore. I regard the core of the group as friends (none of them are mad old-timers), but really the main reason I'm still there is I'm the treasurer (yet again a group treasurer!), and there haven't been any sufficiently bad or mad experiences there yet (apart from the standard readings, which I just lethargically defocus from). Having said this, Orange, your critical analysis of AA has given me the energy and inspiration to make the remaining final break from this dysfunctional outfit that I've never really believed in and definitely don't need. It's getting near impossible now to go through the motions of "sharing" dogmatic step program-based BS at meetings and still live with myself (especially the pretence that even after eight+ years of abstinence, I still suffer from a "disease" that might cast me back into drunkenness at any moment). After reading your material, I feel a bit stupid that after eight years I'm still attending a meeting, but I feel very lucky that at least I had the sense to never get a sponsor. PWS Australia
Hello PWS,
Thanks for the letter and the story, and congratulations on your years of sobriety and your
escape from the looney bin.
So have a good life.
== Orange
Hey Orange, How's it going? Glad to see you are posting letters again — one of my favorite pastimes is reading both those letters and your pithy replies. Anyway, one of the ways I'm trying to dismantle the huge AA juggernaut is to engaging the local pastors at the churches where the cult meets. I've had a few dialogues and, while not seeing any progress, at least have been given the opportunity to express the 1) heretical nature of the organization, and 2) describe in detail its failure rate. I also pointed out that there were occasions where I saw drug, alcohol, and sometimes sexual activity on their premises before-during-or after meetings by some of these upstanding pillars of recovery. I thought it might help to provide the clergy with a little more detailed information about who enters their doors. I also inquired to the head of the local United Way about the dollar amounts given to a couple of local halfway houses. I found out that each gets about $30,000 dollars per year. I then wrote back to the United Way, citing facts and figures about the zero success rate of the 12 step programs, which of course these institutions foist on its hapless clients. I'm writing letters to the local papers, and will contact my governement officals about this as well. I was just thinking back to when I was collared and corraled into one of the halfway houses I mentioned above. It was supposed to be a 6-month course of treatment but it turned into 14 months. I nearly lost my marriage over it. Anyway, one day we were being driven home from our menial jobs (which they encouraged us to take and be proud — aspiring to anything more was deemed "egoism" and "self-will...") by one of the "phase 2 guys" ("phase 2" means you've been there longer and are peceived as a "role model") when we were almost killed in a near head-on accident with a fully loaded gravel truck. Fortunately there were only bumps, bruises, and strains. When we got back to the halfway house the staff had all the guys who were in the van huddle up in one of the counselors offices. The State Police were on their way to the halfway house to interview the people in the van. Well don't you know the spiritual staff told us to lie about what happened, i.e. we were all wearing seatbelts (not all of us wore them) and that we were going the speed limit (we weren't) and etc. etc. Yep, that's AA in action. That's doing God's will alright; lying to 5-0 so that they could get over and continue their patina of righteousness. Because if the truth got out their criminally operated gravy train would run out. So Orange — how do like THAT spirituality? Bill N.
Hi again, Bill,
Thanks for the letter and the story. And thanks for all of your activism. If enough
people write those letters and make a fuss about the 12-Step hoax, something good
really might happen, especially now while we have both massive budget cuts due to the
destroyed American economy, and a new administration that is less dogmatic and
crazy. The hoax machine might find its funding cut.
By the way, demanding real results from treatment programs and half-way houses
and similar things is a great approach. I recently learned that the
State of Oregon has wisely inserted demands for proof of efficacy into funding
for Substance Abuse Treatment programs and the like. That is the kiss of death
to the quack healers, because their frauds do not have any efficacy.
So demanding that the taxpayers get a thousand dollars worth of cure for a thousand
dollars of funding is a very good strategy.
Look here for a description of valid test
procedures.
So keep up the good work, and keep your fingers crossed.
And have a good day.
== Orange
[William N.'s next letter is here.]
Last updated 30 December 2013. |
